How Teachers Are Coping With Omicron

From Education Weekly

We can’t predict where this is going but we can stay abreast of its affects on how teachers and students are coping. This is a great read…..

By Larry Ferlazzo — January 06, 2022

The new question-of-the-week is:

What are you doing—or trying to do—to sustain your morale and the morale of your students in the face of Omicron? What are you doing—or trying to do—to sustain any kind of learning momentum you had built up before the winter break?

Remember those few weeks last June when many of us thought we were over the worst of the pandemic, and then Delta hit. Next, just as many of us felt we were getting “back in the groove” of instruction and learning, and Delta seemed to be waning, Omicron came roaring in.

It’s a tough time to be a human being, including if you happen to be a teacher or a student.

One way I, and I think many of my colleagues and our students, have chosen to cope with all the uncertainty is by concluding that we are all going to get COVID-19 at some point. That doesn’t mean that any of us have reduced our mitigation measures but, instead, have generally replaced much of our fear with acceptance and gallows humor.

But that doesn’t mean my colleagues and I are indifferent. I have had countless face-to-face conversations and exchanged numerous texts with, and made numerous phone calls to, students (and staff) over the past week sharing sympathy and support about their COVID infection and/or infections of family members.

Even though concurrent teaching is every educator’s nightmare, I have invited quarantined students to Zoom in, and students in the physical classroom have bent over backward to include them in class activities.

Many of us teachers are “April-tired” (if not “June-tired”) at this point but have still tried hard to bring high energy to the class and help students learn and be distracted from the pandemic around them over the past several days. I have initiated many new and, I hope, positive activities to help students feel like they have more autonomy and power in the classroom. These changes have also included deepening personalized learning by increasing the role of peer tutors and peer mentors and developing leadership teams in each class. I have begun experimenting with incorporating games in as many ways as possible.

Of course, at the rate staff and student COVID-infection rates have gone over the past few days, many of these in-class efforts will be moot—at least in the short term. We’ll likely have to go remote—we just won’t have enough teachers to staff our school.

Whatever happens, my colleagues and I will continue to do our best. I’m just not sure I’ll have much gas left in the tank if and when the next Greek letter comes along.

In addition to that personal commentary, teachers Bill Ivey, Sarah Cooper, and Amber Chandler share their thoughts during this first week back from winter break.

‘The Cloud of Omicron’

Bill Ivey is middle school dean at Stoneleigh-Burnham School, a gender-inclusive girls school in western Massachusetts:

As we turn to the uncertain future of resuming school under the cloud of Omicron, I need to acknowledge that I am lucky to work in an independent school that has been able to prioritize health more than many. My room is large enough to permit adequate social distancing and has two air purifiers as well as windows that open. We have begun requiring either a highly effective mask like a KN95 or a cloth mask over a surgical mask. We canceled all athletic competitions for the moment. We are small enough to be able to seat three kids at a table during each lunch period (employees eat in our own spaces), we have weekly pool testing, our counselor has been doing an unbelievable amount of good work supporting kids, and so on.

All of this means we both recognize that we have relative privilege and that even with all the precautions we can take, nothing will completely tame the anxiety everyone is feeling. As a colleague put it on our first day back, “I’m delighted to be back. I’m anxious. I’m thrilled to see everybody. I’m terrified. This cupcake is delicious.” We opened the first day back with an all-school meeting to go over all the new protocols, and my Humanities 7 class met next.

After making space for the usual odd mix of student announcements (this is how we usually start class, and I well know the importance of routine in managing stress), I asked the two-thirds of students who were present (where were the others???) if anyone had any thoughts or feelings they wanted to share or questions to ask. We’ve made time for these conversations before, and the ongoing themes of weariness with the seeming endlessness of the pandemic, social disconnect, and worry over elderly relatives returned, mixed with a new level of anxiety centered especially in dining hall protocols: “I get why we need to be wearing two masks, but what about at lunch when we have to take them off?!?!” All I could think of to say was to reiterate all the things we were doing to maximize safety and remind them that they could and probably should leave the dining hall—or at least put their masks back on—as soon as they finished eating. They nodded slightly, whether genuinely feeling better or simply appreciative of my attempt to address the question.

