Never Again

...and I'd advise anyone considering it not to even bother.  I'm talking about Georgia Virtual School.  I thought about waiting until I had cooled down but decided the post would be more powerful if I wrote while fired up.  I enrolled Andrea in Math 1 B at Georgia Virtual School this summer because she struggled with and eventually passed Math 1 A back when she went to Miller Grove High School.  Andrea isn't the sharpest math pencil in the box and neither was I.  Holiday who took calculous in high school and majored in math for a while was able to help, only after spending almost an hour researching how to do the problems.  I'm not making excuses, Im stating a major frustration, one you should be aware of if you enroll in a course at Georgia Virtual School.

The system is limited.  There are a few, and I do mean few online pages explaining each concept.  There are even videos showing a teacher working through examples of the work.  You Think you understand it.  WRONG.  The problems assigned for practice and for a grade have nothing do to with the examples the teacher in the video worked.  The teacher's examples are much easier than the practice and graded work.  To Andrea and Me, they had nothing in common.  The teacher holds help sessions twice a week which is well and good for what it is.  The bigger issue is assignments are due every day.  If we call the teacher we get her voice mail, so we have to wait for a response.  Same with email.  YouTube videos do a much better job explaining the concepts than the videos from Georgia Virtual School.  Her teacher explains things well in the help sessions.  If they examples matched the problems we wouldn't need the help sessions.

Graphing calculators are another issue.  We were told we wouldn't need one.  Thank Goodness.  There are problems best solved by using a graphing calculator and the teacher shows how to use an online version.  I asked if graphing calculators will be provided at the end of course test. EOCT>  She referrs me to a lady at the Georgia Department of Education.  By the way the Georgia Department of Education is the owner of Georgia Virtual school.  I contact this lade, from the Georgia Department of Education and this is her reply.  Graphing calculators are not allowed.  No calculator which stores information is permitted to be used on the EOCT.  You may bring your own but it cannot be a graphing calculator. Excuse me, but what had they been studying?  What had the teacher taught them how to use? 

I am also angry about the location of the EOCT.   This is supposed to be a statewide school and they only have a handful of testing locations.  The closest to me is in a small town called Marietta, at Kennesaw State University.  Now what kind of logic is that?  With ATLANTA so close why in the world is there not a test site in ATLANTA?     I was told about another test site at Chattahoochee Technical College.  What, a site at a dinky place like that and not one in the Capitol?  This is ridiculous.  Andrea's regular school, Georgia Cyber Academy,  had test sites all over the state. They even had one in Decatur.

With the cost of the classes so high at Georgia Virtual school and the way they do things I wonder if it's deliberately geared for students to fail.   We were so frustrated after the first day of class I was looking for their refund policy.  Unfortunately, even though this was her first day of classes she had access to the course more than three days.  Made me mad.  Never again.  Take my advice, find another place to take classes.