Almost ready to start with Keystone -any last minute advice?

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quaqualita
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Almost ready to start with Keystone -any last minute advice?

Postby quaqualita » Thu Nov 24, 2011 1:44 pm

Hello all,
I found this forum on my extensive research about Online High Schools in the last days and decided to post here to hopefully get even more comments / ideas / tips.

Here our situation: I'm a single Mom, originally from Europe, living since 17 years in the Dominican Republic. My daughter is born in the Dominican Republic, her father is Canadian, so my daughter has Dominican, German, and Canadian nationality and is fluent in English, Spanish, also knows quite well German and French. I'm only mentioning this here, as at the moment she did not decide yet what to do after High School, but due to her multiple Nationalities and languages she speaks, we want to keep all her options open - if possible to get a High School Diploma that is accepted at Colleges and / or universities internationally.

My daughter visited private schools in the past since Pre-School age, is now in Grade 10 (age 15), she always received bi-lingual education, schools that teach local (Dominican) and US or UK curriculum. Sounds very cool on first impression, but the quality of those private schools here (we tried different ones in the last past years) are not really good, at times even ridiculously bad.
The last what we have to put up with, only a few examples: The English books (that the school buys / orders and makes us parents pay for in July!) still didn't arrive till today (we have now almost December!), totally non-qualified teachers that make repeatedly silly spelling mistakes, or now a new teacher, that actually teaches very well, but is a former graduated student from last year - so without any teaching diplomas or experiences.

Anyway, I'm not usually a person that complains a lot, and after all this years living in a 'third world' country, we are totally aware that things often are not perfect here, and we have to accept it is what it is. However, those private schools here are not cheap: we pay 300 US$/month, plus costs for books, uniforms, school transportation, etc... it just hurts to spend that much money while not getting good education for my daughter - very frustrating.

In addition to all this problems, my daughter suffered a few days ago a knee injury, which makes getting her to school in the overfilled school bus very difficult. Luckily her injury is not as bad as we originally thought it is. We feared that it might take her several weeks or months to recover, but she is actually doing quite well.
When we thought she maybe won't be able to go to school for a while, I started researching Online High Schools.

I'm working from home, so I would be there to 'oversee' her education, but I do not really have the experience and also not the time to sit many hours next to her and teach her like the traditional home school style. That's why I focused my research on Online Schools, where she mostly can do 'all the work' by herself, with teacher support available in case she needs help.

After searching through many many Online Schools on the internet, I narrowed my interest to Keystone Online High School. They seem to offer a nice variety of courses, the demo courses look very interesting (my daughter went through some of their demos and liked it), I contacted them and they responded with more information very quickly, I researched other internet sites (also this forum) for reviews about them ... all seems to sound very good!

Some here on this forum mentioned that Keystone is more on the expensive side, but as I'm paying right now approx 4000 US$ /year , Keystone would be actually much cheaper for us!

We still have to check with Keystone if they are able to accept credits from my daughter's 9th grade and maybe even part of her 10th grade, but in the worst case scenario - even if they won't accept any credits, the total costs to get the 21 credits to receive a High School Diploma won't be higher than what we are paying now, and I'm very confident she would get a much better education.

On top of that, today I learnt that a friend's neighbor here in our local small town does have their daughter enrolled with Keystone since over 2 years and they are very happy with them. That only confirmed my good impression I had about them so far, so now I'm as good as sold!

Anyway, sorry for such long post. My daughter and I are aware that it will be a very different experience for her (and for me!) to switch from regular school to online school, we both read about 'de-schooling' process, I'm aware it might be a bit challenging at times to keep my daughter motivated. But, she is 15 years now, very mature, very comfortable on her computer, we have a good internet connection, and she knows how important a good High School Diploma is for her own future. We are ready for the switch!

So, my question here to users on this board: Is there anything bad you know about Keystone? Anybody thinks, online school -censored- is much better than Keystone, anything else important I should know? Maybe anything I have totally missed in my research so far?

I will still give it a few days 'to sleep over' a final decision, but at the moment it looks like my daughter will start with Keystone maybe as early as in a few days!

Thanks in advance for any comments and tips!

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Theodore
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Postby Theodore » Sun Nov 27, 2011 11:32 pm

I notice you posted this in at least one other forum as well.

quaqualita
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Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2011 12:33 pm
Location: Dominican Republic

Postby quaqualita » Mon Nov 28, 2011 6:50 am



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