Another part of our daily routine is reading aloud, and I am devoting extra time to that as the kids seem to find it comforting. My students choose our read-aloud books. The current one, Going Viral by Katie Cicatelli-Kuc, deals with managing life during the pandemic from the perspective of a teenager who is upset and scared as her life is turned topsy-turvy and must also navigate difficulties with her girlfriend even as she meets a new girl. It’s the perfect way for students to think about and process their own feelings while also having the chance to escape from them, depending on where in the story we find ourselves.

Finally, I’ve been working in games—get-to-know-you games since we have two brand-new students, and just plain fun games like Pictionary. I know it breaks routine, but it breaks it in a way that helps create a space where we can feel the normalcy of kicking back and relaxing. We round out the day, as always, with unit-based group work and individual “choice time.”

As I write, it’s been a whole 27 hours since we started back. Right now, doing the best we can to maintain normalcy for as long as possible, one hour at a time, and to make space to be human, seems the best we can do.

Finding ‘the Balm’

Sarah Cooper teaches 8th grade U.S. history and civics and is associate head of school at Flintridge Preparatory School in La Canada, Calif. She is the author of two books, Creating Citizens (Routledge, 2018) and Making History Mine (Stenhouse, 2009). Sarah speaks at conferences and writes for a range of educational sites, including MiddleWeb and Well-Schooled:

Over winter break, I walked with a childhood friend through a local botanical garden and I found myself briefly ranting about my job. All the COVID changes and restrictions are enough to make you want to leave education, I said.

To be clear, I’m not leaving—I love teaching and being at school too much. But the whiplash that we teachers and administrators have known over the past two years is very real.

As we’re heading back from winter break, though, I’m surprisingly finding myself in a better head space than I anticipated. Surely this feeling might dissipate with the potential realities of staff and student illness, schools closing because of staffing shortages, or the necessary quarantining of students who’d much prefer to be at school. But for now, here’s what’s helping me a little.

First, at least in California, we are in such a better place than we were a year ago at this time. Last January, I was having lunch with myself each day on an empty campus and lamenting the lack of middle school sprawl. This year, we have vaccines and even boosters for all adolescents. And the will to keep schools open is fierce. Those of us who lived through shuttered campuses from March 13, 2020, to late March or early April 2021 are loath to return to the long tunnel of Zoom.

Second, after serving on our school’s COVID task force for nearly two years, of course I’m tired along with the rest of the team. At the same time, though, I’ve become a far better problem solver, and my anxiety about problems has lessened. It’s not because the issues are smaller, or I’ve become inured to them. Rather, I’ve internalized that every issue can be tackled by a series of steps. I used to believe that every solution had to be nicely packaged from the beginning, but COVID has shown this to be impossible. The steps will be imperfect, but usually just taking one, and then the next, is better than not.

Last, the adrenaline rush of being with 8th graders again in the classroom, in person, full time, has stayed with me even over the weeks of vacation. Yes, I dislike the masks along with everyone else and I’ve been shocked more than once not to recognize a student at lunch when they’re eating, because I know them only by their eyes.

But to be with students in a space that is ours, together, remains nothing short of magical.

• To laugh with them again, since laughter was in such short supply on Zoom.

• To have a daily chat, where they talk with their desk partners about the day’s question—what they find cozy about the rain, anything they are anxious or happy about or both, something they are looking forward to doing for a family member or friend this weekend.

• To spool out a discussion about a current event that connects to the constitutional history we’re studying, seeing a leap of understanding happen across time.

• To tell students while they’re working on a project that they can spread out around the room—on their desks, on the floor, against the walls—and then sit cross-legged next to them to chat about how their work is going.

• To get ready to ask them, as we do every year during third quarter in U.S. history and civics, to research a change maker who made a difference, so that they, too, can make a difference.

This year, I have never been more grateful to see students, more interested in who they are, or more invested in who they will become—as citizens solving the world’s problems and as human beings connecting with others.

This is the balm, for now.



