Add Your Heading Text Here
Sevenstar uses Florida public school platform and adds Christian elements
Sevenstar provides Christian educational platforms for schools throughout the world, therefore, the majority of their students are actually not really enrolled in Sevenstar. However, Sevenstar does host an online academy for students that cannot attend one of their affiliate schools.
Sevenstar purchased the rights to the use and make changes to Florida Virtual’s global platform in addition to several other well-known platforms. The State of Florida encourages homeschool, and they spent large sums of money to build an online public school. This online school is known as Florida Virtual. They became known for their online platform, and eventually opened it to students throughout the world. Now, anyone can attend Florida’s public school online through Florida Virtual Global. However, it is a public-school platform, and as such, many wanting a Christian homeschooling curriculum did not find it appealing. Sevenstar kept the quality of Florida Virtual’s online education and changed the content of its curriculum, along with the curriculums of several other platforms, to make them Christian.
Tuition is lower than Florida Virtual
There are two options with Sevenstar. A student can either attend full time or take classes a la carte. If a student attends full time and graduates, Sevenstar does issue a high school diploma.
Everything is online. Students do not receive books. Instead, they access materials through the platform. Although with some classes, depending upon the class, additional materials may need to be purchased.
Interestingly, tuition to Sevenstar is actually substantially less expensive than tuition to Florida Virtual Global. A typical class at Florida Virtual for a full year runs around $975 plus application fee. Sevenstar charges $675 plus $45 application fee for the same class. The application fee is only charged once regardless of the number of classes taken for the year.
Nice elective selection
One of Sevenstar’s most appealing qualities is the fact that they offer some classes that are not found in most of the other Christian academies. For example, with Sevenstar a student can take Chinese I and II, and they offer computer coding to students in middle school.
Not all students are accepted at Sevenstar. Students that want to attend the academy full time must go through an interview process. Although Sevenstar’s website does mention the interview for all student before they are accepted, we found upon enrolling a student in one a la carte class that they did not require any type of interview or screening of the student. We were able to pay the fee and simply sign the student up the same as we would be able to do at any of the other academies.
Student assessment was highly positive
We enrolled a student in Sevenstar’s Chinese I class and have been quite impressed. The student, who has also used HSLDA and Liberty platforms, ranked Sevenstar’s platform as her second favorite, directly below HSLDA. It features a live, native-Chinese speaking teacher with weekly live classes, and assignments in between. Additionally, the student meets with the teacher via phone regularly. The program is modern, easy to use, and has good content.
An additional perk that we found with our Sevenstar student is the fact that her Chinese class runs for 12 months. She doesn’t just have 12 months to complete the classes, but rather, the class actually runs for 12 months, so it has far more material than the typical homeschool classes. The school does allow parents to select start and stop dates.
Our test student has done very well learning Chinese, and she was so happy with Sevenstar’s platform that she has decided to enroll in Chinese II with them next year.
Online sign up not user-friendly, can call for help
Signing up for either the Academy or a class on Sevenstar’s website can be difficult, however. Prospective students must sign up for an account before they can view sample classes even if they are not sure they want to enroll. It is a somewhat lengthy application that requires a lot of personal information. Once a student has signed up for the account, however, he/she can view sample classes and purchase classes from his/her account. It is not possible to sign up for the account using Edge because it is not compatible with their system, therefore individuals must use either Firefox or Chrome to access the site. Even though we were using Firefox, when we signed up for the account it appeared as though the form did not go through. After numerous tries, we contacted their customer service. The customer service was extremely helpful and was able to locate our account. They walked us through the rest of the procedure. Our recommendation is that if you have trouble with the process, call the number on Sevenstar’s website.
Tuition in upper average for academies
Sevenstar does offer dual enrollment through a couple of different colleges.
Students pay for each class that they take individually. There is no discount in classes for attending full time. Although there are a number of factors that determine the total costs, on average, tuition for five full-year, non-dual enrollment classes would be around $3237.50 per year. Individual regular classes are $640.00 per year. Half year classes are $500.00 each.
Sevenstar’s website is located at: https://sevenstar.org/.
Our review - 5 out of 5 stars
We were impressed with Sevenstar, and give them a 5 out of 5 stars.
Sevenstar conducts their classes on a blackboard similar to the way online college classes are offered. Students do work online and communicate with teachers and fellow students through discussion posts. Students watch videos made by a live teacher, and in some classes, students have regular phone calls with teachers, which are set up between the teacher and student, so that the teacher can talk to the student live.
The teacher does all grading, and our experience was that teachers were very active in communicating with students every week. They initiated asking students if they needed help and were quick to respond to student questions.
The student that we followed took Chinese I. The teacher was a native Chinese speaker, and we found the content, which included a lot of Chinese cultural facts as well, to be exceptional. We have not seen any of their other classes in action, but we were extremely impressed with this one.
Something we found unique about Sevenstar is that the class we followed actually ran for 12 months. In many academies, students have 12 months to complete 180 days of work. But with Sevenstar the class had work for a full 12 months. For Chinese this was particularly helpful in that the student taking the class wanted to learn as much as possible, and this gave her strong value for the price. However, not all families may want to continue through the summer. The school says that parents can select start and stop dates, so although we have not confirmed this, we would assume that parents can select any number of days of school.
The cost was a little bit higher than HSLDA Academy, but everything is online. HSLDA requires students to purchase books, which brings them to about the same pricing.
Since Sevenstar uses Florida Virtual’s platform, all of the information is extremely current. We found the content to be exceptional. It utilizes short videos that are well done graphically, and a variety of learning types, such as short reading sections. This platform is in line with current trends in online education.
The only negative for us is the fact that they do not have live classes. HSLDA, Liberty University Academy, and Excelsior Classes all offer live classes once or twice a week. However, the live teacher element and live discussion posts make their platform as “live” as an online college class.
Parents may find that one of the most frustrating aspects of Sevenstar is their lack of a web presence. This is likely due to the fact that many private schools use Sevenstar for their platform, and the parent company does not want to compete against the schools for students. They do have a website at https://sevenstar.org/, but families will find that if they really want to know anything about the curriculum, they will need to either submit a form for information or call. This gives the impression that the school may be somewhat of a “gimmick”.
They ARE a reputable homeschooling platform, but this particular issue is frustrating. In fact, it took us an extra whole year to enroll a student because we were suspicious of the company based on this outward web appearance. When we searched for videos of Sevenstar, we found none. When we looked for social media presence, we found none. In the end, we were glad we were persistent. But as a side note, any time you see something of this nature, be very cautious, because generally this type of a lack of web presence along with vagueness on the website screams scam.