K12 Reviews 

Soooooo, this is the absolute last straw for me. So my son has been homeschooled since he was in Kindergarten. So it's safe to safe I have certain criteria for what I expect and what I don't expect. So we got started with Digital Academy of Florida in September of 2022, and initially it was a smooth transition from his previous homeschool program which was in the state we moved from. They were GREAT by the way. Anyways, soooo this mediocre yet frivolous excuse masquerading as a homeschool A.K.A. Digital Academy of Florida has totally ruined what used to be a relaxing digital homeschool experience. I knew that things were starting to go downhill last year when DAOF, was trying to convert user interface from K12's original app to Canvas. All that was - was a circus from day to day my son and I didn't know if the system would be up or if it would be down, and the main reason I had not already withdrawn my son from the masquerade ball is because of his last couple of homeroom teachers. They helped my son and I both get through the last couple of years without the anxiety of what their was to come. My son started DAOF in 4th grade his is now in the 8th and we are both sick to death of dealing with DAOF. It has gotten to the point that whenever my watch vibrates I'm almost afraid to look at it, until I hear my son's voice from him saying "now what" because he has received yet another absenteeism email which has been a domino affect, email after email after email. My son sits in front of his computer for an hours with his camera on, participating and not given any credit for being in the class because he was unable to complete the NearPod they gave them to do during class. I even heard one of the teachers tell the students including my son to allow other students to participate. That would be the students who would be sitting back saying nothing. So do you want these kids to participate or not???? Then to top it off there have been a many of days that my son would be sitting waiting for teachers to show up for class and they don't show up, and they have the audacity to count the children absent that show up and do the best they can to be kicked in the behind and reported as absent, by yet another failed UI "Engageli." The teachers don't even worry about doing a manual roll check anymore. Ohhhhh, if Engageli says your absent then you must be absent. It's also very frustrating to speak to the higher ups of the circus being the principal and they tell you what they think you want to hear to then be threated with the fact that my son's grades have dropped because of all of the undue stress that he's being subjected to so now you want to threaten him to be removed from the school altogether. I think it is beyond absurd for these children to be subjected to this foolishness day in and day out. These are not college students with a rigorous schedule these are teenagers still try to find their ways, and let me tell that DAOF is not the way, the truth, or the light. As a college grad my class schedule wasn't as stringent as my son's. And let me not forget to mention those dumb FAST, and interim assessments that they pound these kids with. They expect for them to perform well on these FAST test after making them show up in person at a test site to which the AC will freeze their brains before they could use them because it's so cold in the classrooms. How in the world they expect them to excel after taking them out of their "home"school environment is unconscionable, unfathomable. The key word here is "home". My heart weeps for him and all of the children and parents that are on this downward spiral. I'm on my hunt for a much more reputable school who does what they say and who actually cares about my son, and his education and not just trying to make a buck off the federal/state government according to the number of students enrolled. Do not send your child here. RUUUUNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!

Virginia Virtual Academy (K12) is a tuition-free online public school. We love it for its flexibility, its teachers, and at-home learning. Common complaints we had involved technology/platform issues, communication, and the amount of independent work.

Overall, it can work well for students who are comfortable learning independently online.

My son graduated with honors from here and has tried in college he started in highschool the teachers are exceptional!!!!!
My son attended in elementary it was a different experience for him but the curriculum prepared him and the teachers were very structured my child is resistant to some changes so wasn't the school fault.
I am putting this review now due a recent experience this week. I referred a child who was being severely bullied and has a I.E.P. when I say the mom got approved and start Monday and we started this maybe Wednesday.
THANK YALL FOR SAVING THIS BABY AND BRINGING HIS MOM PEACE IN LESS THAN A WEEK. YALL ARE ABSOLUTELY PHENOMENAL NOW THIS BABY CAN SHAKE BACK ,😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️🏆🏆🏆

VAVA special education programs are a joke. If your child has special needs or a learning disability, this is not the place for them regardless of what they tell you. They do not adhere to the child needs in real time. On paper, sure it looks great but it's not the reality. The reality is they only care about those test scores for funding. They are publicly funded. They need to adhere to the same standards as public brick and mortar. My child has repeatedly been pushed through grade to grade even at my protests. Pushing a struggling child along year after year without meeting their needs is a disgrace and a complete set up for failure. They do not tailor to the childs specific needs. They slap a bandaid on it and call it intervention. There needs to be special needs classes for each grade, where the kids are not in the main classes. K12 seriously needs to look into this schools policies and what is actually happening. They shouldn't be allowed to turn public Google reviews.

