HSLDA Academy Review
HSLDA Academy one of the best
HSLDA, (Homeschool Legal Defense Academy), is the homeschool academy of the homeschool organization, Homeschool Legal Defense. It is run by Patrick Henry College.
As you may have guessed, with HSLDA being the top homeschool advocate in the nation, their academy is one of the best.
HSLDA offers individual classes
HSLDA works a little differently than many of the academies, in that, it doesn’t offer a school with a set curriculum for each grade year, but rather, simply individual classes. With many academies, students pay one fee for the year, and they receive all the main classes typical to students for that year. With HSLDA, students enroll only in classes that they wish to take, and they pay by the class, not per year.
The other thing that is different is that HSLDA does not keep student transcripts. One of the features offered by many of the academies is for them to keep transcripts and give a diploma once the student completes 12th grade with their academy. HSLDA does neither, because they view themselves as an extension of the students homeschool. Being a legal organization, they are well acquainted with homeschooling laws throughout the country, and they say that a diploma from an academy is not necessary. It is, essentially, something to make other academies look attractive in the eyes of homeschooling parents so that they will be more inclined to enroll their students. They say academy diplomas do not hold any more weight legally than one issued by a homeschooling parent. Though, some parents could argue that they “feel more comfortable” with an academy diploma.
More selection for main subjects
Even though HSLDA Academy does not offer a year’s enrollment, they do have all the necessary classes for a student to be enrolled with them for all of the subjects for the year. And, the price, even though it is per class, is comparable to tuition to other similar academies for the year. What is significant is that the student has more choice in exactly what class he/she will take for the basic subjects, like English, science, math, and social studies.
HSLDA Academy is heavily focused on classes in government and politics and offers many electives not available elsewhere in those areas.
HSLDA offers live classes
We followed a student enrolled in HSLDA academy. The same student was also enrolled in several other academies including: Liberty University Academy, Abeka Academy, and Sevenstar academy. We evaluated all four, and although all of them received 5 out of stars 5 from us, HSLDA was the top pick, both by the student, and by our staff.
Students attend live classes, once or twice a week, depending upon the class. In between, they complete online and written assignments. In some classes, they also have projects to complete. The teacher is strongly interactive with the students, both in live class, and individually, one-on-one, with the student outside of the live class. Students do interact with other students online during the classes through the discussion board, and they have an “online cafe” where students can socialize through discussion posts.
Depending upon the class, materials may be all online or mixed between books and online material.
Advanced academics but option to audit
The academic level is extremely high, and comparable to college level classes, with the exception that it has more interaction between the students and the teacher than a typical college class. The amount of material covered in a class in a school year, in many cases, far exceeds the material that would be covered in the typical semester college class, but it is set up so that high school students can easily follow everything and do the assignments. The amount of one-on-one interaction between the student and the teacher is very good. Students can expect to do a lot of work in HSLDA Academy, but the educational value is superior.
Our observation with HSLDA Academy was that there were students ranging in ages between 13 and 18, some of whom did well, and others not so much so. For high achievers, HSLDA Academy provides the platform for them to set and achieve high goals in learning. For the average achiever, the material is presented in a way that is easy to understand, and there is full support from the teacher, so students have the ability to learn a great deal and do well. But for students who did not complete assignments, they quickly fell behind and were lost in the classes. Basically, students got out of it what they put into it.
HSLDA Academy does offer the option to “Audit” classes, which means that parents select the assignments students will do, but they do not have to do everything. In the case of Audit status, students attend live classes and do the assignments parents select. Teachers grade those assignments turned in on time. HSLDA does not provide a final grade for audited classes.
Cost compares to other homeschool academies
As with any other of the academies, the cost is more expensive than Book Packs or DVD/Online options. The cost is $579 ($499 for HSLDA member) for a year-long course, and $724 ($599 for HSLDA members) for year-long AP classes. Lab classes cost slightly more. Single semester courses are $399 ($349), or $499 ($449) for AP.
For those students who cannot afford the cost of enrolling in an academy for all of the main classes in a year, taking one or two of the more difficult classes, or one or two classes of interest, at HSLDA Academy is a good option. If you are a homeschooling parent and your high school child needs to take some of the more challenging subjects that you do not feel confident to teach, you may want to consider HSLDA Academy.
Students who attend HSLDA Academy receive a scholarship to Patrick Henry College equaling the total amount that they paid for all AP classes taken at HSLDA Academy. A score of 4 or 5 on AP exams gives students freshman or sophomore level credit on the class at Patrick Henry College.
For students interested in Entrepreneurship, we highly recommend HSLDA Academy’s “Business” class. It is quite comprehensive and gives the students projects that allow them to learn a great deal about running a business.
Our review of HSLDA academy - 5 out of 5 stars
We have been following HSLDA Academy for a number of years now, and can highly recommend them. We give them 5 out of 5 stars and rank them as the #1 academy which we have reviewed. They are closely followed by Excelsior Classes, which ranks at #2 but #1 for electives. HSLDA has a good selection of electives, but Excelsior has more, and more unusual offerings.
Teachers at HSLDA are exceptional. They are very interactive with the students and the parents. Live classes provide valuable material for student learning, and students are encouraged to work in groups and to speak in class. Student work is often praised in class.
There is enough material covered to give students a strong foundation in the material. And the students that we have followed have come out of each class knowledgeable about the subject.
HSLDA classes are advanced, but we feel that most students will have little trouble doing well with them if they do all of the work when it is expected to be done.
Parents are able to log into the student dashboard to see student work and to track what assignments need to be done.
One of the students we are following has high functioning Autism and needs more of a hands-on curriculum. We found that she does well with HSLDA because there are a substantial number of project-type activities. In some classes she “Audits” the class only because it takes her longer to complete assignments than other students.
