Connections Academy

This school is incredibly stressful. The assignments are easy for me, but because of the constant projects forced on me every single week I am beginning to experience academic burn out. I no longer have any motivation to work on anything. They make you do 6-4 lessons everyday which is already hell enough, and a lot of the teachers take ages to grade assignments. Some of the staff are extremely rude aswell. I had to switch home room teachers due to the harassment they kept giving me. CA is more focused on your education than a students well being, and the "mindfulness live lessons" are incredibly useless. I can't wait to graduate so I dont ever have to go back to this god awful school. Until they minimize the portfolios in classes and quit making our lives so stressful with constant tests, then maybe so many people wouldn't be dropping out from this school.
Not to mention, but their grading system is absolutely garbage. They grade you based on the percentages of how well you do in tests, quick checks, portfolios, etc. Once you mess up on one of those by failing an assignment, a 2/5 quick check can easily bring you to an F. The assignments are also super poorly written, and the teachers do not tell you when there is an alternative assignment from the messege boards. I'm hoping by spring break I can recover from this awful depression this school gives me. Thanks.

Location: Arizona Connections Academy

The school is overall good but can be stressful if you get the wrong teachers. The school didn't enroll my child until 4 weeks into the first day of school so they were very behind in lessons. The home room teacher is incredibly disrespectful, rude, and unhelpful. My child tells me they understand nothing from the lessons, and the feedback they get from their teacher is nothing but slander. Please pick a different school because this one is not it.

I enrolled my child in the middle of last year and at first thought it was a great alternative. Within a few weeks however I saw a massive slip in her grades and she was placed on "academic probation". Basically it's a span of span where you struggle to pull up an grade that is considered failing and as the time I think you were only allotted two or three. Regardless, she managed to pull up the grades even got a message from the adviser that they had placed her with and yet the day the probation was up one grade slipped and she was placed back on which I felt was completely unfair, but it didn't matter.

Flash forward to the current school year. We are approaching the one month mark and already I'm seeing the same slip in grades. I have seen many mentions of the workload and I can attest to the fact that it is a bit crazy. The first week of school we had a research paper due as well as two portfolios, one of which was a slide show that took us two and a half hours between looking up information and putting together.

My final straw was when I received a call on the 31st from the Algebra teacher accusing my child of cheating. She first called my child who was very upset that this woman was accusing her of copying and pasting answers from a website. Told her multiple times that she knew for a fact she had gotten them from a website then when this teacher called me told me that the accusation was do to the time it took her to complete the quiz...

In the span of Friday to Tuesday my student went from being on track to being in alarm and was placed once again on academic probation. I filled out the withdraw form yesterday.

Moved from FL to TN and having trouble enrolling my daughter. Online chat did not help and phone call with person who doesn't speak English did not help either.

This is our 2nd year with Tecca. My son is on an IEP, and he had Kate Davies as his Special Ed teacher in grade 7. The grade 7 experience was great! The instructors were supportive; Mrs. Davies took the time needed to get to know my son. Mrs. Davies was highly involved with my son and ensured that all of his academic needs were met to promote his success... Now he is in 8th grade with Janet Chagnon as his Special Ed teacher. This year has been a nightmare! The accommodations per the IEP were not made to my son's curriculum. I made several attempts to advocate for my son, and Mrs. Chagnon refused to put the accommodations in place per my son's IEP. As the year continued, without the accommodations, my son fell further behind, and he is completely overwhelmed. I reached out to the Special Ed Director numerous times to express my concerns. With the assistance of the Special Ed Director, the accommodations were finally put into place the 3rd week in October. Sadly, had Janet Chagnon opened my son's profile, she would learn that my son needs the accommodations, or if Janet Chagnon listened to me (the mother) my son would not have spent nearly 2 months struggling, falling behind, which in turn have caused his grades to suffer. It is repulsive that one teacher who refuses to read about the children on her caseload to ensure accommodations are in place, never mind when talking to a child's parent and continually refusing to listen to the needs of the child, and outright refusing to put the proper accommodations in place - setting a child up for failure by not following their IEP is not only disgraceful, but it sets the child up for failure! It is the child's right to have the necessary accommodations in place per their IEP. I have asked the Special Ed Director several times for Janet Chagnon to be removed from my son's team - I was told no. We do not trust Janet Chagnon, nor will we take the risk of her continued resistance in providing the accommodations he is entitled to per his IEP, and setting up my son for failure. It's unfortunate that the blatant negligence of one teacher can deeply effect a student's academics. Therefore, we are now researching other online programs my son can transfer to, so he can complete this school year.