After six years at this school, I can honestly say that this has been the most disappointing school year we have experienced. Unfortunately, the concerns extend across both the elementary and middle school programs. Over the years, the school has changed significantly. One of the main reasons we originally chose this program was because it offered a more flexible, homeschool-style learning environment. It no longer feels that way. The workload has become excessive, the expectations are increasingly rigid, and there is very little flexibility for families. At this point, the program feels just as demanding as a traditional brick-and-mortar school, which defeats much of the purpose of choosing this type of educational environment.The amount of testing is also excessive. Students are being tested almost every week, creating unnecessary pressure and taking away from meaningful learning. Elementary ELA is scheduled for an hour and a half, while lunch has been reduced to only 30 minutes. The overall schedule feels heavily focused on assignments, testing, and meeting requirements rather than providing students with a balanced and engaging education. Another major issue is the lack of consistency among teachers and staff. Communication is extremely frustrating. Teachers and staff do not always appear to be on the same page, and getting a timely, clear response to questions or concerns can be incredibly difficult. Parents should not have to repeatedly follow up just to receive basic information or clarification about their child’s education.What is particularly frustrating is that we have been part of this school community for six years and have seen firsthand how much the program has changed. Unfortunately, the changes have not been positive in our experience. The flexibility, communication, and homeschool-like atmosphere that initially made the school appealing have been replaced by excessive workload, frequent testing, rigid expectations, and poor communication. This school year has been extremely frustrating and disappointing. After six years, it is difficult to recommend a program that has moved so far away from the qualities that originally made it a good fit for our family. Also, their platform has been down quite a few times since school started in August 11,2026.

If I could give 0 stars I would. Trying to get my kid enrolled in this school is the most ridiculous thing I have ever experienced and I have been enrolling kids in online school in the state of Florida for years now. They say it’s because of the state. That’s a lie. Plenty of online schools have take ALL of my documents without cause for concern. Not this place. Don’t waste your time.

🚨 DO NOT RECOMMEND K12. SAVE YOURSELF THE HEADACHE. 🚨

I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT enroll your child in this program unless you enjoy being ignored, getting the runaround, and wasting countless hours trying to get someone to do their actual job.

From the very beginning, this has been an absolute nightmare.

Every time you call, you get passed from one person to the next. Nobody knows what the other department is doing, nobody communicates with each other, and apparently nobody is actually responsible for fixing anything. You explain the situation repeatedly, only to have the next person completely ignore everything you just said.

They initially tried to enroll my son in a program he wasn’t even eligible for. Then, after wasting our time, they eventually emailed me saying he couldn’t qualify for it.

Fine. We enrolled him in the program they told us he was eligible for.

We submitted every required document. Documents were reviewed and approved, and then we were told everything was sitting with the school waiting for final approval. Except, apparently, nobody at K12 can actually contact the school to find out what’s going on. So we’re just supposed to sit around and wait.

A MONTH goes by.

We’re now ONE WEEK away from the scheduled start date, so I finally call and demand to speak with a manager because clearly something is seriously wrong. Of course, I can’t actually speak to one. Eventually, someone finally looks into it and admits that both K12 and the school dropped the ball and failed to get my son’s enrollment approved after we’d been waiting for a month.

Finally, we get the approval.

So what do I do? I spend HOURS going through all of the required training videos so my son can be ready to start.

And then I get an email saying MY SON HAS BEEN UNENROLLED.