‘The Little Things’

Amber Chandler is an 8th grade ELA teacher, author, and speaker in Hamburg, N.Y.:

The day before New Year’s Eve, my 16-year-old daughter and I spent a few hours at the Well-Now Emergency clinic. No COVID. No Strep. She was “just sick.” We were thankful for this, but when we began discussing how she had to cancel her plans for New Year’s Eve, she exploded into a crying mess. This wasn’t a big party. This was a sleepover with three friends. When I pressed her—explaining that she could have them over the next week—she said something that is going to define how I “do school” during this crisis. She said, “You know how when we were little, you always told us what was coming next? Like, the next thing to look forward to? Well, there’s not that much to look forward to, so the little things like this is what I’ve got right now.”

As my students and I begin the next segment of the pandemic, I’m going to keep this view in mind. The fact is, Zoey’s right. There’s not that much to look forward to because there is so much uncertainty. I need to give my students more in-the-moment support, surprises, and accolades.

My co-teacher and I are trying to bring a little more joy in their day to day. For example, I have two couches in my room. Instead of randomly assigning students, we decided that we’d have “Students of the Week” for each period. Each student gets a couch for the week, based on a “randomish” compliment we give them. They can keep the couch to themselves or invite a friend to sit with them. This week’s “compliment couch” winners heard what we noticed or liked about them.

Sydney had been out for two weeks, yet had gotten a 100 on a test because she emailed us to stay up to date. Adri was always smiling under her mask and nods encouragingly at us when we teach. Troy always says goodbye when he leaves. I had witnessed McKenzie being really nice to a student who was having a bad day. Carol helped translate when we got a new student who spoke no English. Students were appropriately bashful and embarrassed as we announced these achievements like Emmy nominations, but they LOVED this corny reward.

In addition to our “compliment couch” plan, my co-teacher is a huge sports fan. She began each period today with trivia and rewarded students who knew the answer with candy. These two things are small, yet there’s a difference in my room in the course of just a few days. We are planning to deliberately spread joy not by the big things we do, but instead by the ways we help our students feel a part of our unique community, and we plan to keep connecting with our students. Of course, we laugh because no one was that appreciative when we allowed students to remediate and retake their last test! We look forward to the day when it isn’t quite as hard to find something to look forward to, but I think this newest lesson in pandemic teaching is worth remembering.



Tutoring bridges the gap…

The science of catching up

Daily tutoring for those who are most behind rises to the top in research evaluations

by JILL BARSHAY

August 25, 2021

Small studies of high-quality after-school programs sometimes show improvements in reading or math, but many after-school programs have been a disappointment because of poorly trained teachers, weak instructional materials and low attendance. Credit: Joanne Rathe/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

The Hechinger Report is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education. Sign up for weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox.

Tens of millions of students may now be months or, in some cases, even a full year behind because they couldn’t attend school in person during the pandemic.

Significant setbacks are especially likely for the most vulnerable students — kids with disabilities and those living in poverty, who didn’t have a computer, a reliable internet connection or a workspace to learn at home. Educators will have to do something different for the 2021-22 school year to make up for those losses.

Schools are already spending big chunks of their approximately $190 billion in pandemic relief money on a range of strategies from after-school programs to cutting class size. But research shows that many of these ideas have had a spotty track record in the past and that schools will have to pay close attention to what’s worked—and what hasn’t—to maximize their odds for success with just about any strategy. There’s no silver bullet. And the pandemic’s fits and starts in instruction are unprecedented in the history of American public education and have affected students unevenly.

No catch-up strategy can possibly benefit all students. But studies do point toward which strategies are most effective, how they can best be implemented — and what approaches might be a waste of time and money. Here’s a rundown of the most relevant research.

TUTORING

Research points to intensive daily tutoring as one of the most effective ways to help academically struggling children catch up. A seminal 2016 study sorted through almost 200 well-designed experiments on improving education, from expanding preschool to reducing class size, and found that frequent one-to-one tutoring was especially effective in increasing learning rates for low-performing students.

Education researchers have a particular kind of tutoring in mind, what they call “high-dosage” tutoring. Studies show it has produced big achievement gains for students when the tutoring occurs every day or almost every day. Less frequent tutoring, by contrast, was not as helpful as many other types of educational interventions. In the research literature, the tutors are specially trained and coached and adhere to a detailed curriculum with clear steps on how to work with one or two students at a time. The best results occur when tutoring takes place at school during the regular day.

