Connections Academy

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 family has been with Ca since my oldest was in first grade. It was a great program and I happily recommended it to everyone I talked to. I cannot recommend it for Elementary students any longer. While the teachers are fantastic, the curriculum is not! They have changed the curriculum in Math and ELA so drastically. It no longer is helpful to the students! Math focuses on one concept for two units, teaching a multitude of methods for simple adding and subtracting. The quizzes and tests are designed to confuse a student rather than test their actual knowledge. If one method works for a student, then why should he or she learn 10 ways to do it that will just confuse him or her in the long run. The ELA focuses on videos and online practices. There is no longer an LC guide to allow the Learning Coach to teach their students. The school wants these videos and online practices to teach the student. They no longer encourage writing practice and reading comprehension skills. Stories are supposed to be listened to... I strongly suggest choosing a different program or straight homeschooling. I am not sure my family will be back next year.

Recently, after a complaint I made about the new curriculum, I felt as if I was told this is how it was going to be now and either get on board or leave... We'll definitely be leaving next school year and checking out other options for my children. This is not the only option available to us and CA needs to realize this.

Also, the lack of communication from the school and teachers this year has been astonishing. The teachers used to be very good at communicating, but not anymore.

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'm a 9th grader at connections and iv'e gotten behind a HUGE amount almost every year, with a lot of stress and challenges whether that's in school or outside of school HOWEVER one of the great things about this school is if you work you butt off you can get your grades to A's and have no overdue's, at the beginning of this week i i had 30 overdue's because i went on a cruise with my family but when i got back i worked hard and got down to 3 by the end. Now theirs something a lot of people are misunderstanding is most of the time the students just cant get their head in the game because of stress but this can be fixed or even avoided by just talking to your teacher, i didn't to get from 30 to 3 but that's just because i didn't want to bother them and Honestly the teachers are awesome at least mine (shout out to Captain Mrs. Pyle best Teacher in the school).

The main thing you want to do is stay ahead of the game so you don't have overdue while still doing work and PAY ATTENTION TO THE MATERIAL it may be hidden but it basically has all the answer flat out on the page you just have to look... oh and one last word of advise Quick checks are Incredibly Important so dont just blast through them.

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.

My daughter has attended CA for 8th and into the ninth grade. She was doing okay with the Junior High class but going into high school she has really taken a turn for the worst. I am not a parent that thinks my kid can do no wrong, but in this case this school just plan sucks! My daughter was a strait A student going into this school and she is now leaving this school as an F student! This school will harass you regularly while they are up for their government funding but as soon as that all in they disappear... No joke they won't return phone calls the administrative will LIE to you and promise they will do their JOB but won't do s***! This is the worst experience I have EVER had with any educational institution! They harassed me daily to wright them a review the first month of school so I wrote them a very nice one and thats the ONLY possible way ANYONE would write them a nice review! THEY SHOULD LOSS ALL FUNDING AND BE SHUT DOWN! Nothing but a BS scam! This is a review for the Utah CA, I do not know if they are better in other states.

I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about the amount of lessons there are, to which i have to say you're all dimwitted idiots. You get one lesson per class a day, just like a normal school, and not even every single class has one everyday, only the core classes. And those little "quizzes" you guys are complaining about are actually quick checks to make sure you actually did the lesson, same as getting an assignment or homework at the end of a lesson. Y'all are just complaining because you thought you could slack off and play video games all day instead of actually learning.

It's definitely NOT for everyone. You have to be responsible and easily adapt to the work style. It's not the same as going to a normal school as far as the environment, of course, but class work is just the same, which is good because then you actually get to learn the things you need to graduate, no matter how useless they may be.

If your child is having mental breakdowns because they're not getting out of the house that's not the school's fault, its yours and your child's. You can easily take them to a park among other things, and they can easily go outside and play. You have to do physical activity for PE anyway and that course is mandatory to graduate in most states.

If you start late and you have tons of work, you need to message your teachers about getting help or skipping you ahead. It's policy for the teachers to do so, especially when you're three weeks late like I was. If you are super behind I recommend doing one class at a time, and keeping up with that class when you get caught up as you do a different class. That worked wonders for me.

Don't complain about things that you should have expected from a school. Like I said, this is exactly like a normal school where you have to actually do work.

My son is able to do school anytime he want and has more free time. He doesn't have to wake up very early and likes it.

My son has been in this school for 2 years. Both years of hell. We thought by putting our son in an online school it would be great seiing as you can do everything on your own schedule. Which is not how it is. You are on their schedule He has an I. E. P. Which they could care less about. They do not honor it. He has ADHD. PTSD. And has always been in a SPED classroom. When we enrolled him, they said that the school has no problem with children witgh IEP's and SPED. They have held our son at the same standards as an honor student. He has no Idea what he is doing in algebra or chemistry. Basically F's down the line. When having meetings with the teachers. They tell us that they might call truancy in my city because he doesnt go to live lessons all the time. He takes meds that make him wake up late. They dont care about kids. They wont make modifications for your kid. The only reason we are still in this godforsaken place is we live in the city and the schools are real bad. So we are stuck til then. Run as fast as you can from tecca.

We enrolled our 6th and 7th grader for the 2020-2021 year. Customer service signing up was a huge challenge due to demand, I have close to 30 hours into a straight forward enrollment and over 6 hours of cumulative time on hold. Instruction is extremely fragmented. My online bachelors degree program was easier to navigate and locate information on. The curriculum doesn't necessarily follow the teachers instruction and students need to read the assignment in the lesson then sometimes refer to a bulletin board or email to get the final instructions which sometimes conflicts with the lesson. Students also cannot fill out lesson templates online, they need to download and save them, then attach or upload the completed version to their teacher. Sometimes they attach and sometimes upload, this depends on the teacher and leads to failed assignments because of upload or submission errors. My kids have been very discouraged these first weeks. So far the teachers have been good at getting these errors sorted out but this has taken hours of extra time. Some teachers use Microsoft products some use Google, there is no consistency and you must use your own accounts as there are no linked accounts to the school. On average I am receiving 10-12 emails per day, and the information from teachers and admin is fragmented. I spend about 2 hours a day in emails and review and we have hired a tutor to help out 5 hours day to assist them in navigating the software. There is virtually no interaction or instruction with the teachers. Most of the lessons are recorded and students cannot interact or ask questions. Communication is primarily through email which is ineffective. The platform is just a mess, it is like trying to work with Windows 95 in modern day. The supporting tech is at least 5-7 years behind the UI and integration you might expect in modern software. I strongly suggest you go elsewhere.