[Purple Haize]

I know LU has a “thing” because I have has a couple of friends ask me about it. But I know we have several on this board more knowledgeable than I on the subject. What are some of the good online curriculum for parents who will probably be Homeschooling come Fall?

[Cider Jim]

Here is LU's "thing," and A LOT of our students do this as homeschoolers.

https://www.liberty.edu/online-academy/

But Mr. & Mrs. Sly are the homeschool experts on this board.

[Sly Fox]

Oh, there is no shortage of homeschool parents on this board.

Picking a curriculum is both crazy awesome and just as overwhelming. The past decade has seen an explosion in this space. So depending on the age of the students and what the parents really want out of the experience will impact choices. Do they want to homeschool using curriculum located online or do they want the full online experience with live teaching? Major difference. Classical or traditional? Investment or budget? The choices are endless.

Yes, LU Online Academy is one of the largest options available. Honestly we have never used it because it was never the right fit for our kids based on curriculum. But they do manage all of the paperwork and transcripts and are considered a private school by most colleges and public schools. That makes transfers easy.

The biggest player in the space is a name that will be familiar to most everyone with a Christian school background: Abeka. They essentially took ther standard curriculum and pushed it to the web. No surprises. Once again, it is not for everybody and wasn't for us. My sister spent one horrendous emester at PCC that taints my view of anything related to the Abeka mpire. But that's just me.

Here in the Lone Star State, Texas Tech created an online curriculum that doesn't use live teaching but provides accreditation and the administrative side of things in addition to the actual curriculum. I believe they have now taken it national. BJU (yes, that BJU) is huge in the curriculum space and has come up with some online solutions. But the stigma remains for some of us.

If they want the full online experience with live teaching and interaction between students then there are some nice options. My two high schoolers are in this situation. They attend Logos Online School based in Moscow, ID. The brick & mortar school is the feeder into New St. Andrews if you are familiar with that outfit. All my kids' teachers have a minimum of a masters and some have PhDs. The curriculum is crazy rigorous and in some cases much more challenging than what I took in undergrad at LU. We have always used the Classical model for our kids who are liberal arts-minded. This school is not for parents just wanting to find something online. But the kids who graduate tend to hav great collegiate options available to them. My son was admitted to Texas A&M and had options at nearly every SEC and Big XII school. My daughter is a sophomore and if she maintains her grades and work ethic will have the Ivies, Stanford and Rice as options even though she is alll about the Longhorns.

The primary competitor for our kids' school is Wilson Hill Academy in Austin. Frankly if we had learned about it first they would likely be there and my youngest who is in middle school might wind up taking this path. It is another rigorous classical offering with live teaching and student interaction. Teachers tend to bounce back and forth between the two schools.

A friend of ours was the headmaster at Laurel Springs for years. They have a big reputation and it is very popular for kids who are sports phenoms dedicated to practicing their sport hours and hours every day. Not as rigourous but accredited making it easy with transcripts into college.

That's probably more than you asked. But this is a topic where I am well versed whether I want to be or not.

[thepostman]

Thanks for the info, Sly. With schools going through the challenges of converting to online platforms around the country, I have a feeling more parents are going to look at homeschooling options. That will be especially true if schools decide to stagger attendance and other measures that are being discussed.

So this info will become even more valuable.

[Yacht Rock]

In California, where we homeschooled, we had a great setup. Our school was a public charter school and we had so much choice on curriculum and programs and it would all be billed to the charter school. It paid for my daughter's ballet lessons, music lessons, all the books and curriculum. We just had to meet with a licensed teacher once per month. They would come to our house.

While it was a public school, we were allowed to supplement the material they paid for with our own material that wouldn't be covered by them.

[RubberMallet]

we are a classical conversations family. and we supplement with saxon math and dave ramsey foundations. there is some other curriculum for spelling and stuff. we have 3,9,13,14 yr olds

[Class of 20Something]

@cruzan_flame13

I think this is your time to shine my dude.

[Class of 20Something]

I’ll throw a couple LUOA nuggets out there. My wife is the lead elementary advisor.