“It’s not once-a-week homework help.” 

Jonathan Guryan, Northwestern University

“It’s not once-a-week homework help,” said Jonathan Guryan, an economist at Northwestern University who has evaluated school tutoring programs.

A 2020 review of 100 tutoring programsfound that intensive tutoring is particularly helpful at improving students’ reading skills during the early elementary years, and most effective in math for slightly older children. One 2021 study found tutoring led to strong math gains for even high school students, enabling those who started two years behind grade level to catch up.

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Not all tutoring has been successful. When the No Child Left Behind law was first passed in 2001, schools got extra money to tutor students who were behind. But there were many reports of tutoring fraud and fiascos. Sometimes tutors weren’t properly trained and there wasn’t a clear curriculum. Often when tutoring was scheduled after school, many students didn’t show up.

Even thoughtfully designed tutoring programs can fail. A randomized control trial of math tutoring for fourth through eighth grade students in Minnesota was a flop. There have been other disappointments too.Not all tutoring programs have been successful but, across hundreds of research studies, daily tutoring rises to the top as one of the most effective interventions in helping struggling students.  Credit: Amadou Diallo for The Hechinger Report

In effective math programs, for example, tutors don’t simply reteach the previous year’s lessons. Instead, tutors know what is being taught in the students’ regular classes that week and give their students extra practice on those topics or review prerequisite concepts. Much as corporate America relies on just-in-time deliveries, several effective tutoring programs rely on just-in-time review. Determining what those key underlying concepts are isn’t obvious; curriculum experts need to be involved to create materials that guide tutors on how to diagnose each student’s knowledge gaps and what to teach each student.

In a successful algebra tutoring program in Chicago, researchers highlighted how effective it was for tutors to be able to pull different practice problems to match each student’s weaknesses.

To accomplish this, the tutors themselves don’t need to be highly trained educators, but they do need training, coaching and monitoring. The late Robert Slavin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, calculated that college-educated teaching assistants produced learning gains that were at least as high as those produced by certified teachers and sometimes larger. Even paid volunteers, such as AmeriCorps members working as tutors, were able to produce strong results, Slavin found.

The question, of course, is whether we can recruit and train enough tutors to meet the need right now. That’s ambitious but at least there’s evidence for this approach.

AFTERSCHOOL

After-school programs might seem like a good idea because they give teachers extra time to cover material that students missed last year. But getting students to attend faithfully is a chronic problem. For students who attend regularly, high quality after-school programs sometimes produce reading or math gains, but many programs operate with poorly trained teachers and lessons that are disconnected from what students are learning in class. When researchers look across studies, they usually don’t see meaningful gains in reading or math achievement.

Summer school programs don’t fare well in evaluations either. Kids don’t want to miss out on outdoor fun with their friends and often don’t show up.Schools are spending big chunks of their approximately $190 billion in pandemic relief money on a range of catch-up strategies from after-school programs to tutoring.  Credit: Gretchen Ertl for The Hechinger Report

After-school programs appear to be better at improving students’ social wellbeing. A meta-analysis of 68 studiesof after-school programs by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning found that students participating in an after-school program improved their school-day attendance and were less likely to engage in drug use or problem behavior.

Another option is to make after-school hours mandatory by extending the school day for everyone. That has worked well when the extra time is used for tutoring. But research evaluations have also shown longer school days can be an academic bust. Schools don’t always use the extra time effectively with well-designed classes targeted at students’ specific academic gaps. And learning is taxing; students’ brains might need a break after almost seven hours of classes.

Back to Class: How schools can rebound

RETENTION

Repeating a grade, what educators call retention, might make intuitive sense, especially for students who missed most of the past year at school and weren’t able to engage with online instruction. Before the pandemic, research outcomes for retention were generally miserable. Having students do the same thing twice didn’t help. A successful exception was shown in a study of a Florida program in which the most commonly repeated year, third grade, was accompanied by tutoring and extra support. It’s possible that these students would have fared just as well, or better, if they had received tutoring and proceeded to fourth grade. We don’t have a study to test that.

