North Star Online School

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

Posted: May 10, 2024

While I was hospitalized and placed in a residential treatment facility for around 2 months they tried to expel me saying I was missing to many assignments and days. Then when a medical caregiver at the facility told them that there was no reason to qualify for expulsion and if they did we would sue they reluctantly said they weren’t going to expel me. I have been diagnosed with multiple mental disorders and illnesses that make completing school work difficult especially when there is an overwhelming amount of missing work. When a 504 plan was requested they ignored my mother’s attempts to contact them, and then when we had to reach out to the school district did they agree to set up a meeting. They tried to tell one of my medical caregivers that I couldn’t get a 504 plan because I had to many missing assignments. Overall when it comes to mental health, hospitalizations, and disabilities they are incompetent, they tried to prey on my mom’s unknowingness of the school system so they wouldn’t have to deal with me. The staff are ignorant and naive to the harsh reality of mental illness and would rather try to unenroll a child without the legal requirements than deal with having to make a 504 and changing the course work.

Posted: May 4, 2022

Posted: May 4, 2022

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Posted: May 4, 2022

Posted: May 4, 2022

As someone who has been a student at North Star Online School over the past year, I am basing this review off of my own personal experience from a year effected by Covid-19. Considering the huge increase of students attending the last couple of years due to the pandemic, and issues with not getting enough staff, I think that this is a good school, though the curriculum the school is using is definitely in need of improvement.

Whether this school is appropriate for anyone that is considering it, I believe it truly depends on how the student would work in an online environment. It can be convenient when it comes to needing to work at your own pace and when you need to, especially when you are in something that requires participation during school hours. Depending on your situation, it could be a good or bad choice. I came to this school because of my social anxiety, and I think it has given me a lot of opportunities to develop in my personal life, so I appreciate having the choice to attend North Star. When I was in public school, all that mattered was getting passing grades and surviving, but here I have been able to improve mentally, while also taking time to actually learn and care about my education. (Again, this is from my own experience, this does not apply to everyone).
Learning:
We have tons of reading at this school, and it can be a lot of work for everyone. It is not the easiest, but the teachers that I have, have been very helpful through live lessons and try to make themselves available through office hours and webmail, and we have a lot of outside resources to help us. Certain electives come to be challenging, though those are getting removed next school year.

Teaching:
The best part about this school so far for me has to have been the teachers and staff that I have made contact with; they make the content a lot easier and help whenever I need it. They have been very understanding and motivating.

Social-emotional support:
My teachers seem to care, and I can always schedule meetings with the counselor. The grade aspect can be stressful of course, but this is a part of every school. As for the social interaction, we do not have many of these opportunities due to covid.

Special Education and safety:
I do not have enough experience with these areas to give an opinion.

Family Engagement:
They definitely encourage learning coaches to take part in our education here at North Star.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. :)

Posted: September 12, 2018

Because the K-12 lessons have so many errors, the teacher is tired of me asking for my son's grade to be fixed. She is now making me deal directly with Pearson and they are incredibly slow. When I complained to the principal, we were threatened to be kicked out. For what? Emailing? No foul language was used. There was no reason other than the enormous number of errors in the lessons. Meanwhile, they preach, "Communication is key."

Posted: September 12, 2018

I would have answered differently, but after their behavior of deleting emails where they threatened us. I say that is a poor example of character.

Posted: September 12, 2018

Select the letters that should be capitalized. Choose three letters.

Because the K-12 lessons have so many errors, the teacher is tired of me asking for my son's grade to be fixed. She is now making me deal directly with Pearson and they are incredibly slow. When I complained to the principal, we were threatened to be kicked out. For what? Emailing? No foul language was used. There was no reason other than the enormous number of errors in the lessons. Meanwhile, they preach, "Communication is key." The squeaky wheel gets kicked out. They deleted our correspondence through their online schooling system to try to delete the proof of the threat. Thank goodness for hard copies.
I asked about a policy listed on the main school district website and they treated me, as if I was out of line for even inquiring about it. (credit for P.E. for an outside approved school - only available for high school students and not virtual elementary students - this was not an unreasonable question).

Posted: September 12, 2018

The occupational therapist has been great but the environment of hostility has made even this unpleasant.

Posted: September 12, 2018

The staff has bullied my famil , because of excessive errors in the K-12 lessons.

Posted: September 12, 2018

K-12 lesons through Pearson have a ton of errors and I constantly have to beg to get these errors fixed. There are also broken links in lessons and websites that are external that have been removed.

Posted: September 12, 2018

It was good at first, but not now. Only the O.T. is keeping us in this school at this point.

Posted: January 25, 2017

I am sure there is some bullying, but I haven't experienced any bullying myself or around me so I can't say. North Star is very comfortable.

Posted: January 25, 2017

We are taught to learn on an independent basis. We learn to become good leaders of ourselves and others, not bosses.

Posted: January 25, 2017

Posted: January 25, 2017

They are always reachable, even if it is by phone. Staff at North Star try their best to keep all communication with students and families.