At this point, I am beyond frustrated.

I ask WHY.

I’m told to email another person.

I email them. No response.

I call. The person I speak to says they don’t know why he was unenrolled, but the notes apparently say he was marked ABSENT — despite the fact that his documented start date was still A WEEK AWAY.

WHAT?!

So I submit ticket after ticket. I request manager call-backs. I request emails. I explain the situation over and over again.

Eventually, I finally get a response that basically amounts to:

“Sorry. We don’t know what happened. We can’t help you. You’ll need to call and re-enroll him.”

You have got to be kidding me.

A MONTH of waiting. Countless phone calls. Multiple departments. Approved documents. Training completed. Tickets submitted. Manager requests. And after ALL of that, nobody can explain what happened or take responsibility for fixing it.

This isn’t just poor customer service. This is an absolute failure in communication, organization, and accountability.

My child’s education is not something I’m willing to gamble with while a company passes me around in circles and expects me to clean up the mess their employees and their school partners created.

I’m done.

K12 can keep their enrollment process, their endless phone calls, their unanswered emails, their useless tickets, and their “sorry, we don’t know what happened.”

I’ll take my kids somewhere else.

⭐ ZERO STARS if Facebook would let me.

If you’re considering K12, PLEASE read the reviews and think twice before putting yourself and your child through this.

Do not go through k12 the worst program ever computers don't work no one wants to answer phones or anything to help you figure out how to get your kids going as far as doing the work and the zoom stuff just not a good program if you want your kids to learn something do not sign them up for this program cuz it's a joke

After approximately four years with Colorado Preparatory Academy/K12, we made the decision to withdraw our remaining children. I want to start with the one area that deserves genuine praise: the teachers are excellent. They cared about our children, supported them, and were the main reason we stayed with Colorado Preparatory Academy as long as we did.

Unfortunately, the administrative side of the school was a completely different experience.

In our experience, Colorado Preparatory Academy operates far more like a corporate system than a family-centered school. There is no shortage of communication when the school needs forms completed, requirements met, trainings finished, or enrollment-related tasks handled. But when parents need answers, raise concerns, or expect timely follow-through, the level of communication and responsiveness drops significantly.

That is not acceptable for any school, and it is especially concerning for a virtual school where families are expected to carry a major part of the educational responsibility at home.

We repeatedly dealt with poor communication, inconsistent information, lack of follow-through, and recurring technical problems involving K12 systems, platforms, and equipment. These were not isolated issues. They became a pattern.

Even our final day reflected that same problem. Our withdrawal paperwork clearly identified when our children’s enrollment was supposed to end, yet my youngest son attempted to log in to finish his remaining work and had already been removed from the system. I attempted to reset his password and discovered his access was already gone.

That was incredibly disappointing, but by that point, it was also unsurprising.

After years of dealing with the same types of administrative disconnects, it reinforced exactly why we chose to leave.

The contrast with our new local school has been immediate. Communication has been clear, responsive, organized, and proactive. We have been told exactly what our children need, what to expect, and how their transition will work. Our oldest son also left Colorado Preparatory Academy after completing fifth grade, and the growth we have seen since he entered a brick-and-mortar school has been significant academically, socially, and personally. That experience helped confirm that moving our other children was the right decision.

Colorado Preparatory Academy has very good teachers working inside a system that, in our experience, does not support families with the same level of professionalism, responsiveness, or care.

That is the most frustrating part of all of this. The teachers made us feel that our children mattered. The administrative experience too often made us feel like another file, another requirement, or another number in the system.

After four years, I would not recommend Colorado Preparatory Academy based on our experience with administration, communication, technical reliability, and family support.

The teachers deserve credit. The system around them needs serious improvement.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS SCHOOL IF YOU WANT CONSISTENCY AND A SCHOOL ADMINSTRATION THAT CARES ENOUGH TO COMMUNICATE.

I believe one of the biggest problems with Digital Academy of Florida is the excessive number of classes, particularly classes that I believe should be optional instead of being added to an already demanding schedule.