It’s not clear if the retention research is a good guide right now. We don’t really know how students will fare if they repeat a year in-person that they effectively missed because they were learning remotely. However, educators point out that being held back is demoralizing and many students lose their enthusiasm for school. Even if students are told that it’s not their fault that they are repeating, they may be discouraged to see classmates move on while they are being left behind. And a discouraged child isn’t going to be open to learning.

REMEDIAL CLASSES

Historically, remedial classes have been a bust. The argument for them is that teachers can give lower-achieving students the correct level of instruction so that the students aren’t overwhelmed in classes that are too challenging for them. But in practice, students often don’t progress in remedial classes. Instead, they get stuck at the bottom, learning less each year and falling further and further behindthe rest of their classmates.

Online credit recovery classes, which allow students to retake classes that they have failed, have been popular with high school administrators in recent years. Studies show that students are more likely to pass a course when they can click their way through it, and such classes are helping more students graduate from high school, but students do not seem to improve their academic skills as much as they would in face-to-face classes.Students often don’t catch up in studies of remedial classes and fall further behind their classmates.  Credit: Terrell Clark for The Hechinger Report

One promising approach is to assign students who are far behind to both a remedial class and a grade-level class simultaneously. This double-dosing strategy has spread rapidly at community colleges but hasn’t been studied as much in elementary, middle or high schools. One evaluation of double-dosing in algebra found that it worked in Chicago high schools but not in middle school math in Miami. Refinement and further study are warranted.

ACCELERATION

Teachers know that students in remedial classes get discouraged and lose their motivation to learn. This year, an anti-remediation sentiment has spread quickly among educators, who’ve adopted a mantra: “Accelerate, don’t remediate.” What they mean by acceleration is fuzzy. Teachers at one elementary school in Washington state described it as promoting kids to grade-level material with extra support, such as a preprinted multiplication table to help them follow along in class, while also asking teachers to somehow find time to do catch-up review when breaking the class into small groups. A charter school network recently described acceleration as interweaving review material with grade-level content. 

Though called acceleration, in practice, it can mean teaching less and slowing down the pace.

A May 2021 report by a nonprofit online math provider, Zearn, found that students learned more math during the 2020-21 school year when truncated review material was woven into grade-level lessons than when they were retaught many of the previous year’s lessons. This comparison of the two approaches using education technology is promising, but more research is needed.

The extra review material can push out some topics that would traditionally be taught this coming year. Though called acceleration, in practice, it can mean teaching less and slowing down the pace.

LOOKING AHEAD

Educators have a lot of work ahead of them.

Students will need to be frequently assessed to figure out their individual gaps. Teachers are going to need a lot more planning time for lesson plans. And schools also need strategies to help students move past the trauma of the past two years, including more counselors, because students cannot learn well when they are coping with Covid-19 deaths in the family and struggling with problems at home.

The influx of pandemic money is enticing school systems to spend it on things that they wanted to do long before the pandemic and call it a pandemic response. Reducing class sizes is popular, but it’s very expensive to hire more teachers and build more classrooms, and the research shows that you often don’t get a big academic bang for the buck.

We don’t really know how students will fare if they repeat a year in-person that they effectively missed because they were learning remotely.

Our education system has never been good at helping students who are behind catch up. If schools instead embrace the research — adding tutoring for the students who are most behind and testing promising ideas for others — adversity and crisis could lead to lasting, progressive change.

This story about catching up was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Jill Barshay

barshay@hechingerreport.org

Jill Barshay writes the weekly “Proof Points” column about education research and data, covering a range of topics from early childhood to higher education. She taught algebra to ninth-graders for… More by Jill Barshay

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Florida is the first state to drop the common cores standards. What’s next for k-12 education standards ?

www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2020/02/12/floridas-best-heres-whats-next-for-the-states-new-educational-standard/

States are implementing new educational standards, signaling the end of Common Cores

THU,

AUG 5 2021

Nathaniel Lee

America is preparing for a return to school this fall semester, but curriculums might seem a bit different than they used to. Many states have implemented or are currently in the process of developing new educational standards to replace the Common Core.

“I think you are seeing today what kids experience and their curriculum kind of is a little bit more blended,” Connecticut Education Association President Kate said.

On Feb. 12, 2020, Florida adopted the Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. New York is also developing its own curriculum. The Next Generation Learning Standards are expected to be implemented throughout New York by September 2022.

