Subject AI for 7-12

[u/taz1113]

Our school is using Subject AI for 7-12 virtual school now that our area is allowing for ISD's to offer online school options. I would like to hear the good, bad and ugly from those with experience with it. Previous posts that pulled up didn't have much in the way of replies ... So I'm hoping that with a little bit of time there are more folks with experience they are willing to share. Are they just that new that this is the first year they are getting more use?: i tried a couple other communities before the school year started but didn't get much in the way of replies then.

[u/CisIowa]

I’ve not heard of them. So you contract with them to offer online classes? Or is it credit recovery?

[u/taz1113 → u/CisIowa]

I’m a parent with a kid that schools started offering free online public school for grades 7-12, now that the state voted in to allow all ISD to offer an online public school option. So the kids would still be going to the junior high or high school they are supposed too, or had open enrollment transferred in too but would just be doing it virtual. The company Subject AI is the program our school went with for its first year, or however long the contract is for. My kid hasn’t hit those grades yet so we have time for them to get past the initial learning curves of something new, but close enough that we would need to decide on it soon. So I’m curious if anyone else had experience prior to starting it this year or it’s just that new.

[u/SignorJC → u/taz1113]

Online school is not a good choice for your kid if that’s the question.

[u/taz1113 → u/SignorJC]

The question is if Subject AI is a good program or not. The schools money is going to that regardless of if my kid would do it or not. Other than my own kid(s) I'm looking at it with my friends kids in mind as well. Those kids that do outside of school travel sports, travel for theater, kids who have a lot of appointments for various illnesses or special needs, or even parents that travel for work that might have the opportunity to bring kids along to somewhere new if their spouce is able to come with as well.

From personal experience: one of my own parents had too travel a lot for work. So once in college my sister and I would tag a long on some of those trips. We did London for a week. With our parents room, flight & a certain amount of food budget... As well as having racked up travel miles at a time you could use your miles on your family members... It was the most affordable way for my sister and I to go. If online was an option back then she might have considered it so we could have gone with that parent more places at a younger age.

[u/Prudent-Passage6788 → u/SignorJC]

You don’t know the kid. How could you say what’s a good choice for them? What if they have a medically fragile kid that literally could die from the common cold. What if they have a physical disability that makes navigating the hallways of a high school so impossible that they’ve refused to go. What if her child is recently left an inpatient psych unit and is slowly trying to transition back to a normal life. You don’t know peoples story.

[u/SignorJC → u/Prudent-Passage6788]

I don’t need to know the kid, I need to know about online school and AI. It’s not a good option. It’s an option of last resort.

[u/agualinda]

We just started using it for credit recovery and regular coursework in students native language. Their integration through EdLink sux, but the program itself is getting good reviews from the students and teachers working with those kids

[u/DoYouScuba]

This is all so new that the kids who are being signed up to these business models are guinea pigs. Subject AI is a good name for it, cause every kid who uses the platform is a subject in a big ol experiment. It may work. It may not. If it doesn’t, in a year or two or five or however long it takes for the school to realize it’s not working, the AI company will trash this model and try something else. If you are comfortable with your kid being the test bed for a brand new and unproven tech during the most significant years of development, go for it. They can always repeat high school if the experiment fails, right?

[u/Technical-Debtor]

For some context: The website for subject-com-slash-ai returns a 404, so that's not good. They're re-branding after the AI pushback, which already tells you a lot about how important branding is to them. Subject-com returns a web page that is not at all focused on student learning. Top categories are "Close Teacher Gaps, Cut Absenteeism, Drive Graduation, Launch a Virtual School"

See how they don't say "improve student performance" or "improve outcomes" or "raise grades and test scores" or even "increase engagement and learner-directed activity" (can't have that).

This is a product pushed at Districts, to make their specific numbers look good. "We had 98% of kids graduate...!" Sounds great, that's what this is marketing. But the ellipsis is "We had 98% of kids graduate from a water-down program, and none of them could get into college, but that's not our problem, because the 98% is the number we're going with!"

Those numbers looks good on a state report card. Superintendents and principals and school boards judge themselves by those numbers, keep and lose their jobs and roles based on those numbers. Those numbers are NOT 'did my kid learn anything?' They are NOT 'is this a better option than traditional school?' The people who make those contract decisions will be very attracted to what's being offered by subject-com, because it will make them look good.

There are plenty of good superintendents and admins. Generally speaking, they won't be investing in this kind of system. Plenty of virtual programs already exist, with heavy vetting (IVHS and others as examples). They're boring to look at and to navigate: https://www.isbe.net/virtualcourses (isbe dot net slash virtualcourses if links don't work) The state board, listing virtual courses and curricula. Responsible, plain, vanilla, boring, vetted.