I do not take pleasure in pointing out things that can be improved... this is a kind, not upset just very over it. I will say the company or department that processes the enrollment information is a systematic deplorable disappointment... from loosing paper work to inconsistencies with each call is sad. Im not in an urgent situation regarding online education with my children but I cant imagine if I were. I am not sure if Connections Academy is aware of this but. Connexus enrollment staff istruly in need of help. Extreme embarrassment, seriously

This year has not been so good for my kids. The math is not set up for kids with learning issues and there is issues with the teachers not getting back to you when you need them and you have to set up a time and day to meet them and sometimes, they don't show up for that. The math is just trash the kids don't know when to stop and the lessons are not set up for kids with issues and the teachers is no help. You don't get the grades and don't know they are behind until you see their grades fall then the kids get upset because they don't understand why. I really hope they change this and get back to the why things was and stop with all these changing things. Ive been with them for seven years and this is bar far the worse year. Teachers are not teaching, and lessons is just bad. You can't find the head of the school so you can talk to that person about all the issues so tell me who do you contact for this?

Location: South Carolina Connections Academy

After 1 full month in, I would say the school is failing it students.
Issue # 1. Some teachers have never read the materials in the course (90% of which is reading text and watching very short videos), nor have they reviewed the test given at the end of text. I would never expect my students to take a test that I had not reviewed or created myself. Each Teacher can have over 500 students each. Though the teachers, so far, are very helpful the content that in presented and the manner in which it is presented is overwhelming in content and lacking in creating an environment where students can succeed.
Issue# 2. The teacher/student instructional time i. E. "live Lesson" consists of a shockingly short 30-50 minutes per wk! And available for questions 4 hr per week. It is my fervent belief that unless a child is gifted with photographic memory or a parent can spend 8 hours with your child teaching the lessons the student will not be successful. Hopefully things improve.

I can't speak about other states, but the Texas Connections Academy apparently is the only branch of this school that requires the principal to manually check off parents' names that attend the online pre-enrollment meeting. Attending this meeting is a requirement to complete enrollment. I attended the meeting & followed instructions, but the principal hosting the meeting did not check off my name. A week and 15 phone calls later, I can't move forward in the registration process because of their error. Mostly the representatives I have spoken with have been pleasant, but there is a huge communication problem between the state school staff and the main corporate staff. I have had 2 "tickets" submitted to address this issue, only to find out they were both sent to the wrong person. No one can help me except this one principal that never answers the phone. Meanwhile, my child is falling further and further behind--if he even gets registered at all. My advice is to register for this school with plenty of time to spare. If you are running behind & close to the registration deadline, find somewhere else.

I am a parent of a 7th grader. My student has been a part of the TCAH since 2014 (3rd grade) and the struggle is real. These poor students complaining and getting told that they are lazy is beyond frustrating. My child works A LOT of hours and barely has time to actually enjoy any down time except for bedtime. This year has been overwhelming for her. Her grades are still good, but she has sacrificed days to accomplish this. She works 10-12 hours a day, 6 days a week and continues her work through any vacation days to get caught up. This year in 7th grade, the math has been crazy! The curriculum states she should do 2 quizzes, after a couple quick checks, and then she'll have a test and sometimes 2 tests. Then, lets not forget the required imagine math work lessons that need to be completed. This is on top of all her other classes. When she gets stumped as she is now, the lessons pile up and a call to the teacher never gets returned. She has worked so hard to get where she is. She has been an honor student for quite some time and is in the NJHS. But this work load... whew, this work load is too much for any child. They aren't lazy kids if they are in this school, I assure you. One lesson alone can take an hour to do if it's done thoroughly. If they have a portfolio due, well... they are screwed. This is too much. Believe the kids who are stating this school has stressed them out. I have recruited quite a few parents that were interested and I have yet to find any out of 20 parents that found it reasonable to stick with because their lives were impacted so severely by keeping up with their children's break-downs over accomplishing and overcoming hardship. These are grade-school kids, no wonder kids don't have lives anymore, why they're so bitter and glued to technology to find solace in their world. I also want to add that the field trips are a huge joke... they are basically like you and your kid going on a scheduled trip alone. There is no socialization or togetherness. Kids scatter close to their parents and barely talk to each other. If you go on a field trip, be assured that you will be behind in your day lessons. So, why bother having a day of fun when you risk the lessons getting behind? Really TCAH do something about this huge overload. Just because kids are getting older doesn't mean that you have to treat them like robots.