Posted: January 25, 2017

North Star really doesn't have 'homework'. We mostly study and have projects away from the computer.

Posted: January 25, 2017

This school has given me more opportunities at a bigger future than brick and mortar school could have ever provided me. Not only do they provide amazing help with something you don't understand, they are undeniably and truly concerned with our mental health. The staff do not hesitate to help out if they can. I feel so blessed to have grown and have the chance to graduate with this school. Thank you North Star Staff.

Posted: December 9, 2016

Posted: December 9, 2016

Posted: December 9, 2016

Posted: December 9, 2016

Posted: December 9, 2016

Posted: December 9, 2016

There is no homework with online learning.

Posted: December 9, 2016

North Star had a 90% graduation rate for 2016. Staff work incredibly hard to assist every student in realizing their goals. They truly care about every student's success and are able to support students individual needs. If you are looking for a school that can support your student's individual needs, check out North Star!

Posted: April 10, 2016

As other reviewers note, there are some issues with the connections curriculum, and the Brain Pops are a waste of time. There are easy solutions, however, to all the issues mentioned below, most of which I have not encountered, and I am on my second child in Northstar High School. The solution to BrainPop is skip them. They are silly. Unlike a brick school, no one knows/cares if you watch every video and complete every worksheet so long as you learn the material. If you want to use other resources instead, you are welcome to do so. In fact, the dashboard page has links to a number of useful resources such as Khan Academy. The main issue I encounter is a common one with other curricula as well, namely, the questions where the student is to pick the "best" answer. This is a judgement call. But my experience has been that if an answer is marked wrong that you believe should be correct, you contact the teacher, identify the test, explain why you think your answer is correct, and if you have a good logical reason, the student can generally get the points back. The students can contact connections with comments about confusing parts and ask that the curiculum be clarified. As one student review points out, the internet changes, but that also means the school is not locked into what has been printed until the next edition comes out. All the teachers are available for on-site help throughout the day. Mrs Voth is Great!. Re the math comment, it is sometimes useful in math to make changes to both sides of an equation to make them easier to solve. The math teacher is not always as clear as he might be in explaining math to those who find math perplexing, although #2 son has no more dificulty with him than with any brick math techer he's had. I never found particluar plethora of unnecessary emails. I recommend the school for kids who like to move at something of their own pace (they only nag you if you don't do at least one lesson per class per week), don't like getting up at horrific hours of the morning to catch the school bus, are the subject of bullying, or have other issues with more traditional schools.

Posted: April 27, 2015

I graduated from North Star in 2014. I was failing nearly all of my classes in my brick and mortar school due to crippling anxiety, and I started at North Star halfway through my senior year. My only issue was the curriculum they used, Connections Academy. These are the two main problems I had with it: 1. The internet is always changing. It's not like a textbook where page 13 will always be page 13. Websites change, links are deleted or moved, and the curriculum should keep up with that. But this one doesn't. 404 errors were rampant, especially in the art and PE courses. 2. Things need to be tested on different platforms to make sure they'll work for everyone. I had a Mac and encountered numerous issues, including textbooks not loading and downloadable worksheets coming out garbled and incompletable. I want to make clear that these problems were the program developer's fault, not the school's, and teachers were great about making accommodations for technical issues. Overall, I would recommend North Star to anyone having problems attending a traditional brick and mortar school. Going at my own pace did wonders for my anxiety, and saved me from dropping out of high school.

Posted: September 2, 2014

I completely agree with the first post. Connections Academy curriculum is a failure across the country. Work at your own pace does means don't fall behind by more than 1 day or be ready to hear from the school. Resource links don't work and give just a copy of a front page of a book in science. Sometimes the videos just repeat themselves, if they load at all. WOLF could be great, but the Connections part of the school is terrible. In what wold is adding other numbers to an existing problem to make it easier to calculate? I can only imaging how much money the creators of Connections made while exploiting students. The same couple of parents seems to try to dominate the school group activities. I understand it is a good option for school, but it really needs to be less stressful for the parents that have to sift through email after email in order to be the learning coach.

Posted: September 4, 2013

A fantastic idea, with great staff. Unfortunately that is where the pros stop. This school offers Connections Academy curriculum, which appears to be a failure across the country with some schools reporting 3-1 failure rates when compared to brick and mortar school. Work at your own pace means don't fall behind by more than 1 day or be ready to hear from the school (not your own pace at all). Resource links give 404 errors (site no longer exists). It is a lot of keep busy work with little BrainPop videos for instruction. Sometimes the videos just repeat themselves, nothing new or original often leads to boredom... Again, WOLF could be the greatest school in the area, but the curriculum they are now offering is pretty poorly constructed for the students, but it did make Pearson (who owns connections) $190 million in 2011 alone. Even more alarming, this is the 3rd curriculum provider for WOLF in 5 years, this makes it very difficult to follow a year on year plan, measure progress, and almost impossible to "hit your stride". I think this school would be much better off if they got their own IT consultants and let the teacher build their own curriculum. This is my last year...