Explanation of Florida Virtual Academy
Florida Virtual is Florida's Public School Platform. It is available to students living anywhere in the world through Florida Virtual Global.
A number of years ago, the State of Florida invested quite a lot of money in producing an on-line platform that would allow public school students to be homeschooled instead of attending classes live if they so choose. Students who live in Florida can enroll in it free of charge.
The platform itself is very well done, and highly contemporary, and it soon became known world-wide, prompting schools and homeschooling families outside of Florida to want to use the program as well. Because of that, Florida Virtual started their global academy.
The academy is a public school platform. It is not Christian.
For those seeking a Christian platform, Sevenstar purchased the rights to transform Florida Virtual into a Christian curriculum. Therefore, Sevenstar is the Christian version of Florida Virtual. Teachers at Sevenstar are on staff at Sevenstar, whereas teachers with Florida Virtual are teachers on staff with the Florida school district. See our page on Sevenstar for more information.
We have not seen Florida Virtual in action. But we have seen Sevenstar and are very impressed. There are live, "real-time" classes once a week. The platform is contemporary and will appeal to students that are used to bold graphics and interactivity. It would be a good platform, as would Sevenstar, for students who have short attention spans. In between live classes, students are expected to complete assignments that are comprised of short reading passages, videos, written assignments, projects, and discussion posts.
There are live teachers that follow the students. They keep grades and issue report cards. It should be noted that when we read their reviews from "Consumer Affairs" (right), there were a substantial number of individuals that stated that they had trouble getting Florida Virtual's teachers to respond in a timely manner. This could be due to the massively increased volume of public schoolers who were suddenly thrust onto the platform due to Covid because all the in-class Florida public schoolers would have had to go online quickly. We have not seen any problem of that nature with Sevenstar. They have been extremely fast to address any student issues.
They have 175 classes available on their platform. They are accredited through Cognia and WASC.
Their pricing is in tiers, with some classes being more expensive than others. Also, they charge by the semester, rather than the year. The prices are: $475 per semester for tier 1 classes, $400 tier 2, and $325 tier 3. Most of their classes are tier 1. We only saw two classes available in tier 3. It should be noted, however, that Sevenstar offers many of the same classes at a much lower price.
They do offer AP classes.
They also have Honors classes, their classes are mobile friendly (meaning you can do them on a mobile phone), and they are NCAA approved.
For more information about Florida Virtual, you can reach their website at: https://www.flvsglobal.net/students-families/.
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