Connections Academy states that you aren't the teacher, but a "Learning Coach". A "Learning Coach" is someone that is supposed to keep the student on track, but not to teach them anything. They say the teachers and the online lessons do that. This is not entirely truthful. When your student has a question, they will come to you for help. Either because the online lesson is convoluted and doesn't actually cover the material asked in a quiz, or because they can't get real help from their so-called teacher.

There's also a designate called "Caretaker". This person (in your household) is the person that is supposedly taking care of the student's needs, such as doctor's appointments, driving to events, meals, etc. You guessed it, the "Caretaker" and "Learning Coach" are one in the same.

So, not only are you the "Learning Coach", but the "Caretaker" and much of the time the teacher.

Don't enroll your student if they struggle in any subject and need help frequently. YOU will be providing that help.

Connections Academy is fine for someone who decided they want to be a homeschooler and was needing some curriculum already planned out for them. The state testing and reporting is all taken care of, too. But don't expect to modify the lessons.

The stress caused by CA in our family has made us decide not to re-enroll our student next school year. But that hasn't stopped CA from asking us for a review. But they only want you to give them a 9 or a 10... if you don't think they deserve that, they tell you to contact the Executive Director. So, in other words, don't give an uncomplimentary, honest review. That's why I'm doing it here.

I've uploaded paperwork to them multiple times & somehow it's been lost. How? When I call there is always a 20-30 min wait. They have enrollment tasks divided into small portions and the people who answer the phones can't see the documents or answer questions. So, you end up waiting to speak to individual teams. They can answer only one part of the question & then transfer you to someone else. Seriously? If it weren't for covid, I'd switch to another online provider bc their enrollment system is a complete and utter mess. I'm very scared that the when we attempt to upload school work, it will be lost and that the education is going to be sub-par, confused, and just as much of a nightmare.

The math lessons are awful. They are very vague and even if the topic is simple, they find a way to make it difficult. The teachers take a long time to respond to webmails. By the time they respond to a question your child has, they will already be behind. The live lessons are usually irrelevant to the lessons. The lessons do not teach you everything that must be done in the assignments. This goes for most of the classes, including the electives. If your child needs help and you can't help them, they are going to get bad grades. You are better off learning the material off of Google.

With multiple students, it would be very helpful if correspondence reflected which child it is for. I get so many, and never know who it is for.

I have two children currently at NC Connections Academy. I have expressed concern with the overload of schoolwork and/or communications that seems to be new this year. My honors student is struggling to keep pace and the stress from the volume of information has me exploring other curriculum paths. I intend to keep my son in for the time being since he has some modifications due to special education and he needs to get a curriculum from another source (not me; otherwise we just argue about why he has to do it)... but for my 8th grade daughter I am ready to quit. The teachers assign so much work. They make up for not having a textbook in science by webmailing excessive information (her teacher LITERALLY sent 37 pages in multiple document attachments today in ONE webmail). I have emailed the principal three times but have heard nothing back. I dont know why the changes have taken place. My kids loved Connections last year. This year the stress level in our home to keep up with the work means we have one foot out the door.

I had enrolled in our child in June and was told to not worry about the lengthy time to process the enrollment as the California schools would not start until September. Calling just about every week to learn of the status, I had been told over and over to not worry and that they currently don't have a cap on student enrollment. Waiting for tall the documents took forever, as they informed me that they had an influx of new enrollments but did not have a lot of staff at the time. Here is an idea, HIRE MORE! None the less, the school year started is fast approaching, still no word from them, in August, TWO months after the start of my enrollment process, I get an email that we will have to be put on a waitlist, What the heck?! They said that they reach capacity and now we are put on a waitlist. There is little communication, even when you have the chance to get in, and then they tell you that everything will be okay and then slam you with the fact that you have to now wait. As a result, I had to enroll him in another online school.