Today, my daughter had NINE classes, while my son had SEVEN. They are seven years old and in SECOND GRADE.

At what point do we ask whether children are actually learning and retaining information rather than simply being expected to complete an excessive number of classes?

My son is strong in both math and reading. My daughter struggles more with reading, although she has improved significantly, and she does well in math. My concern is not their ability to do the work. My concern is that this workload is unrealistic for children this young and can interfere with meaningful learning.

Children need opportunities to process information, take adequate breaks, and focus on mastering core subjects. More classes and more instructional hours do not automatically equal more learning.

I have voiced my concerns to multiple school officials, not only because of my own children, but because I am concerned about ALL of the children expected to function under this type of schedule. From my experience, I do not feel these concerns about student wellness are being taken seriously.

I have also personally heard teachers speak to children in ways that I found rude and inappropriate. That is especially concerning when dealing with elementary-aged students.

My children will finish this school year, but afterward I intend to homeschool them independently. I refuse to continue placing them in an environment that I believe contributes to unnecessary overstimulation and mental exhaustion.

NINE classes in ONE DAY for a seven-year-old second grader is excessive.

Education should be about comprehension, retention, development, and mastery, not simply packing as many requirements as possible into a child's day.

Our children deserve better.

We have been at k12 for just over a week and are consistently having issues with assignments that are turned in being erased and having to redo them multiple times which is put us farther and farther behind the teachers are unable to fix the problem and tech support seems to be unwilling to help they say it’s the teachers problem even though teachers have no way to erase a students progress it is extremely difficult to get anyone on the phone. The system itself is difficult to navigate and seems to arbitrarily lock lessons when they should be available. Unless you have 18hours a day to devote to trying to make it work and help your child do classes over and over you should choose a different online school but beware they are the first one to come up if you google search a different online school. I know teachers that have left k12 because they make it so difficult to actually teach kids

The staff are all very helpful and patient. My child enjoys that she can ask questions and get the help she needs and not feel like she's annoying or bothersome. I appreciate the emails it helps me especially since I'm working different shifts it keeps me well informed.

I enrolled my daughter in this program hoping it would help with her anxiety, but it has been a terrible and inflexible experience. The school is incredibly strict with heavy workloads, making it a very poor fit for a child dealing with anxiety.Communication here is non-existent. It is nearly impossible to reach teachers to actually speak with them. Worse, my daughter wasted her entire summer in summer school because teachers assured us she had brought her grades up to passing. After all that hard work, she was held back anyway. When I finally got a hold of a counselor, I was flatly told she failed, with zero explanation as to why she was told otherwise or why her summer was completely wasted.When I reached out to the 504 coordinator for help, instead of offering accommodations, they just recommended we find a different school with a lighter workload. If your child has anxiety or needs any flexibility, this program is not going to help.

I could not agree more with disgruntled parent!! Ugh!!! My son just started 6th grade and he has not missed a class. But I received an email stating he has more than 5 absences and is on attendance warning. The school was great when he was in 4th grade, they had the flex program and he watched the classes if he couldn't do them live, then completed all the assignments. Last year, they did away with that but it was fine, we managed. This year, the disorganization of the schedule and finding assignments in different places is terrible. There is no support system, no matter who you ask. I'm disgusted, but not wanting to change because he's used to the school and the students we've gone through with the past few years. But having a kid sitting at a computer that has to hold it when he needs to use the bathroom so he doesn't get marked absent is awful. The fact that he's on the computer longer than a full time worker is so bad for any kid. There is no time between classes at all, just back to back. No outdoor time, homework through the late evening....They need to make a change because this is really ridiculous. And having to submit an absence form when their platform crashes?!? Make it make sense......

Friendly faculty and technical support team.

Student is happy. No issue on student’s home work and grade. Always communication is there with Parents and School.

I have held off on writing this review because, honestly, I felt like it was ultimately a waste of time. But I have reached my breaking point, and I genuinely hope my experience helps another parent make an informed decision about whether DAOF/K12 is the right choice for their child.

