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 had high hopes when enrolling in Forest Trail Academy for my 11th grade year, however they were not reached. While the classes and curriculum were decent, the Administrative Offices and Student Services were terrible. Once I finished all my classes I was given the wrong information twice about how to obtain my transcript. Despite telling them on two separate occasions that I was not a graduate, Student Services insisted I fill out "Graduate Forms" to obtain my transcripts. Once I did this, I had to wait an entire week before receiving a response that I had filled out the wrong forms and I needed to do something else. I was also told I needed to submit a withdrawal form, 3 days before my student account expired. On top of all of this, Forest Trail Academy sends emails and closes the ticket so you cannot respond to their emails. Since correcting their mistake, I have requested transcripts from Parchment where it has been five whole days without a response from Forest Trail. Additionally, I have called the school multiple times and they always seem to be "busy". I feel as if my questions and calls were always answered when I was initially inquiring about the school, but now that I am leaving I am a low priority. On another note, Forest Trail Academy charges for every inconvenience and fee. I was told that I needed to pay if I wanted to keep my student account open and I needed to pay to obtain my transcripts. Additionally, I had to reach out to Forest Trail about every little detail of my academic interests. I was enrolled in an Advanced Placement (AP) class and I was not given any direction as to registering for the final exam. I had to reach out to my teacher who redirected me to student services when she did not know what to do. I find it surprising that an AP teacher would not know how to register for a test that most students in her class would've taken. While Forest Trail told me I would have a counselor, I have never met her because she doesn't exist. They think that replacing a school counselor with student services is an acceptable replacement. But they are extremely wrong. Many different people work in student services and there is no continuity of who is responding to your emails. For example, I sent them an email regarding leaving the school and two different workers sent me a response that contradicted each other. Forest Trail is definitely not the type of school I would recommend to anyone due to their terrible customer service. Now onto the decent classes. My classes are Forest Trail were not engaging, interesting, or informative. I was given no feedback from teachers when I needed it most. Additionally, I received more emails about my physics teachers vacation and cancelled office hours, than I did receive her support in the class. While the academics were subpar, a few teachers caught my eye and made me feel supported. These teachers are were my Health and Precalculus teachers. If Forest Trail would ever like to reach out I can go more in depth of the support they provided. Forest Trail should invest in finding more teachers like them rather than the other ones I had. Going along with the classes, there was always several links or labs that were outdated and did not work. It was very obvious that teachers copy material from the internet and use other resources in an attempt to "teach" us. Overall, my experience at this school has been less than decent and I am extremely excited to be leaving.

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

My daughter went there for 8th grade. The course material was ok (not outstanding). Marcus in the office insisted I didn't have to notify my county (Va.) because FTA is accredited, but he evidently didn't know at the time that just because they have Cognia accreditation, many schools do not recognize it and require notice of intent to homeschool. I think most of my daughter's teachers tried to do a good job. I just felt less than satisfied with the quality of teaching and switched my daughter to Whitmore High School, which has very good course content and the feedback is more personalized.

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.

I tried to speak with them about enrollment I’ve chat and they said the art/music were not included. I was confused because it shows on the online course 5th grade summary that it is so I called them. When I called them they said the same thing as the chat and that online is incorrect. Well don’t you think you should fix the online information? I ended up narrowing my choices down to Bridgeway and Ignite Learning Academy. Update: they called me and have now changed their website to match what they actually offer.