My son will be getting a few Fs and a few other low grades because... his homeroom teacher, other teachers failed to ACTIVELY respond to his cries for help.

Positives were at the beginning of the year when some teachers had time to call and encourage him. Near the end of online high school, he got some automatic responses because teachers were busy part of the time with Istep or other projects.

He also likes the independence of homeschooling. We will be giving it one more try! And hopefully he can still graduate on time.

But... he struggled all semester to get his homework transmitted to Connections. Yes, the teacher was informed... but to no avail. People there are good at telling you to "call someone else". He will be getting an F in a class where he did the work... but it dropped out of the system.

The principal, assistant principal gave no ground. Too bad... So sad. Factually (and I am sparing much detail here) I estimate Connections as 80% responsible for the failures to heed my son's cries notably the last few weeks... and thus responsible for his 2 Fs and a couple other too-low grades. (And he was on the way to get possibly all or mostly As and Bs... before the last few assignments and exams!)

I have worked in customer service for a technical sales company and a major world bank. We NEVER treated cries for help from customers like Connections treated our son and us. Basically, no one was his advocate when he repeatedly said "I am having problems submitting stuff in all my classes".

So... if Connections works for you... fine. We liked part of it. But you need to dog their steps with emails and repeated calls IMMEDIATELY if something goes wrong. It took a week (about4-5 actual business days, with a couple of phone calls and SEVERAL emails) before an administrator called us back.

The curriculum is AWFUL, I have never seen so many portfolios due so often as I do here. The work content and work load for Kindergarten is just entirely too much. God Forbid your Microphone doesn't work and you can't do a recording because you will fall so far behind so quickly. The program is designed for failure, plain and simple. I had a high schooler that couldn't seem to graduate with the program, B/C student in Public school and completely fell behind here. My 8th and 5th graders have been enrolled 1 week and have done every assignment and already have an average of 60%, Both A/B students in a public setting. I have Two Kindergarten students in the program and they both carry a solid 60% which I find odd because I've NEVER seen a kindergartner fail. Every assignment is turned in and on time, it must be the 3 recordings we couldn't do, those need to go. The ONLY reason my kids are in this program is because we happen to live in the worst state for Education currently. I get wanting to be competitive or even "the best" but your lessons are ridiculous, the work load is entirely too high and God forbid we take a sick day. Time to withdraw!

I like to read real reviews, so every now and then I take the time to write one. I have a son who attends Georgia Connections Academy. He has been enrolled for three years, so I know a little bit about the program. All students learn at a different rate, so what works for one may not work for the other. This is a great program for a student with a great learning coach and who does not need a lot of instruction. There are live lessons and teacher interaction, however distractions are still a concern. Some teachers come to these lessons unprepared and with instructions for the whole curriculum, which takes up a lot of instructional time. Teachers work mostly on a part-time level, almost like a substitute teacher. Some kids don't need that constant attention, so this would be great for them. I am writing this review because school is taking a private turn to the right and cyber school will be one of the alternatives. I urge parents to do your homework and research any school, before enrolling your child. Curriculum assignments continue to be a concern for parents and students, however we all need to give a full-time effort in educating our children.

We enrolled our daughter half-way through her junior year because she was dealing with a lot of social anxiety at school. We thought the flexibility of Oregon Connections Academy would be beneficial for her and would allow her to work at her own pace and have some additional free time to work or volunteer. Unfortunately, our expectations were not reality. After six months, our A & B student is now receiving poor grades. She has lost motivation and doesn't really seem to care. At this point, she does the least amount required, which is essentially a lot of busy work and multiple-choice questions. Also, this is a very challenging format in which to teach or learn math. Our daughter has always done quite well in her math classes, yet she's currently failing her CA math class. My brother, who has a degree in computer science and math, attempted to assist her with her math assignments, but it didn't seem to help because she was already so far behind.