However, experts remain doubtful on whether the new standards truly stand by themselves.

“The standards that the states have come up with, where they claimed they were different from Common Core, they’re really not that much different,” said Tom Loveless, an educational researcher and former senior fellow at Brookings. “Some states just basically took the Common Core label off and then slapped the new label on the package.”

The end of Common Core might be arriving, but its impacts are here to stay.

Best Online Homeschool Programs

Help your kids get the best education possible from home.

By Laura Dorwart  Fact checked by Dale Brauner Updated on July 23, 2021Our editors independently research, test, and recommend the best products; you can learn more about our review process here. We may receive commissions on purchases made from our chosen links.

If you’ve never taught your child at home before, it might seem like a daunting task. But not to worry: There are plenty of high-quality, interactive homeschool programs that you can easily use on your tablet, smartphone, or laptop. 

Whether you’re looking for SAT prep for your high school student, ways to keep your toddlers engaged and educated, or hoping your elementary-aged kids won’t fall behind in their studies, we’ve come up with a list of the best online homeschool programs on the market. These picks are interactive, user-friendly, and cost-effective.

The 7 Best Online Homeschool Programs of 2021

Best Online Homeschool Programs

BEST OVERALL K12.com

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Notable for its comprehensive and ultra-customizable approach, K12.com is a one-stop-shop for online learners and their families.

K12’s online homeschool options include tuition-free, virtual public schools for students in grades K-12 taught by state-certified teachers. There are options for three different tuition-based private schools, and a variety of summer school, intensive, and standalone course offerings for kids with special interests or subjects they’d like to brush up on. 

If you’re not looking for a full-time homeschool program, you can draw from K12 Digital Literacy Solutions—a free library of literacy tools and over 21,000 eBooks—to boost your child’s reading ability, or sign your teenagers up for one of K12’s several free camps centered around high-interest areas like coding, marketing, or information technology.

Free, game-based learning is available for kids in grades K-8 through K12’s program STRIDE. And, if there are subject areas in which you don’t feel comfortable homeschooling your child, K12’s state-certified teachers offer live, online tutoring sessions in math, world languages, English, science, or social studies.

BEST BUDGET ABCmouse.com

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At around $10 per month, purchasing a subscription to ABCmouse.com is the most budget-friendly educational decision you can make for your early learner. ABCmouse.com’s Step-By-Step Learning Path is accessible on tablet, smartphone, or computer for kids ages 2 to 8. 

Spanning 850 lessons across 10 levels, this award-winning curriculum includes a comprehensive reading system (from letter recognition and phonics to reading full-length books), as well as math, science, social studies, and even art (including both drawing and painting).

Music, read-aloud stories, puzzles, and educational games round out the ABCmouse.com library, making it a solid choice as a supplement to an existing homeschool curriculum and for a comprehensive educational system. 

ABCmouse.com is also gamified, meaning your little ones can play it like a video game, complete with a ticket system that rewards them for completing levels successfully.

As they sharpen a particular skill set, they’ll receive tickets they can use to “buy” virtual treats, like fish for the online classroom aquarium. Built-in incentives allow your kids to move at their own pace and make the learning experience more enjoyable and engaging. 

BEST FOR STRUCTURE Time4Learning

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Time4Learning is a comprehensive, subscription-based online homeschool curriculum. It’s reasonably priced, at around $20 per month (and about $15 per month for each additional child) for PreK-8 students and approximately $30.00 per month for high school students. This is one of the best programs if you want to keep your kids in a more traditional educational setting, even when they’re learning remotely.

Your child’s curriculum will include hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of animated lessons, activities, quizzes, worksheets, and full-length tests, all suited to each student’s grade level and your particular state’s learning standards. In contrast to some of the other curriculum resources on this list, Time4Learning offers a combination of online and offline, printable worksheets and other hands-on activities. 

Additional resources that make Time4Learning stand out are the many lesson-planning tools and learning style guides that can help you track your kids’ progress.

BEST FOR COMMUNITY Connections Academy

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If you’d rather enroll your child in a full-fledged online school rather than teach them yourself, Connections Academy is a great option for elementary, middle school, and high school students. 

