How to Stay on Track with Virtual School

Keeping track of virtual school progress is a big part of our jobs as a homeschool parent and learning coach. How do we stay on track with the virtual school progress targets, and if we get behind (which happens to all of us), how do we catch up?

Daily Lessons and Progress Targets

Measuring our child’s progress through the school year involves measuring daily lesson completion and hitting long range progress targets. These targets are critical to make sure that you finish the curriculum each year! Staying on track with the virtual schooling curriculum means that we need to pay attention to both of these measurements.

 If you are traditionally homeschooling, then you are the one who will set these benchmarks. You can decide which units and lessons are important, and how long you’d like to take for each curriculum component.

If you are doing virtual schooling, these weekly, monthly, and quarterly benchmarks will be set by your child’s teacher.  Our job as a learning coach is to make sure that the right lessons are getting done so that our child doesn’t fall behind.

I absolutely love the structure and the progress benchmarks provided by our online school.  We have been with CAVA for the last 12 years, and they have been excellent at making sure that my kids stay on track and are completing the right lessons.  

Just a note: I am not a k12.com employee or an employee of CAVA or any other virtual school.  What I am saying here is my own experience as a learning coach.  For specific questions, please ask your teacher or school!

What’s Great About Virtual School Structure!

The structure provided by the virtual school means that I don’t need to review the state and federal curriculum guidelines by each grade level, pick and choose the right subjects to learn, and make sure that my student does the right lessons.  

I don’t need to worry if the high school curriculum will be rigorous enough to meet the California A-G college requirements.  The school has already gone through the approval process and tells us which of the high school courses meet the standards.  

I also don’t need to do the math to figure out what percentage of the curriculum needs to be done each week to complete a subject.  

So, how is progress benchmarking and monitoring done in a virtual school?  I’m going to talk about how it worked for us with CAVA and k12.com, because that is what we have done for the last 12 years.  It may be different for you because you’re attending a different school, or are in a state with different requirements. Also, when it comes to the elementary progress monitoring, since my students are now in high school, things might look a little different now.

Staying on Track in the Elementary Grades

In the elementary years, my students had one teacher assigned to them each year, much like it is in a brick and mortar school. This teacher was the one who I would call with any of my questions.  Additionally, this teacher would meet with my children, either in person, or through an online conference, to do some benchmarking and independent assessment of how my child was doing.  In the early years, I would meet the teacher in the library and she would have my child read sight words aloud, or do a few math problems.  She would keep track of the results and then would use them to keep an eye on how my child was doing.  It was not a high pressure situation.  It was just a way to make sure that learning was taking place at home.

In addition to these quarterly meetings, we would have progress benchmarks sent to us at the beginning of the year.  It would tell us what percentage of the curriculum needed to be completed at the end of each week.  It was usually about 3% or so per week.  I could then log into our OLS (Online learning system) and see if the percentage of lessons completed matched with the guidelines set by the teacher.  

At the end of Quarter 1, the goal would be to be at 25%, and (obviously ) at the end of Semester 1 to be at 50%.  But, it was helpful to have weekly percentage goals for progress as well.

Some of the teachers would print out a lesson spreadsheet which included specific units and lessons that needed to be completed by the end of each quarter.  These would be customized to the individual student.  So, if my child was ahead in math, the printout would include the appropriate number of lessons (one per day), but the unit and lessons would be specific to where my child was in the curriculum.  Teachers would also have the ability to reduce a child’s lessons if that child needed more time on a particular subject.

In the k12.com elementary program, it is mastery based.  This means that as soon as your child achieves 80% on a lesson, it is considered mastered, and the child can move on.  Quizzes can usually be retaken without penalty (depending on your child’s school policy) until the child meets the objective.  If your child is struggling, then the teacher is available to help out and give one on one assistance as needed.  The goal is to complete the curriculum by the end of the year with at least 80% mastery.

The key here is to note that in the elementary system, if a lesson isn’t completed, it slides to the next day.  If you don’t complete the assigned daily lesson, you will no longer be on track to complete the curriculum in the school year. This is how your child can get behind if you aren’t monitoring the progress percentages.

I used a combination of daily lesson trackers, with weekly progress monitoring to make sure that my child was completing the right amount of school a week.  

Another thing I would do is check the Estimated Completion Date on the progress tracker within our Online School.  If the estimated end date was after the last day of school, then I needed to increase the number of lessons per week to make sure that we would actually finish.

There are some subjects, especially in the elementary grades, that take place 2-3 days a week.  For example, Art was a 2 day a week subject.  If you have a subject like that for your child, make sure you are keeping an eye on that progress! It is very easy to get behind on those subjects, especially if you have them scheduled on a Monday.  Since there are so many Monday holidays, you can more easily fall behind, especially in January and February.  I always arranged my child’s schedule to only have 5 day a week subjects fall on Mondays.  The other days of the week were good options to have longer days.