We have been part of the K12 family since Grade 1, back in 2021. After being with the program for this many years, I feel like I have given it more than enough time and opportunity. We have dealt with homeroom teacher changes right when students are finally getting settled into some sense of normalcy, along with technical issues that are absolutely insane. Every single day since the start of this school year, I have received either a phone call or multiple emails advising me of some type of technical glitch. Keep in mind, these updates are usually coming AFTER we have already discovered the problem ourselves and decided to wait for an update. At this point, I can practically set my clock by it.

Now we are in 6th grade—middle school—and you would think that after being in the program for this long, things would be different. They aren't. Instead, there is now a new process for recording attendance that is, quite frankly, stupid and backward. A student can be present for the entire class, actively participating, responding in the chat, completing the required checkpoints, and doing everything they are supposed to do. Yet, if their camera fails for whatever reason, they can still be marked absent. According to the requirements, students must be on camera and actively participate in the checkpoints in order to be marked present. So if a student is actively participating, engaging in the chat, completing the checkpoints, and the ONLY issue is that their camera fails because of a technical problem, how does it make sense to mark that student absent? There is zero accountability for the lapses in the system.

I have now installed a camera facing my child's computer so that I have evidence that she is actually sitting there, attending class, and participating when the system says otherwise. Think about that. I should not have to install a camera in my own home to document that my child is attending school, but that is where this has taken me. I no longer feel that I can rely on the school's system to accurately document whether my child was actually present.

And unfortunately, attendance is not the only issue. I saw someone refer to this as the "broke version of public school," and I honestly cannot disagree. The problem is the pace and the lack of meaningful instruction. It feels like the focus is on moving through the curriculum rather than making sure students actually understand what they are being taught. Imagine starting a syllabus and discovering that you have already completed a quarter of it. How is that humanly possible when the material is supposed to be taught, understood, practiced, and learned? You cannot introduce something completely new to a child, rush through it in a week, give them an assessment, and then move on to something else and honestly call that learning. If I am going to have to teach my child after she has already spent an entire school day in front of a computer, then I may as well figure out how to get her into a homeschool program. This school is becoming a waste of time.

Then there is the issue of textbooks and screen time. My child is now in 6th grade, and there are no traditional textbooks being provided. Everything is digital. I understand that technology is part of education, but as a parent who is actively trying to minimize my child's screen time, being told that printing the digital textbook is "not recommended" is absolutely ridiculous. REALLY? You are putting my child in front of a screen for hours every day and then telling me that printing the material so she can actually read it without another screen is not recommended?

I am also a history fanatic, so when I saw that history was the subject my child was currently working on, I was actually excited. I thought this was something we could really get into together. We are now at the beginning of Week 3. Keep in mind, Week 1 consisted of essentially nothing being taught on this material. Week 2 brought a F.A.S.T. assessment, and now the students have already completed material covering the Sumerians' role in civilization. Are you kidding me? How is a child supposed to genuinely understand the development and significance of an ancient civilization when the material is being rushed through at that pace? This isn't learning. This is checking boxes.

I’m done tolerating DAOF/K12’s technical, attendance, and teaching failures. After years of frustration, I’m reporting them to the Florida DOE. Parents: research carefully; your child’s education is at stake.

Great when it works, problem is, it's constantly messing up. Outages and issues happen regularly. My child has been a student for years, and since moving to the "Canvas" platform, its been consistent issues.

ALDCA gives so many opportunities, such as more one on one with the students. Students being able to work at their own pace. The communication between staff and parents is outstanding.

If I could give them a complete 0 stars I would. It has been an absolute mess since the beginning of the school year trying to get my son in school. Every time you call they are telling you something different. The call center agents don't know what they are talking about as well as supervisors. You can't get the school directly on the phone at all. I have been trying to withdraw my son for a month and can't get any paperwork on him. So he's just stuck home doing absolutely nothing because I can't get him into any local school without paper work from this school.