LUOA is fully accredited.
LUOA offers dual enrollment including an A.A. track. This is the major differentiating factor for them.
LUO offers a 15% discount for students that come from LUOA.
LUOA offers both full and part time course registration.
LUOA had used AlphaOmegas curriculum in the early years, but their entire current curriculum was created by LUOA in collaboration with LU professors.

[Purple Haize]

I’ll throw a couple LUOA nuggets out there. My wife is the lead elementary advisor.

LUOA is fully accredited.
LUOA offers dual enrollment including an A.A. track. This is the major differentiating factor for them.
LUO offers a 15% discount for students that come from LUOA.
LUOA offers both full and part time course registration.
LUOA had used AlphaOmegas curriculum in the early years, but their entire current curriculum was created by LUOA in collaboration with LU professors.

Probably not Philosophy Professors anymore though......


Too soon?

[RubberMallet]

the biggest take away i'm hearing from a lot of our friends who are now teaching their own children their public school curriculum is "why is it taking our kids 1-2 hours to finish 8 hours worth of a school days work plus homework? "

the inefficiency of one size fits all public school should be glaring to those who put a lot of time and energy into their kids education. I think brick and mortar education will still be the vast majority of education but the homeschool stigma is slowly shedding away (it had been for some time) and i think will aggressively shed away over the next few years.

[cruzan_flame13]

I’ll throw a couple LUOA nuggets out there. My wife is the lead elementary advisor.

LUOA is fully accredited.
LUOA offers dual enrollment including an A.A. track. This is the major differentiating factor for them.
LUO offers a 15% discount for students that come from LUOA.
LUOA offers both full and part time course registration.
LUOA had used AlphaOmegas curriculum in the early years, but their entire current curriculum was created by LUOA in collaboration with LU professors.

You pretty much summarize some key factors for LUOA. Of course we are still growing and expand the curriculum and the wonders of online academia.

[Yacht Rock]

the biggest take away i'm hearing from a lot of our friends who are now teaching their own children their public school curriculum is "why is it taking our kids 1-2 hours to finish 8 hours worth of a school days work plus homework? "

the inefficiency of one size fits all public school should be glaring to those who put a lot of time and energy into their kids education. I think brick and mortar education will still be the vast majority of education but the homeschool stigma is slowly shedding away (it had been for some time) and i think will aggressively shed away over the next few years.

Most of my observations are that teachers/students aren't covering nearly as much content as they would have in the physical classroom.

That's not to say that with more planning and prep it could happen, but what's going on in a lot of regions right now isn't really a good model of what distance education or homeschooling should look like.

[Purple Haize]

the biggest take away i'm hearing from a lot of our friends who are now teaching their own children their public school curriculum is "why is it taking our kids 1-2 hours to finish 8 hours worth of a school days work plus homework? "

the inefficiency of one size fits all public school should be glaring to those who put a lot of time and energy into their kids education. I think brick and mortar education will still be the vast majority of education but the homeschool stigma is slowly shedding away (it had been for some time) and i think will aggressively shed away over the next few years.

The reason I asked the question is because my friend has been astonished at how much is NOT being taught at their school. He gets it, they have to teach to the lowest common denominator and that’s just a fact of life. But it has opened up his eyes as to the wasted potential out there. His kids are burning through the lesson and several parents have started swapping assignments with older students. I think you are going to see a HUGE disparity when kids go back to school. Some will be light years ahead of their peers while others will have fallen so far off their academic trajectory there may be no coming back.
From the teachers stand point, they are totally unprepared for this. And they shouldn’t be expected to be. How do you teach to kids at different levels with different home environments who may or may not have Internet access or transport to pick up learning packets etc. Then of course you have the lazy parents and lazy teachers.
IMO Education is going to see the biggest paradigm shift because of all this.

[Yacht Rock]

I keep telling my colleagues that I hope education sees a huge shift because of this. Thankfully, there are a lot of teachers and administrators who want education to change and see this as the event to push it forward.

I think I've stated earlier that so much about the quality of education is less about homeschool/private/public but about the specific student, the school, the admin, the parents, program of studies, extracurriculars, and of course, the teachers.

I've experienced and seen and heard good and bad experiences in any kind of school. Sometimes it's like reading job reviews on Glass Door where someone says a place is a crappy place to work but when you worked there, you loved it.

