Washington Virtual Academies

I disagree with the comments made about the K12 curriculum being centered on Christianity. My second grader has had lessons as a WAVA student about the history of Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and early polytheistic religions. Whether you're religious or not, bible stories are woven into our modern culture. The lessons are presented only as stories, just as those about the Greek and Roman gods are. Maybe this parent skipped too many lessons or just has a particular sensitivity toward Christianity. WAVA is outstanding and the K12 curriculum is amazing. The workload is INSANE, but as the "learning coach" (teacher) you have the flexibility to decide which activities advance your child's understanding of the subjects and which do not. You do not have to do every activity within every lesson! Teachers will work with you through any struggles you have as long as you are committed to putting forth an honest effort (and that's NOT 2 hrs. per day!) and as long as you communicate. I highly recommend this program!
--Submitted by a parent

WAVA has been a better alternative than putting our son in public schools, however expect heavy workloads in order to meet monthly goals. 5TH grade math can have 30-60 fraction story problems in one daily lesson. Too many!!! 5th Grade math has had many errors in it, especially the adaptive lessons, I have brought this to the attention of K-12, not fair to kids when the lesson is wrong and they give the correct answer and still get it wrong. K-12 must have been written by the Christian Coalition, many many many Bible stories, religion should be kept OUT of public schools!!! I just skip over all these, they have had no other religious stories from other religions, only christian ones so far. Skipped a whole week of bible stories in Lit.
--Submitted by a parent

This is our second year with WAVA and it is the best thing we could have done for our child. Homeschool takes a huge amount of commitment from the parent. But it is well worth the effort. Our child has gone from failing in public school to testing off the charts. Just as public school is not for every student, WAVA is not for every child/parent. If you know how to manage your time, establish and reestablish priorities, don't get hung up on the little things then WAVA would be great for you. If not, then I don't recommend it.
--Submitted by a parent

This was our 3rd year using WAVA and LOVE it!! For those who feel that the classes "take too much time" or are complaining that you have to be the teacher, well, i don't know what you think homeschooling is about, but you ARE the teacher (MOSTLY) and in the younger years especially, you will be the ones teaching the classes. The classes deffinatly are NOT "too long", they are perfect to get the information across to the children. You can't expect a lession in history for a typical kid to be in 5-10 minutes...But you can expect it to take about 30...my 3rd grader gets done with school in about 2-3 hours and my 7th in about 3 hrs a day. We have nothing but good things to say about the curriculum, materials and support. Depending on the year, more or less is online. In the younger years, more is hands on with workpages, and books and as they progress, there is more online interaction and more of the children working more independently but with adult supervison and as a resource for any issues/questions that arrise. I think a lot of people are "lazy" homeschoolers and feel they should be able to get school done in about an hour a day, thats not realistic. This is duable!
--Submitted by a parent

This is my second year doing this and I have a 3rd and 5th grader. Although I never planned this for the longterm for my 5th grader, I've found the K12 curriuclum exhausting. For Language Arts, many of the 3rd party books they use are good. But the in-house developed K12 books are burdensome to use for both grades (teacher's guide for composition, grammar, and vocabulary combined into one fat book). Last year I used sinapore math (not k12's) and this year k12 introduced a new math curriculum. This has been time consuming because lessons and tests are online. We've enjoyed the history lessons, but they're often time-consuming, esp. at higher grades. They have teacher support, but IMO it's token and her role is purely administrative.
--Submitted by a parent

The K12 curriculum is amazing, however, each of the year-long courses are crammed into the nine month public school academic year calendar. The progress goals dictated by WAVA are burdensome if you're working with more than one child. The quality of the learning experience is diminished by having to rush through the material in order to keep up with monthly goals. I was misled by the "learning coach" verbiage. These lessons require me to be a full time teacher (40+ hours per week)! There is very little flexibility because we're forced to adhere to the same public school academic calendar as far as weekly attendance. We enrolled in WAVA because we thought saving a few thousand dollars on the K12 curriculum would be worth all the hoop-jumping. It isn't, and we won't be returning to WAVA next year unless they provide a year-round option that makes the pace reasonable.
--Submitted by a parent

Our experience with this school was horrendous. It look forever to get enrolled, and we had to re-fax information and wait past the date school started before my child could begin, . After beginning and doing the work, only then did we find out my child's previous school credits would not be accepted. We were not told this upfront so my child had to drop out and we had to rush out and find a home school curriculum at the last minute. It was very stressful and we felt they not only misled us, but took advantage of us. Also, one of the teachers was very hard to reach when my child needed to ask a question. All it all, it took a huge amount of our time, money sending faxes of the loads of paperwork required, and miscommunication with nearly everyone we dealt with, including the school counselor.
--Submitted by a parent

WAVA's test scores are not really comparable because part-time students (home schoolers) are not required to take the WASL (now MSP). The state counts those students (even though they are not required to take the test) and gives them a score of zero! Don't trust test score statistics without looking into how they are derived!
--Submitted by a parent

This is a very damaging school at the high school level. We live in a rural area where Internet access is sometimes down. WAVA gave us no means of catching up. My son spent an average of 8.5 hours a day, 6 days a year trying to succeed. Contacting teachers and administrators was always difficult and required hours of phone tag and being placed on hold. At the end of the year my son was about 2 weeks behind and was failed for the entire year. After repeating 9th grade my son had a GPA for the year of 3.40. But his Cumulative GPA was 1.864 due to the lost year at WAVA. This school had no business destroying a year of my child s life. He is still paying for my mistake of putting him in this school.
--Submitted by a parent

WAVA, is an excellent school for my child. She has more one on one learning time. A much bigger quality social life. Her Lessons are at her personal level of education tailored just for the student. There is no more standing on cold bus stops in the dark morning hours. to get to an over crowded school were you hope your child can learn something ,or even get to finish lunch before loosing there seat in the over crowded lunch room. I wish online public school was an option sooner. It may be the new way to go to school and replace the brick and mortar schools all together.
--Submitted by a parent