[Corin Stormhands]

I'm really not clear on this "homeschool academy" thing - how does it work?

I guess in a sense it's still sort of a co-op. I think their earliest classes are middle school age (I'm not sure on that since wife teaches upper grades).

Basically parents send kids to take subjects parents aren't comfortable teaching anymore. Some kids take all their classes there. Some just a few.

Parents pay per class. But they pay the school and the school pays the teachers. They meet three days a week.

[JenB]

Right, that sounds more like the co-op... ours had classes for little kids, since the moms were all teaching, and were a good way to get in the weak subjects.

From one point of view, your wife almost certainly has the kids with the weakest writing skills. Because their mothers recognize that, they send the kids to your wife. So she's probably dealing with the worst homeschooled kids, not the best. Just like the teacher who's teaching, say, Algebra probably doesn't have any of the brilliant math students.

I'd applaud the parents for seeing that their kids get this gap fixed if you hadn't said the parents are part of the problem.