I believe the teachers are intelligent and well-intentioned; however, they are limited by the horrible interface and limitations of the online learning platform. My biggest complaint is their confusing system. I struggle to figure out what is due and when, and how she is supposed to complete her assignments. I have a graduate degree, yet it makes little sense to me. I can fully see why my daughter is struggling with this, as well. We are disappointed with her experience at Oregon Connections Academy and will be re-enrolling her at her local high school for her senior year.

On a side note, I did not find out Connection Academy is owned by Pearson Education (publishing company) until after we enrolled our daughter. All CA textbooks are from Pearson, and I recently read they've seen continued increases in revenue from these "public" schools. So, Connections Academy is essentially the K-12 equivalent of the troubled for-profit colleges.

My daughter has health issues but was an A student, she just had trouble with her number of absences in public school (9th grade). We thought this would be a good fit. Her regular workload was never this heavy in public school, but we could handle that if it were flexible. I don't know why they advertise it as being flexible, it's not. If she doesn't turn in 6 completed lessons a day she's counted absent for the day. We didn't know that at first and thought she could make up the hours on weekends or work more lessons on another day to make up for it, apparently you can do extra work whenever but you can't do a few hours on a week day and add the rest to the weekend and be counted present for the whole week. It doesn't matter if a lesson took more than an hour or if she turned in a portfolio or a paper assessment or was studying their resource flashcards or reading the lesson text... 6 submitted lessons a day or she's counted absent. The handbook says they have to attend 25 hours a week, but the teachers tell me anything less than 30 lessons (30 hours) is an absence and the hours the learning coach logs in apparently mean nothing because they only believe the child was working on school work if they have a completed lesson to show for it. Also she was enrolled a little late and I don't think she will ever get caught up (very discouraging to try to tackle every missed lesson on top of a full workload). On top of that making for crushingly long days, you have to learn in reverse to get caught up by doing the current lesson then fitting in the overdue ones and if the current lessons are building on the previous lessons you're lost. I am surprised at the amount of time I've had to devote to the program as well trying to sort this all out. I get at least 5 emails a day about stuff that doesn't even apply to us and it's easy to get lost. I had such high hopes and now I just have regret and worry.

My child is currently a 9th grader at Connections and I feel like it is my duty to review this school in order to help anyone thinking about signing up.

First, let me say that my child was in public school until 3rd grade and then I decided to homeschool her. She was/is an intelligent child and was doing very well grade-wise but, did have attention and anxiety issues that needed to be addressed (without medication). When we reached 9th grade, we were both unsure of what to do for her high-school years... and then I saw Connections Academy advertised and we both decided to give it a try.
Now... onto my review. Connections is really interesting, but I cannot say that it is good. I think that if your child needs to be removed from a public school and you don't know what else to do... then it might work for you. Sadly, what we have found is, that instead of being educated, she is essentially married to the computer. The way the scheduling is set up, she could easily spend 8 hours a day sitting and watching a screen... and taking test after test after quiz etc... Her Biology class is just doing tests and watching outdated videos; Algebra and English are just quizzes and tests; Spanish is the worst, with a horrible curriculum and no book to follow; History class is dry and the tests are timed and on enormous amounts of chapters; Physical education is even done sitting at a computer, which is really counterintuitive if you ask me. Basically, this is not a place for an education, as my daughter is left to try to self-teach herself everything and scramble to find classes online to patch up the holes in a fragmented curriculum. It is merely a place to pass tests and learn how to sit at a computer all day.
Honestly, what Connections advertises is not what you get. There is basically no communication between students and teachers, unless you email them but, it is still very difficult to communicate. If you want a public education for your children, I would recommend that you send them to school where they will have face-to-face interaction with teachers and peers. The clubs so far have been a disappointment as well, honestly, I am not sure what to say about them because they are just run so poorly that you would have to see it to believe it!
I am not reviewing Connections poorly because my daughter is doing poorly there; she is in a mixture of honors and regular classes and has all A's. I am giving my review, because I wish that I would have had a fair review to read before I signed up at the school.
Yes, Connections is free, but I guess you get what you pay for. I am going to withdraw my daughter after the semester ends because she is quickly starting to hate school... which was never my intention when I placed her at Connections! I am very sad indeed.

My son's teacher lost his math test at least 5 times now and she keeps on telling him to retake it, and the teachers lack communication with each other, causing my son to fail his class. So I'm planning on pulling him out of connexus all together