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I am a publik skewl teechur and I grade work for an on-line program just like you described. Not only do the students cheat like crazy, but they also don’t grasp some of the information being presented. Once they submit a lesson, it is too late to reteach because that is not an option. On top of that, many of the teachers that grade these lessons simply mark “correct” for all of the answers, whether they are or not. They claim that it is easier and the parents won’t complain.

That’s interesting information about online homeschools. It sounds to me that if all that is going on, it’s the parents who are dropping the ball! If they’re like the homeschooling parents I know, they would keep an eagle eye on their kids and the work they’re doing.

It occurs to me, also, that you’re describing what goes on in thousands of public school classrooms: kids cheating, not really learning concepts, being passed on to make it easy for the teacher, teachers trying to avoid confrontations with parents. I guess whatever is “new” is just the same old, same old!

I prefer sitting down with my kids, refusing to go on to the next lesson until what we’re working on is finished satisfactorily. I prefer being able to model the correct way of approaching a problem, writing a sentence, etc. over and over again, if necessary to just throwing out information and hoping my kids “get it”.

I’ve been blessed with extremely smart kids who make me, the homeschooling mom, look good, but I’ve been on the other side of the fence as a public school teacher, frustrated with time limits, low parental involvement, and all the other ills of the system.

I bet your online program is being pushed for kids who were expelled or suspended from public schools. This situation seems to be increasing. When I started homeschooling my older children(1986) we never met any kids like this. Now they are common. They are not “homeschooling” because of a commitment to education. They are homeschooling because they have little choice. We had to kick a couple of these kids out of our homeschool group because they were thugs. They beat up younger kids and their mother did nothing. If I wanted to put up with that, I would have sent my kids to school.