At this tuition-free, online public school, your children will be taught according to your state’s educational standards by certified teachers. Even textbooks and other instructional materials are provided free of charge. 

True to its name, Connections Academy might be one of the best online homeschool programs for your family if you’re interested in building a connected community with fellow parents, students, and educators.

The online school encourages you to be directly involved with your kids’ education as Learning Coaches. Online live sessions with teachers and classmates, in addition to extracurriculars like online clubs and activities, allow kids to foster meaningful connections with peers. 

What’s more is your kids don’t have to miss out on many of the perks of a brick-and-mortar school—like career counseling, one-on-one sessions with a guidance counselor, standardized test prep, and college prep advising—as these resources are all offered at Connections Academy. 

BEST FREE Khan Academy

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Khan Academy, an award-winning nonprofit that offers free educational resources for students, parents, teachers, and homeschoolers, first garnered international attention for its high-quality, completely free SAT prep materials—an attractive alternative to its much pricier peers. But Khan Academy has since expanded to include curriculum pieces for children and teens of all ages. 

Simply select your child’s grade level and subject—the Advanced Placement (AP) or standardized test they’re preparing for, or the specific skills they need to boost—and send them off to gain “mastery points” as they progress. Easy-to-follow video lessons accompany practice quizzes and unit tests that help you track your kids’ progress. 

This resource is notable not only because it’s free, but also because of the sheer variety of the content available. Khan Academy’s materials include many niche topics for adult learners and high school students that aren’t offered by many other online learning programs.

The virtual academy’s inclusion of unique subjects—like computer programming and animation, personal finance and entrepreneurship, art history, college admissions, and English as a second language—solidifies it as one of the best online homeschool programs. 

BEST FOR COLLEGE PREP edX

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If you’re going to get an at-home education, you might as well get it from Harvard, right?

If you’re looking to help with your teen’s college prep, consider enrolling them in one of the many classes at edX, a platform that partners with high-ranking institutions like NYU, Harvard, and MIT (as well as international universities, like Oxford and Australian National University) to offer over 2,500 college-level courses. Some are self-paced and available for college transfer credit, while others are taught by qualified instructors—most of whom have doctorates in their fields. 

You and your teen can choose from a variety of standalone courses across the arts and humanities, STEM fields, music, computer science, education, and more. Most courses, even credit-eligible ones, are free, with completion certificates that will cost about $50 in most cases. 

Particularly proactive high school students looking to get a head start on their college career while at home can enroll in an edX MicroBachelors program in popular majors like computer science, for just $166 per credit. Or, they can start earning college credits now by attending the Global Freshman Academy that offers common, foundational first-year courses like English composition, pre-calculus, or college algebra and problem-solving through edX’s partnership with Arizona State University. 

BEST FOR MATH AND SCIENCE CK-12 Foundation

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If you’d like your child to beef up their math and science skills, look no further than the wealth of interactive learning tools at the CK-12 Foundation. This free resource offers one of the best online homeschool programs for STEM subjects. It’s also one of the most advanced resources available in terms of its seamless use of technology and cutting-edge approaches to learning.

While writing, spelling, and social studies are available, math and science topics (from arithmetic and earth science to calculus and engineering) are where CK-12’s creative curriculum really shines. 

Simulations and the Play, Learn, Interact, Explore (PLIX) seriesintegrate graphics and games into lessons about STEM concepts. Meanwhile, CK-12’s FlexBooks—interactive online textbooks that allow students to learn as they play and play as they learn—distill complex concepts into digestible pieces.

Check out your kids’ central Dashboard to follow along with their Adaptive Practice progress, which tracks the skills they need to boost and those they’ve already mastered in order to tailor their upcoming lessons.

FAQs 

What is Homeschooling? 

Homeschooling is an educational option in which parents are responsible for their child’s education at home rather than sending them to a traditional public or private school. Some families choose to homeschool because of concerns about the school environment or for religious reasons, while others are not satisfied with the traditional educational options in their area or think their child will benefit from a more unstructured approach.

Homeschooling is not exactly the same for all families, but researching and following their state’s learning requirements is an important first step. Some states have few requirements, beyond asking families to file an intent to homeschool notice, but others want to review the curriculum or require regular standardized testing.

