online homeschooling?

[Jordyn]

I was thinking about enrolling in K12 next year for 8th grade for various reasons. I couldnt find any information on the schooling or cost. So how does k12 work? Is everything online? Do I need to have a teacher? If not does a teacher video chat with me? Or if so can I hire a teacher and whats the price of that for one year? And finally what the total cost for one year? Thank you!
Also, what comes along with k12? A computer? Instruments? Textbooks? Anything?

[?????]

K12 is all online and it is free because it is still a public school it works by they send you your text books and stuff that you will need directly to your house and if you qualify for financial aid they will send you a computer. During the week you have to complete a list of stuff in each class for the week and there are also these things called class connect sessions that last 45 minutes and its like Skype and PowerPoint combined and the teacher explains the lesson in these and you have to attend one class connect session each week for each class. If you miss both the class connect session for a class in a week you can watch a recording of it and answer questions. K12 is extremely flexible and is great in my opinion all the work assigned during the week is due by Sunday after that it is late and has to be turned in by the late due date deadline which is every 3 or 4 weeks.

[K]

K12 comes in two flavors: Through your school district, and independent.

IF your school district or state has signed a contract with K12, then you might be eligible for it. K12 just lets you on the system; your school system maintains control of the content and maintains control of you. You'll still be told what to study, when, how and from whom. Some places will demand that you be online during specific hours. Others don't. It really varies depending on where you live and how controlling your district happens to be. And not all districts have signed a contract; some states don't allow this option at all. (They have some sketchy results; buyer beware.) In our state, they played massive politics with the online schools. They dropped entire grade levels to force you back into the schools (4th grade? Nope, can't do that online. You have to go to school. 7th grade? Nope, can't do that online....), they randomly drew lotteries to award seats in the online schools (so you could never plan ahead or anything), and then when that failed, they intentionally doubled the workload for just the online students. Kids dropped the online program and went back to school, and the school district said, "Look, kids LOVE their schools, they don't even want an online option!" So the program was defunded and cancelled.

You can enroll as an independent student, but it's going to be at something like $7,000/year tuition, plus more for packs of materials.

I did K12 for kindergarten through about fourth grade as an independent. For those grade levels it was just a monthly subscription fee of about $30 plus materials (books, workbooks, maps, math manipulatives, etc). After that it became kind of a glorified, online textbook and I figured I could do better on my own. Now I spend a few hundred per year on the kids materials and we pretty much do whatever we want, which is more like what traditional homeschooling has been like.

Homeschooling 101
http://www.wagnerweb.org/Homeschool_101

[Sarah]

K12 is an online public school that is permitted to operate in about 33 states. The others do not permit taxpayer money to be used for a for-profit private company that provides curriculum.

Because it is a public school it is free for you just like your current public school. They also must comply with all public school laws in your state. If you live in one of the other states, your parent may still enroll you but they will pay thousands of dollars in tuition.

It is completely online,however the contract your parent's sign commits them to be your 'learning coach'. Without a parent there each and every day you stand almost zero chance of succeeding in online school. Your online teachers has hundreds of students and must find time to each, so you do not get to speak with them often or for long.

You can hire a teacher. They are professionals and are paid as such. Here are the average salaries by state: http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state/

As an employer your parents would also have to pay for health insurance, social security taxes and other benefits. (paid vacation for example).

Here is a short video explaining how K12 works and why it doesn't:

http://tucsoncitizen.com/in-the-aggregat...fit-model/

and here are several articles explaining the problems with online virtual public schools. Anytime you put profits before anything else, there is going to be a problem with the quality of the product:

Virtual School Profits Far Exceeding Performance
May 17, 2013
http://neatoday.org/2013/05/17/virtual-s...dayexpress

Cyber schools flunk, but tax money keeps flowing 9/26/13
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/cy...z2gQD7kZhB

From Junk Bonds to Junk Schools: Cyber Schools Fleece Taxpayers for Phantom Students and Failing Grades
10/2/13 http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/10/1225...-and-faili

School Reform and the Profit Motive
By Jay Mathews
The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
http://www.vnews.com/news/schools/912831...ofitmotive