By Sue
(Salzburg, Austria)
Visitor Review:
We started with K12 in July 2010. Daughter had been attending the best private school in Melbourne, Australia and was very bored with the repetitive curriculum. Did K12 independently of the Virtual Academy having been told the Academy gave no added value only unnecessary admin and busy work.
My daughter studied:
Year 5 Science
Year 6 Language Arts
Year 7 History
Year 7 Art
Year 5 Music
Year 5 Maths
We had no trouble finishing the year in the required time, having done all of the work and scored 92-96% in each subject. I don’t consider her to be gifted or particularly talented academically.
We never spent more than four hours a day on schoolwork. As we decided half way through the school year to move from Australia to Austria necessitating selling our home etc my daughter managed the second half of the year unsupervised.
History, Language Arts and Science all require A LOT of reading. Math at Year 5 level is very straightforward with a very clear textbook and not a lot of busy work.
There is nothing wrong with the K12 program if you have the sort of child who can focus and has great comprehension of written text as it is VERY text heavy.
My daughter had an auditory processing problem and had difficulty comprehending a teacher droning on and on. A child who is easily distracted would probably not do well with K12.
The minimal cost involved in purchasing the entire curriculum – around $1200 – was well worth the convenience of not having teachers interrupting the learning process.
We are starting the new year of K12 tomorrow with the addition of Middle School German and don’t anticipate any issues this year either.