One thing that I think will be key to educational success in the long term is powerful differentiation. Not just in modalities but in the ability for a teacher to facilitate students learning different topics at different times.

[RubberMallet]

the biggest take away i'm hearing from a lot of our friends who are now teaching their own children their public school curriculum is "why is it taking our kids 1-2 hours to finish 8 hours worth of a school days work plus homework? "

the inefficiency of one size fits all public school should be glaring to those who put a lot of time and energy into their kids education. I think brick and mortar education will still be the vast majority of education but the homeschool stigma is slowly shedding away (it had been for some time) and i think will aggressively shed away over the next few years.

Most of my observations are that teachers/students aren't covering nearly as much content as they would have in the physical classroom.

That's not to say that with more planning and prep it could happen, but what's going on in a lot of regions right now isn't really a good model of what distance education or homeschooling should look like.

i'm talking about families who's kids are finishing the entire books worth of course work. teachers are hamstrung with a number of factors in and out of the classroom, its definitely not on them in most cases.

one family was like the kids work through the entire weeks worth of school work in a day and then had 4 days of nothing. they've started looking for other stuff their gradeschooler is learning anew instrument and their jr high daughter is doing DR foundations wiht our kid.

another family wouldn't let them just do it all ina day, structured it out a little but is also using some software to do advanced AP type work (they never considered their kids AP type kids)

there are other families where its been a struggle. we have friends who's child has a IEP and its been a total backwards transition because they are not equiped to educate the same way.

[Yacht Rock]

the biggest take away i'm hearing from a lot of our friends who are now teaching their own children their public school curriculum is "why is it taking our kids 1-2 hours to finish 8 hours worth of a school days work plus homework? "

the inefficiency of one size fits all public school should be glaring to those who put a lot of time and energy into their kids education. I think brick and mortar education will still be the vast majority of education but the homeschool stigma is slowly shedding away (it had been for some time) and i think will aggressively shed away over the next few years.

Most of my observations are that teachers/students aren't covering nearly as much content as they would have in the physical classroom.

That's not to say that with more planning and prep it could happen, but what's going on in a lot of regions right now isn't really a good model of what distance education or homeschooling should look like.

i'm talking about families who's kids are finishing the entire books worth of course work. teachers are hamstrung with a number of factors in and out of the classroom, its definitely not on them in most cases.

one family was like the kids work through the entire weeks worth of school work in a day and then had 4 days of nothing. they've started looking for other stuff their gradeschooler is learning anew instrument and their jr high daughter is doing DR foundations wiht our kid.

another family wouldn't let them just do it all ina day, structured it out a little but is also using some software to do advanced AP type work (they never considered their kids AP type kids)

there are other families where its been a struggle. we have friends who's child has a IEP and its been a total backwards transition because they are not equiped to educate the same way.

Well, like I said, most students, even at the lowest levels, should be able to finish "a weeks" worth of work in a few hours during the quarantine.

I don't know of any teachers that are assigning a true "week" of work. Most are assigning work for a week but estimating that whatever we are assigning, can be completed in a few hours.

Some schools have mandated things like, "Only assign 1 hour of work per week", etc.

So what parents are seeing isn't what a real week in a classroom would look like. I hope that parents don't jump into homeschooling based on what they are seeing now, lol, they might be in for a rude awakening.

[Purple Haize]

the biggest take away i'm hearing from a lot of our friends who are now teaching their own children their public school curriculum is "why is it taking our kids 1-2 hours to finish 8 hours worth of a school days work plus homework? "

the inefficiency of one size fits all public school should be glaring to those who put a lot of time and energy into their kids education. I think brick and mortar education will still be the vast majority of education but the homeschool stigma is slowly shedding away (it had been for some time) and i think will aggressively shed away over the next few years.

Most of my observations are that teachers/students aren't covering nearly as much content as they would have in the physical classroom.

