After looking at each of the above options for online schooling in Ohio, here's how they stack up in my opinion on a scale from 1-10:
Clarity Understanding Look Feel
So, which of the five DL options would I pick for my child? I would have to say that choosing between Ohio Virtual Academy and Virtual Community School of Ohio would be a challenge. I really liked what both had to offer. At first glance I liked the home page of OHVA, the schools contact number appear right there with no effort to find it. The flow of the website was nice and easy to navigate and I loved the break down of each grade and program. It also gave faces to some of the staff that a family might have contact with. Likewise, OCA was fairly easy to find my way around within the site. Some things that I found very helpful was the live chat option. I would defiantly benefit from that as well as the fact that there are three teacher and administration centers in OH. There is one in Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati making it easy to reach out to a live person when absolutely necessary. One more reason I liked this school is because of the five this was the only one that offered a video on how to enroll, explaining the process. This is helpful to both a parent with little technology skills and an older student trying to enroll on their own to make up credits who may not understand exactly what the forms are asking for.
Let me now state which of the five DL options I would NOT pick for my child? The Virtual School House did not have much to offer at first sight, but I wanted to give it a chance, so I continued to click around and check it out. I was disappointed by both the pictures and the lack of up keep of the site. The photos show no kind of diversity as if they are only targeting a specific group. As I moved on to announcements, I found that it has not been up dated since 2015. What? This is crazy. Hello, It's 2017. I hope the curriculum is more up to date. I'll never know, because after doing a little check on the staff I got out of there. Several of the staff members had no profile information available and that is important to me. I need to know as much as I can about who will be working with my child.
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