Need Feedback on Online High Schools

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I have an extremely bright suspected Aspie 17 year old that is just not succeeding in public school. I think he needs to go to online high school so he has more control over his schedule and to lessen the level of busy work and structure that happens n public school. Has anyone attended or had their child attend an online high school and were you satisfied with the results? What are good and bad experiences with various schools?

My son tried taking two online high school courses during his Freshman year, both core courses. We decided to try this because his academic performance in middle school was not very good. The online courses were worse than real school, it was a terrible experience, and now he is making the courses up in summer school. I feel bad because I pushed the agenda and am partly culpable for him being in summer school, but on the other hand I don't regret the decision because I am committed to trying *almost* anything to help my son succeed.

Thanks for the feedback!

Do you mind me asking please what was worse about them?

I am kind of desperate to find something that works for him this year, I know exactly what you mean about trying *almost* anything , feel like I've been there, done that and running out of choices.

An excellent choice would be K12 but they are super expensive for high school. Give them a call and see what you think.

I just went through this with my AS son, 15.

He enrolled in April. The set up of the school was that he would read a lesson and take a quiz or test. He had a really hard time right from the start. He failed his first quiz. On the second day I sat right next to him and had him read the lesson to me. It was then that I found out my son was a very poor reader. I was correcting A LOT of words and words I should not of been correcting for a 15 year old. He spent so much time trying to figure out what the words were that he had no idea what he had just read.

I read the lesson out loud to him and after every paragraph asked him if he understood it. Most of the time it was no. I would reword what it said. His response every time was why didn't they just say that in the first place.

My son just went through testing at the public school here and we found out his reading level is 3/4 grade. How he made it this far in school without anyone realizing it is beyond me. It is more obvious now than ever that he is an auditory learner. When he went from a classroom setting to online that was taken away.

Next year he will be re-entering public school with some supports put into place.

The online school we used is called "American Highschool" it is affordable. They have two levels one is a homeschool level. He will do the lessons and summit them the teachers will grade them, but there is no "teacher support" That level is $50.00 a month.
The other level (the one we did) is the accredited school. He does the lessons, summits them, teachers grade them, and you can ask the teachers for help. In this level you don't have to file homeschool paperwork either. This level is $80.00 per month.

My advise for online schooling is to be sure you know what your child can and can't do on their own and be sure the school will be able to accommodate where necessary. I knew my son was not a strong reader, but I had no idea his reading level was as low as it is.

Good luck

This school is based in California and they do have some religious based classes but they are only an option, they also have equestrian classes....so if you have a horse you can get credits for taking care of your horse....dont know much about that end of it. Its about 1000 a year depending on which courses you want to use. My daughters did this online school for two years and my younger daughter did quite well. Some courses are better than others. I dont recommend buying the foreign language classes and you can send you child to a community college for these to earn HS credits. Anyway here is the link http://pearblossomschool.com/ they do not offer tutoring but they recommend a place. All the tutors had a heavy Indian accent and my daughter could not understand them so I dont recommend that either. Still she really enjoyed a lot of the other classes and they have some very interesting Electives. They also have the option to combine 11th and 12th grade in order to graduate early.
Also when you return your books at the end of the year you get a few hundred dollars of your tuition back.

My son had great success with his online school. He started the second half of the year as a sophomore. It does help that he is an excellent reader and can get through the lessons quickly, except math, that's a different ballgame altogether. He has an IEP and an advocate through the online school who has been very helpful.

We took him out of school because he was ignored and excluded from anything social, even talking to other kids at lunch. He felt like he was invisible. Who needs that day in and day out?!

While I hope we are doing the right thing by keeping him in an online school at home I can't help but worry that what social skills he had are now nonexistent. It's very isolating. He has one 'friend' that goes to the public school and he hears from this kid very occasionally. He basically interacts with his dad and myself. We are desperate to find him a friend or two but don't know how to go about it. Just wanted to put it out there that home school is isolating.

My son attends Connections Academy which is available in our state and is a free public school. You can go to their website and check if they are available in your state. Best of luck!

I currently attend an online high school program through the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (http://highschool.unl.edu), and have done so for the past couple of years, and my experience has been very positive overall. I did one year of public high school, but couldn't handle both the academics and social issues. The problem is, online high school courses are generally harder (i.e. college level) and require a lot of self-discipline to do the work. Although teachers are available to help, either via email or phone, you're mostly on your own. For some kids, though, this is a MUCH better path to take than public school, and it certainly was for me.

Outtathisworld says that homeschooling is isolating. Generally it is not. In our area we have the opposite problem. We have too many groups to choose from. This problem applies to homeschooled highschoolers as well. It totally depends on where you live. Our main group is Classical Conversations which has groups all over the country. The kids and adults in our group are very accepting of AS kids. CC goes through high school. It's Christian based so maybe that won't be something to consider but there are all kinds of secular groups as well.