Forest Trail AcademyReviews of foresttrailacademy.com

I can not praise FTA enough. They saved my child. The school is rigorous, but not to the point of frustration for the student. It is an excellent school with high standards. If you are afraid to taking that leap into online school like I was, I would say do not worry and go for it. At first your child will need time for the transition from traditional school practices and routines, but this happens in a short time frame. This is my child's 6th year and he will graduate in a few weeks. I have seen reviews that say that FTA diplomas are not recognized. This is false. My child has recently been accepted into a top university and I have no doubt that he will be fully prepared thanks to FTA. Sincerely, Proud FTA parent and Educator not affiliated with FTA

I was waiting for my documents to upload into the system and decided to use chat so that I could continue to work. I really dislike contacting customer service because it is a joke and hard to get a resolution. Boy, I was wrong with this chat experience. Anne took ownership of my issues and helped to resolve my concern with ease. I really appreciate how effortless she made the resolution seem. Thank you, Anne. I truly appreciate you for your help with a working mother and getting resolution right away. You really made my week. I can't thank you enough. many blessings. JC

Amazing school! Love the teachers and all the work.

Forest Trail Academy is the best online school I've ever seen! My son Michael is currently finishing 5th grade and we plan to continue studying at this school further. We are Israelis, so English is a foreign language for my son. My son goes to a regular Israeli school and is additionally studying at the FTA. However, even the most difficult subject for him - Language Arts - lends itself very well to study. The curriculum for all courses, including Math, Social Studies and Science, is very rich and interesting for the student. A very large amount of information on all courses is ideally combined with an excellent, interesting and accessible presentation for the child. My son received a lot of knowledge, and at the same time experienced great pleasure in performing experiments and making various crafts and presentations. I would like to note the very high professionalism of all teachers, especially Ms. Emeline Briley and Ms. Amanda Swan. These teachers are truly dedicated to their work, and have a professional, individual approach to the needs of each student. The school website has a very simple interface that is understandable for both students and their parents. When there are minor problems (for example, a link does not work), then the FTA staff fix it very quickly. I hope that in the future, online video lessons with the participation of teachers and students (at least partially, 1-2 lessons per week) will be added to the curriculum for greater immersion of the child in the learning environment. Thank you very much, Forest Trail Academy, for the excellent teaching of my son!

I entered both my children for the year 2020-21. We were new to homeschool and come from an extremely small rural school. It was a bit of a learning curve but I loved the structure of the school. Everything was right there, laid out, easy to follow. We were in 5th and 7th grades. The coarse work was very good especially for online. The teachers always responded very quickly to any questions. Math was somewhat difficult and needed a more hands on approach as a parent, and having to take up more of a role as a teacher also, but we got through it. My kids loved the science curriculum, and even had little experiments to do like in school. Online school can always be lacking in the hands-on aspect of in person school but I think this is school is very good, and the students are definitely learning. The self paced work is awesome and doesn't put a time constraint on it. We are re-enrolling for the next year.

During 2020 amid the thick of COVID-19, we made the decision to enroll our daughter in Forest Trail Academy's online high school programme. Thus far it has been a very fulfilling experience for her. Being able to work from home at her own pace has really helped her to become the type of student we knew that she could be. Her grades are markedly improved and her level of interest and determination is at an all-time high. Prior to FTA, she hated most aspects of school . Being highly anxious didn't help either. She used to be physically present at school but otherwise absent. Her grades reflected that state of being. At the end of last semester, with FTA, we asked what were her take aways from this experience. She indicated that she surprised herself by how much she could accomplish. She also indicated that her advice to herself would be to keep trying- knowing that her efforts would be rewarded. We are so thankful that she is an avid participant in her own success and is empowered to do her best. Special thanks to FTA and their teachers for continuing to provide these profound opportunities to students all over the world.

My son attended Forest Trail Academy online for 7th and half of 8th grade. Overall we were very happy with our experience and have recommended it to others. We felt communication from the teachers and school was excellent. The tuition was fair. The workload was challenging, but not overwhelming. I thought the English coursework and teacher were excellent. The Science and Social Studies classes were good for an online curriculum. Math was challenging in 7th grade, but dropped down quite a bit in 8th grade. I would highly recommend a review of that course because it took a good step back. Otherwise it's a great school and I highly recommend. We would return without hesitation.

What I love most above Forest Trail Academy is its curriculum allows students to cultivate knowledge beyond the curriculum itself. For example, my oldest daughter, at one point, had to do course work related to drawing graphs for math and social studies classes. Together, we dove into utilizing Microsoft Excel to build tables in excel and then have excel create the graphs for her using scatter charts. She could've settled for drawing the graphs on a sheet of paper and scanning them, but instead, we partnered together, and she learned how to do the same work through automation. In short, she learned to work smarter and not harder. She was able to complete her work while simultaneously learning to use one of the most daunting and ubiquitous computer programs available, Microsoft Excel. She consistently has had to use Microsoft Word for her Language Arts projects. One of the great features of Microsoft Word is that it has a built in references tool that auto formats referencs for the author based on the citation method required, in this case MLA. By utilizing the reference tool, and some of the other tools within word, she has, again, learned to work smarter and not harder while, simultaneously, abiding by the school's plagarism policy. If she was in a traditional school setting, she wouldn't be learning how to utilize Microsoft Excel to do basic math functions or how to utilize the tools within Microsoft Word to organize her work and produce a quality finished products. While understanding macro economics is important, or figuring out that the meaning of life can be solved with y=mx+b, understanding how to use computer tools will serve her better into her future and make her a better candidate for potential colleges and jobs than merely completing school itself. The second most impressive thing about the Forest Trail curriculum is that my 7th grader is being introduced to a collegiate approach to academic research. She is required to use MLA format for her homework assignments, to cite her sources, and how to read books critically. These skills will help her become a better critical thinking and assist her as she transitions into post-secondary education. In my recollection, attending a traditional in-class public school, I don't recall learning these skills in high school, let alone in a middle school curiculum. I learned them once I got into my post-secondary education. Learning these skills now will position her to be able to achieve better success in her post-secondary pursuits. I will concur with some other reviewers, the portal used is a bit dated. It looks similar to what Blackboard was doing about 15 years ago. The school would do well to invest some funds into a mainframe overhaul of their student/parent portal, or maybe even partner with a company like Blackboard. Despite the technological deficits, they do have a great tools that allow their teachers to interact with students in online office hours, and the teachers have been excellent at helping my two children get the one-on-one tutoring they need to receive very high marks in all subjects.