School Review: Tacoma Virtual School (TVL)
School name: TVL (Tacoma Virtual School)
Cross School: Foss High School
Location: Tacoma, Washington
Phone number: 253-571-3551
Overall Grade: Avoid this school at all costs. One of the worst online schools anyone could go to. I highly suggest WAVA, Insight School of Washington, or some form of the K-12 academy.
During the first semester of this school year, I attended TVL. Little did I know, that my GPA would soon drop from a solid 3.5 to a 2.6 because classes were unable to be completed due to severe technical errors, teachers who only help 25% of the time, and two administrators who don’t do their job half of the time.
The most annoying thing about the administrators of this school is the fact that they never return phone calls. It takes the female admin 1week+ to answer form of a phone call because she is hardly ever in the office. Let’s not leave the other administrator out of this one either, he’s just as bad because he argues with you over your classes when you confront them about technical difficulties not to mention is harder to reach by phone than somebody dying in a hospital room.
My first semester at TVL consisted of this:
6 classes, but only completed 3 of them. This happened due to numerous technical problems inside of the class(es) themselves. Most of the classes consisted of ‘Applet Errors’ that do not allow a student to enter the class or open an assignment, while others just consist of assignments that don’t open all together.
Teachers will repeatedly tell you that ‘It’s your browser, you can’t use this but you can use that’ — which proved to be a consistent lie as I tried more than three different browsers at that school and neither of them worked.
The administrators of the school itself are just as bad. Kelly Calvin & Michael Farmer are two of the worst school administrators I have ever had to deal with in my life. Lack of phone calls, inconsistencies with their ‘claims’ to get you to attend the school, and Even requesting to drop the classes plagued by technical difficulties, they refuse to drop them until after the deadline to do so passes so in the long run you’re getting a string of E’s all the way down your transcript.
The pitfall of this school is the lack of communication the administrators have with you. They are absolutely terrible at handling documents, papers, and answering phone calls. Class drop forms take anywhere from 2weeks+ to finalize and finally drop the class all together, due to it mysteriously ‘disappearing’ or never making it to their desk.
Let me not forget to mention the lack of documentation they have for their students. I went an entire semester without any record of my grades from my previous school because TVL lacked the knowledge required to obtain my transcript from my previous school. It turned out to me having to personally obtain a copy of my official transcript to finally have some sort of grades on my record.
This school is not a school a student would want to go to if they want to peacefully graduate on time before they’re 20. One important thing to note: This school charges $300 for anymore than 6 classes. So don’t expect to attend this school and take up as many as possible to get closer to graduation, unless you want to open your wallet. Michael Farmer will convince you till your ears bleed with his pamphlets that the school is A+ okay, but it is not.
In his sales pitch, he fails to mention the $$ clause for extra classes. Also, the ‘Extra class’ or ‘Credit Recovery options’ are unable to be done as they apparently lack the funding to do so.
As a student who once went here, I suggest running the other way if you ever even come close to picking this school.
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I’m sorry to hear about your experience with virtual schooling at this school. While I don’t think think (and I hope) no educator would wish to give any student a less than excellent education option, I think there are some factors sometimes that make things more difficult (perhaps swiftly increasing enrollment resulting in “growing pains”). I think it’s great there are so many options for virtual education now though, and students/families can do their research to determine what is best for each individual. Thanks for sharing your experience, and I hope I can avoid making any students feeling the same way.