HSLDA lets parents drop to audit status up until the last day of class, which means that students can start out in the regular classes and drop down if they have trouble keeping up. This is very useful for students with learning disabilities because it allows parents to track their student’s progress compared to other students during the class. They can then drop to audit at the end and spare the child receiving a lower grade if they have trouble. Parents can substitute their own grade on their student’s report card that is commensurate of student work with the handicap.
HSLDA has a nice list of electives, but we wish they had more, simply because the quality of their classes is not matched by most other academies. They do have some political and governmental classes that are not found elsewhere.
Parents can use HSLDA as a supplementary resource, enrolling students in as many or as few classes as they wish without a financial penalty. Therefore, if parents cannot afford to enroll students in all of their subjects with HSLDA, they can simply enroll the student in one or two classes and use another curriculum for the others. Some academies, like Abeka Academy, make it impossible for parents to afford to do that by raising the cost of single classes if parents do not enroll students in a full year of subjects.
We highly recommend HSLDA Academy.
Comparison of HSLDA, Liberty, and Excelsior
We want to take a moment to compare HSLDA Academy, Liberty Academy, and Excelsior Classes, which are our top picks for academies. This may give parents a quick view of the differences.
HSLDA Academy has live classes run over a college-type blackboard. Students attend live classes once or twice a week where they can see and hear the teacher. Teachers cannot see students live. Students cannot see each other live, but they can communicate with each other live via chat. Students can also communicate with the teacher via chat. Students buy books, and they also have assignments online. This system does work well, but students do not have the sense of a face-to-face interaction. However, the excellence of HSLDA’s classes compensates for the lack of face-to-face time. For homeschooling families who may not feel comfortable with the teacher and other students seeing live inside of their home, HSLDA provides the perfect balance.
Liberty Academy has online classes run the same way as an online college class. Students read assignments or watch online videos and do assignments. Teachers are interactive with the students far more so than college instructors would be, but they communicate through discussion posts and email. Liberty does have an “Enhanced” class option that is basically a live class run the same way as is outlined above for HSLDA Academy. Enhanced classes are only available for some subjects and cost more.
Excelsior Classes has fully live zoom classes. Students attend live classes once or twice a week and complete online assignments the rest of the week. Students and the teacher can see each other and talk to each other through a camera. They can also use chat. They also have the ability to break students out into groups during live classes to complete group projects. Parents need to be conscious of the fact that the class sees and hears live into the home, as one student we followed had a sister accidently walk out of the shower and in front of the camera. This option does allow students to experience face-to-face classes, though. Students do need to buy books for some classes.
Academics are excellent for all three of these academies. Teaching quality is superior for all three. Additionally, all three use a project-based curriculum, with HSLDA having a little bit of classical education mixed in, meaning that of the three they have a little bit more of the traditional school feel. However, many of their assignments are project-based.
One student's experience with HSLDA Academy
Our student is an academic achiever. She originally took Algebra II with Abeka Academy, but she struggled, and ultimately failed the class because she was unable to understand the material, and, being reserved, she didn’t want to call an instructor to ask her to further explain things she didn’t understand. She re-took Algebra II with Liberty Academy, where she passed it with an “A”. She also came out with a reasonable understanding of the material, but she struggled quite a bit through the year and was frustrated while trying to learn parts of the curriculum. Because she was behind a year from failing Algebra II the first time, she needed to take Geometry the same year as the Algebra II with Liberty. She took that Geometry class with HSLDA academy. After a couple months, she told us that the geometry class was her favorite class of the year, even when considering her electives. Since math was clearly her least favorite subject in school, we found this surprising. She, ultimately, completed the class with an “A”, and came out with a strong knowledge of Geometry. The following year, she enrolled in a Statistics class at a major university. She also passed the Statistics class with an “A”. We asked her to explain her assessment of Liberty Academy vs. HSLDA.
The student told us that HSLDA Academy has remained her favorite, even though she did like Liberty Academy and felt that Abeka Academy was excellent up until she started having classes that were more difficult to understand, such as Algebra II. She felt that Abeka Academy gave her an extremely strong foundation and that it motivated her to excel in school in general, but once she started having classes that were harder for her to understand from just listening to a teacher in front of the class, she did not feel Abeka gave her enough support. However, it should be noted that the support was there. She simply did not choose to use it because she felt intimidated making a call to an instructor to ask for help. She told us that Liberty Academy was a good platform, and it had the most teacher interaction of the academies, however, she said she did not feel that the teacher interaction at Liberty Academy was as personal as it was at HSLDA. She felt that the teacher took the time to get to know all of the students quite well at HSLDA Academy and was extremely interactive with all of the students. She felt that the teachers at both Liberty and HSLDA picked up on the fact that she was having difficulty with some concepts almost right away, but that the HSLDA teacher was more supportive. Furthermore, the teachers in both initiated asking her if she needed help in specific areas, rather than her having to make the move to ask them. Students at HSLDA have quite a lot of interaction with other students, both in class, and in the Student Lounge, whereas students at Liberty have only limited interaction with each other in the class.
Since then, the student has gone on to take more classes with HSLDA and has had the same positive experience with all of them. When asked about how the HSLDA Geometry class compared regarding the amount of work, she told us that both the Liberty and the HSLDA classes had quite a lot of work, and she came out of them with large notebooks full of notes. Furthermore, she said the expectations were high for both academies. In comparing the HSLDA Geometry class to her university Statistics class, she told us that the HSLDA class was more challenging, therefore, she found the Statistics class to be “pretty easy”.
On a side note, this same student has also taken classes at Sevenstar and ranked it as her second favorite behind HSLDA.
Every student is different, and just because this student excelled at HSLDA Academy does not mean every child will.