Texas Connections Academy @ Houston - Houston, Texas

Jamie S Baker

My daughter just completed her first year of online school experience (8th grade) through Texas Connections Academy. I have only positive things to say about the program, its teachers, and the format. Teachers and counselors are responsive. They respond very promptly to student and parent emails. The home room teacher has a monthly check-in call with the parent. The level of difficulty is equivalent with what we experienced in our highly rated F2F school district. My daughter also did great on the most recent STAAR test after her year with Texas Connections Academy, so I feel confident she is learning what she needs and not falling behind in an online school environment.

The program is extremely organized, and the online portal is intuitive and easy to learn. Very minimal tech issues, and they never interfered with my daughter participating in class activities or submitting assignments. The program has both synchronous and asynchronous components.

The student has to be motivated and willing to work. I feel that children that are resistant to learning or a distraction in class (behavioral problems) would not be a good fit unless the parent was willing to shadow the child throughout all their school work. The students need to be proactive and willing to reach out to instructors when they have a question (it is not like F2F school where the teacher is looking over their shoulder as they complete an assignment). Being a self advocate and reaching out for help are great life skills. I am glad my child is learning this now.

We are grateful for the instructors at Texas Connections Academy and look forward to completing high school through this program. Thank you.

Kindness Matters

The worst enrollment experience of my life. I have sent in every piece of ID, utility bill, mortgage closing papers and Naya S. keeps rejecting it saying she won't accept. Asked to speak to someone else and nothing but more rejection emails from Naya. More difficult than getting a mortgage or a passport. Previously they refused his vaccination proof, after several phone calls they started laughing and said "oh looks like we didn't look at the paper you sent with all of his vaccinations listed clearly on the first page" Really frustrated. Hopefully these people in registration aren't graduates of this place. I literally give up.

Camille Sherman

I enrolled my daughter 10th grade she graduated 12th grade with honors, got accepted to her 1st university choice. Texas connections academy def was the connect between her and her future. She even thanked me. *parents stay involved*

Alberto Rosas

This is the dumbest home school anyone has ever created, at least coming from another state.. his prior school had to send the transcripts over and over and they wouldnt accept them.. this put our son 2months behind and because of that he had to make up 170assignments in 2 weeks while in a soccer school or else he would be dropped from the school. That time wasted had a huge and negative impact his freshman year and has even effected soccer now in his sophomore year

Roman Carmona

I really like connections academy, the teachers are very friendly and the students and staff are all very supportive. Also I love how you can make your own schedule rather than following a specific time. However, the work given each day can be a lot sometimes and the work can really stack up if not done in time. Also lessons will start being taught on Friday and then be picked back up on Monday which makes no sense to me. So I think the work could be a little less and lessons can be slower and at a calm rate. But overall great school! ?

Nina Austin

I would not recommend this school to anyone. They aren't "Connected". In fact, the way the handle registration, is horrible. I tried two time to get my son enrolled and it was like pulling teeth. When I finally, got him enrolled which he was "late" due to them not getting him registered by the start of the school year. Then, they wanted to rush us, though, everyday he was doing his assignment along with me monitoring his work schedule. He was already behind 2 mos. due to them not getting him enrolled. We had already submitted "all" documents. Not all the teachers, but the homeroom teach was rude, uncaring, and was accessible to assist. We had to figure out their whole system on our own. The system was ok, but question: How can you be on A's and B's, one day and tomorrow be on D's and F"s, though you're completing 10-15 assignments a day with the student. From our experience, there was an absence of parent/teach intervention by the administrators. Yet, we continued to email and call them, attempting to "connect", however, again, there wasn't a "connection" by Texas Connections Academy. NEVER again will we ever deal with this school. It was so frustrating and disappointing....

Nikki Durham

I had to update my review as my son has now been at Connections for two years now. Connections has exceeded my expectations beyond belief. Enrollment was so easy, teachers always respond to my son's questions and my own quickly and politely and professionally, and I feel like they really care . My son is in Gifted and Talented and was never challenged in his old school. Connections offers advanced classes YEAR Round as opposed to the one hour a week at his brick and mortar school.

They provide all books and make sure you know how to navigate the systems. Putting my son in Connections is not something I will ever regret. My only complaint is they do not offer more opportunities for children to be social with other children, but they even are slowly fixing that.

Parents have to be active as a learning coach to ensure your child is keeping up to date with their work, but I feel as if parents should be doing that no matter what school your child attends. I have zero regrets leaving brick and mortar school for remote learning at Connections Academy as they offer EVERYTHING that they do. Thank you Connections for improving my son's education experience! I am forever grateful and thankful.

niggaballs23

I enrolled because I was scared to send my son to school due to the pandemic.

Here are some things I actually like about connections academy.

1. It is very flexible, you can work at any time during the day.

2. Vacation days are a nice thing about connections academy that you can't find anywhere else
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3. The school sends textbooks to your home which can be very convenient for families if they are on a tight schedule, since they don't have to physically go to the school to receive the textbooks.

4. The teachers are very nice and helpful, except a few.

I would now like to provide some things I didn't like about connections academy.

1. The enrollment process is very frustrating and confusing. Once you upload your documents, it takes anywhere for 2-3 weeks for all the documents to get approved. Our documents didn't get approved by 2 weeks, so we called connections academy. It was very frustrating to wait an hour for the representative to pick up and trying to explain our problem, only for the representative to hang up without us explaining anything.

2. The lessons are not very engaging. I found some differences between traditional school and connections academy. One of them was the lessons. You had to read an article and complete a short quiz at the end. I do not find that very engaging. The students will forget about the information the next day and mindlessly complete lessons without actually retaining information.

3. LiveLessons. The LiveLessons are very frustrating, it is very messy. In the meetings, the screen is always cluttered. 90% of the time, if you try to enter the meeting, you will not be able to enter the meeting because the user limit is reached.

4. Extra resources. Students should be able to have access to extra resources for each subject such as Math, Language Arts, Science, and Social Studies. Without resources, students will only complete the lessons and not learn anything else that might prove beneficial to them.

5. The school claims to provide advanced and accelerated learning when in fact the lessons contain what was taught from the previous year. My son knows a lot of information, and he often learns things that are above his grade level. He also learns things taught in his current grade level. At the previous school my son attended, he took advanced math and he struggled. I can see this as a good thing because the teachers were actually challenging him with rigorous curriculum. Now, my son complains that the lessons are too easy and that he needs to be challenged. I feel like connections academy is not providing a rigorous curriculum.

6. Advanced courses for other subjects. When I was enrolling my son in connections academy, we had the option to pick either a regular course option or an advanced course option. The only advanced option was available for math. My son excels in both math and science. Science, and other subjects should also have an advanced option.

Overall, I am very dissatisfied with this school. There are so many bad things about this school, and only a few good things. I plan to withdraw my son from this school before the second semester and send him back to traditional school. My son loves traditional school anyway and he starts to miss it.

Don't send your kids here. Please. It is like living hell.