So, keep an eye on your elementary student’s progress by checking on daily lesson completion and mastery, following the progress guidelines sent to you by the school, and also by checking the estimated completion date in the Online School. 

If you happen to find that you are getting behind, then I would recommend doing one extra lesson a day in the subject that you’re behind on so that you can quickly get back on track. Another way to do this is to take advantage of a non school day and do that work. Your child won’t get the attendance credit, but it will help you get back onto the right track with regards to weekly progress.

Middle School Progress – Check Gradebook Weekly

It becomes really important to measure progress in middle school.  We want to make sure they are staying on track, and also doing quality work. At this age our kids are ready to be doing most of their work on their own.  However, this doesn’t mean that they will always be getting the right work done!

It took me a while to wise up to this middle school mentality.  I was still measuring progress as doing one lesson a day.  However, I wasn’t always monitoring assignment due dates and test completions. We had some interesting situations where one of my children skipped turning in assignments and we reached the end of the quarter, when all the assignments were due, and there was a boatload of late work to do!

 In the k12.com ecosystem, the grading and the assigning of a schedule shifts to the teacher in the middle school.  That meant that my student’s assignments were given to them directly by the teachers, and that all work was now turned in to the teacher.  I was no longer grading essays on my own.  I was still checking the progress, but I clearly wasn’t making sure they were doing the right assignments to stay on track!

Word to the wise- Make sure to check your child’s grade book weekly!!!  It is important to see if they are turning in their work, and what grades they are getting.  Also, in middle school, at least for our version of virtual school, it was now possible to fail.  Previously, because things were mastery based, my kids had lots of opportunities to demonstrate learning.  Now, they needed to submit assignments to their teachers for a grade.

In middle school I would recommend having a weekly plan available that your child can print out.  Sometimes the teachers will prepare this for them.  If so, have your child print this out at the beginning of the week.  Then, at the end of the week, check with the online school and grade book to make sure work has been completed and turned in.

Also, make sure you keep an eye on deadlines.  Every school will set up their own standards as to when assignments open and close.  Encourage your child to be independent, but do not rely on what they say they’ve done.  Always verify daily lesson completion, weekly assignment completion, and the grade book checks.

High School: Different Teachers, Different Expectations

This is where your teen really learns how to be independent.  They will be managing multiple subject matter teachers and lots of different expectations.  Staying on track in high school will look different for every subject!

Once we got used to the high school system, it was fantastic!  The quality of instruction was wonderful, and because the subject matter teachers were grading the work, I was confident that my sons were getting graded objectively.

My workload as a learning coach really went down once my kids reached high school. The tradeoff was that the flexibility that we had enjoyed in the elementary school years was not there anymore.

In high school, every subject gets completed every day, and most of the time your child will have a different teacher for each subject.  Like in a brick and mortar school, the virtual school teachers will set the pace, assignments, due dates, and expectations for their classes. 

 I would recommend you transition your high school student to their own journal or notebook to keep track of assignments.  This could be a dedicated student planner, or you could use a system like the bullet journal.  This places the monitoring of their progress squarely on their shoulders, where it should be.  

There are also online tools in the high school LMS (Learning management System) which can put assignment dates on a calendar for your student.

I will monitor grades by reading the weekly emails I get from the teachers, or by logging in on my parent portal once a week. Our policy is that they can move weekly work around, but everything assigned on a given week must be done in order for their weekend to start.  

Because there are different teachers in High School, there may be days that are filled with tests.  This wasn’t usually an issue in Middle School because the teachers generally tried to space the tests out.  But because each high school subject is self contained, some days can have lots of tests.

On those days where there are multiple unit tests scheduled, sometimes it makes sense to flex the schedule a bit. Sometimes my high school student will move a unit test to a different day, just to balance out the work load.  My student have been grateful for this freedom to defer a test, especially on days with 3-4 unit tests! 

 In general, for our school, the unit tests and assignments don’t close or lock until the end of the quarter.  But that will vary based on each teacher’s expectations.  Some teachers dock points if assignments are turned in late.  It is key that your child understand each teacher’s late work policy.

I make it a policy to check my student’s daily completion either by asking them or by looking at their bullet journal. Then I monitor weekly progress by checking the gradebook.  Usually I have my kids show me the grade book themselves and then we talk about how thing are going in each class.  

Staying on track looks different with each educational level. By teaming up with your child’s virtual school teachers you can make sure that the right things are being completed. If you’re struggling to keep up with the daily lesson objectives, don’t forget that you can reach out to the school support network for help. I have really appreciated how much the teachers have helped us throughout the years to stay on track and also to inspire my kids to work harder!

The goal is to transition yourself out of a job.  With each educational step, you are supporting your child’s learning independence.  You are truly a coach, moving from being right next to your child directing the learning, to supervising the work completion in the upper grades.