Most homeschooling families cover subjects that are taught in traditional school programs, but they also may cater to their children’s interests and readiness. Parents pick and choose materials and classes that meet their children’s needs. They may even include independent study programs, online homeschool programs, college or co-op classes, volunteering opportunities, and more.

What Are Some Pros and Cons of Homeschooling? 

Homeschooling families appreciate the flexibility they get in determining how and what kids learn. The children’s curriculum can be tailored to suit their individual learning style, personality, and interests.

Because they’re not in a classroom with 25 other students, there are fewer distractions and less busy work that could lead to wasted time or boredom. Often, schoolwork can be completed in a shorter time frame, and students can progress based on their own temperament and schedule.

Parents and kids who homeschool also have some flexibility in their schedules, because they don’t have to adhere to the strict routine that traditional schools set. Children can learn at the time of day that works best for them, and families can plan vacations in the off-season.

Some of the biggest disadvantages of homeschooling are the high level of parental involvement and commitment, as well as the potential loss of income. Someone must be home, at least part-time, to organize and facilitate their children’s learning. Even if both parents are able to keep working, it can be challenging to adjust work schedules and career goals to accommodate homeschooling.

Another difficulty can be criticism or lack of understanding from others about the decision to homeschool. Some parents also deal with some stress and lack of confidence about being responsible for their child’s education. The entire family may feel overwhelmed, especially when they’re first transitioning to homeschooling.

How Much Does Online Homeschooling Cost? 

The cost of online homeschooling programs varies greatly, depending on the curriculum, interactivity, and level of support. Some online homeschooling programs are completely free.

Others require a paid monthly or yearly subscription or tuition, or charge a flat rate per class. Prices can range anywhere from $10 a month for a subscription to $7000 for yearly tuition at a private online academy.

How Do Homeschoolers Socialize? 

Most homeschoolers are involved in activities outside the home such as sports, music, dance, and Scouts. Some homeschooling families plan educational outings and physical fitness activities with other homeschooling families. Homeschool support groups, co-ops, field-trip groups, public library programs, and park playdates all offer opportunities for kids to socialize and make friends. 

The local public school may also be another option for activities, as some states require public schools to allow homeschooled students to participate in extracurriculars at the school they would have attended.  Parents can contact the school to ask whether they allow homeschooled students to participate in clubs, sports, and other activities.

Drop in Student Attendance Leaves Colleges Wondering About the Future of Higher Education

In a recent article by Dahlia Faheid, college enrollment is taking a hit with a 6.8% reduction in enrollment. It is uncertain as to if the decline is completely Covid related or a product of a slow decline and disruption of student’s higher education goals.

Educators and professionals have watched the continuous unsteady navigation of non-profits trying to stabilize a shaky market, complicated by the exit of ill-managed funds and profit school closures. Strategies include trying to keep students enticed by decreased tuition plans and faster track programs. Current players in the market for prospective students and title IV funding have had to compete within an already saturated market of schools offering advanced degrees that are totally online, affordable tuition rates and on time completion.

Faheid’s article sheds light on the direction higher education is headed since post- pandemic life.

Fewer Students in Class of 2020 Went Straight to College

By Dahlia Faheid

Education Week , April 6,2021

Amid a sharp decline in college enrollment during the pandemic, graduates of low-income, high-poverty high schools were disproportionately affected, with their enrollment dropping most steeply, new data reveals.

“If you’re a low-income kid, a kid of color, a first-generation college-going kid, the actual process necessary for you to get from high school to college is incredibly fragile, even in the best of circumstances,” said Derrell Bradford, the executive vice president of 50CAN, a national nonprofit that advocates for equitable schools. “The tiniest hiccup can mean that your entire college experience is derailed. The focus it takes to make sure that an underprivileged kid gets to college, matriculates, and manages to stay there for all four years is immense.”

The eighth annual “High School Benchmarks” report from the National Student Clearinghouse found that, as of Nov. 16, college enrollments dropped by 6.8 percent—more than quadrupling the pre-pandemic rate of decline, a pattern magnified based on poverty level. Overall, 56.5 percent of the 2020 graduating class enrolled in postsecondary school immediately after graduating, compared with 60.5 percent for the 2019 graduating class.