That's not to say that with more planning and prep it could happen, but what's going on in a lot of regions right now isn't really a good model of what distance education or homeschooling should look like.

i'm talking about families who's kids are finishing the entire books worth of course work. teachers are hamstrung with a number of factors in and out of the classroom, its definitely not on them in most cases.

one family was like the kids work through the entire weeks worth of school work in a day and then had 4 days of nothing. they've started looking for other stuff their gradeschooler is learning anew instrument and their jr high daughter is doing DR foundations wiht our kid.

another family wouldn't let them just do it all ina day, structured it out a little but is also using some software to do advanced AP type work (they never considered their kids AP type kids)

there are other families where its been a struggle. we have friends who's child has a IEP and its been a total backwards transition because they are not equiped to educate the same way.

This is exactly where my friend and his friends are at.

[Sly Fox]

We have had kids in Classical Conversations aka CC for 12 years. Our youngest just finished Challenge A and will do B next year before transitioning online for high school like her big brother & sister before.

My kids find it maddening that their friends who were forced into online schooling because of the pandemic somehow think online homeschooling is cake. That's because what the public schools are sending home is a fraction of what a real curriculum entails.

On a related note, one of my son's best friends growing up who would be finishing up his junior year in high school if he went to public school just finished B.B.A. from LU with a 4.0 GPA this week. Instead of heading off to a senior year this fall or early entry as a freshman, he's starting his MBA . The dual credit component of LUOA is THE primary attraction of the program.

The old Alpha Omega curriculum LUOA offered when we were shopping programs was so awful we didn't even give it mild consideration. Glad to hear they have improved the prgram. It was sullying the rep of the university's LUO program.

[thepostman]

We don't homeschool and in talking with other parents, it is pretty clear they are well aware this looks nothing like real homeschooling and it is why a lot of them are thinking about going the homeschool route if schools don't reopen in the fall. We may even do that. We are still weighing our options.

[Yacht Rock]

My kids find it maddening that their friends who were forced into online schooling because of the pandemic somehow think online homeschooling is cake. That's because what the public schools are sending home is a fraction of what a real curriculum entails.

Yeah, it's seriously apples and oranges right now. The bar of what to expect from students during the pandemic has been set pretty low so the material given has been altered accordingly.

We don't homeschool and in talking with other parents, it is pretty clear they are well aware this looks nothing like real homeschooling and it is why a lot of them are thinking about going the homeschool route if schools don't reopen in the fall. We may even do that. We are still weighing our options.

That is the challenge. In each discussion I've been a part of, what is happening now will look nothing like what happens in the fall, if students don't return.

I think a lot depends on how much time schools are given to prepare for remote learning in the fall and how much autonomy they are given in teaching and measuring standards.

Personally, what excites me is a lot of the discussion behind the scenes at the admin level and higher about doing away with a lot of antiquated ways education was being done.

[thepostman]

@Yacht Rock that is the thing we keep thinking too. If they have a whole summer to prepare it will probably be much different. My wife's thing (since she wil be the one at home) is if they are at home she may as well find a curriculum that works best for them as opposed to whatever the school district decides. I love our daughter's school though. We are blessed with a very good public school situation. Our son is really looking forward to kindergarten there in the fall so maybe things will improve enough but I have my doubts which is why we will continue to weigh our options.

[Purple Haize]

@Yacht Rock that is the thing we keep thinking too. If they have a whole summer to prepare it will probably be much different. My wife's thing (since she wil be the one at home) is if they are at home she may as well find a curriculum that works best for them as opposed to whatever the school district decides. I love our daughter's school though. We are blessed with a very good public school situation. Our son is really looking forward to kindergarten there in the fall so maybe things will improve enough but I have my doubts which is why we will continue to weigh our options.

Yep. You are going to see a lot of involved parents taking this route. Which again is going to really increase the gap with those kids whose parents aren’t that involved

[Jonathan Carone]

In my little rural county, there are close to 1000 kids in home school because parents can control the curriculum.

By comparison, there are only around 1500 kids in high school in the county.

[TH Spangler]

What's up with free public k 12 homeschooling? Im seeing it adverised alot lately. Is the curriculum the same as regular public?

My sisters private Christian school is adding homeschooling support next year, in conjunction with LCA.

[Yacht Rock]

Not all public schools use the same curriculum and free public homeschools would fall under that same umbrella.

In California, we did free public homeschool and they gave us $1600 to put toward curriculum of our choice.