What is Tech Trep Academy?
Tech Trep Academy is a tuition-free, public school program for grades K-8 that is currently available in some counties across Tennessee, Idaho, Indiana, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. They offer a lot of different resources for parents to homeschool, as well as a stipend to help you pay for your own homeschooling experience. Every other week you turn in proof of your homeschooling experience. The proof alternates between logs of 3-5 sentences describing the work and portfolio submissions that adhere to a set of learning goals for each particular subject. Your children are also required to complete state testing and periodic progress testing.
The Good
Socializing, Resources, and Classes
Tech Trep includes a Facebook group and field trips to keep you socializing with other local TTA families. They offer so many free resources, such as a membership to Generation Genius science and math lessons or Learn360 which has just about every subject. I did love those resources as a complement to our regular learning. If we were having a more chill day, I allowed them to watch Generation Genius videos for lessons instead of what we would normally do.
They have curriculum counselors who might be able to advise you on which programs would best suit your child’s learning needs. You can use some of your stipend for live online classes taught by actual teachers, like bread making, chess, or creative writing. We didn’t take advantage of those perks because of our commitments outside of TTA, but I definitely thought they could be useful!
Funding
Speaking of stipend, just how much money are we talking about here? $1,700 per year, per child is the current allowance of Tech Trep Academy. You can either be reimbursed or directly order a huge variety of things within the approved list, like curriculum or your Internet fees.
Tech Trep will not pay for religious curriculum, though you are allowed to use it in your submissions. They will also not pay for things that are deemed furniture and you really have to look closely at the list because for some reason, a ping pong table is furniture. I can’t picture eating a family meal over a ping pong table but alas, somebody makes the rules!
So, what exactly did we buy with our Tech Trep funds? Tech purchases can come with very specific stipulations (like longevity within the program) and since I was not sure if I planned to commit to the program past one year, I chose to buy refurbished laptops for the kids. My son wanted an Oculus/Meta Quest virtual reality headset, which is not subject to the tech rule. My youngest daughter got a cute light-up hoverboard. Both of those fell under PE and if you’ve ever seen someone use a virtual reality headset or try to balance on a hoverboard, you know why!
We bought a family membership to the zoo and the recreation center, which has an awesome outdoor pool as well as an indoor one! I bought some of our current and future curricula, as well as a bunch of the Who Was? books. You cannot buy actual playsets but we did get a Ninja slackline playset the kids love. We got clay, slime kits, and headphones. We haven’t yet used our Creality 3D printer but we can’t wait to see what it can do! Not to mention the purchase of all of our archery supplies, which can really add up.
Even in the area of homesteading, Tech Trep helped us out! Our incubator is less than a week away from hatching us some baby turkeys! We got a new Yardbird chicken plucker too.
As far as reimbursements for regular bills, we were able to get back what we spent on Internet, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, AppleTV, Amazon Music, and Audible. That’s a lot of bills!
The Bad
Testing
Right off the bat, we hated the testing. We knew we would, which is why I gave my children the choice. My most advanced child said that no amount of money would entice her to delve back into testing of any kind. I told the kids not to take the test seriously but that was not their public school experience with tests, so they couldn’t see it any other way. All three of the children cried during the very first test. My youngest yelled that the wording of the questions was weird and she wasn’t wrong. Despite all of the stress, they did do well on the tests. It was nice to have some reassurance that I was doing fine as a homeschool teacher and when there were skills we were missing for the state test pre-tests, I was able to see it and focus on the area. Our official state testing starts next week and the kids are dreading it, so we plan to have a lot of rewards afterward!
Portfolios
I truly hated the portfolio submission and that’s when I cried! I have regular curricula I do with these guys each day and it covers what it covers but now I have to sift through it and find things that might qualify under their specific learning goals, like global perspectives or technology science. There were times when I took things directly from the description beneath the learning goal and was still told by the “homeroom teacher” who checks your work, that it didn’t fit for that learning goal. You have several learning goals to choose from but you have to check off each one before the year’s end.
Overall Thoughts on Tech Trep Academy
Only two cons, that must mean you loved and highly recommend it, right? NO! If it were a pie chart, these cons are just too big for us. Standardized testing is one of the things that I think homeschoolers are thrilled to get away from. There are tests within our curriculum, sure, but this just feels different. No matter how much you say “no pressure”, the test just makes them feel that way. I watched them forget basic things like addition because they panicked at the way questions were asked.
It might sound dramatic to some but the portfolio learning goal submissions ruined our school year. I constantly felt like I had to stop what I was doing to find something that would fit under a learning goal I hadn’t yet done. Homeschooling has been amazing because we’ve been able to customize our learning adventure but this just felt like I had to go back to doing everything someone else’s way and that takes the magic away for me.
This is just my opinion on the experience because I know a couple of people who truly adore this program and I know people who are happily blessed by the large sum of money to help their homeschooling experience. Homeschooling can get very expensive and unlike public school, everything comes out of our own pockets.
I am very happy that we tried a year of Tech Trep. We love the things that we bought that we may not have bought otherwise. I learned about some great homeschooling resources like iCivics and the aforementioned Generation Genius. I also learned that relaxed, at-home testing can be helpful in homeschool to show you where you might need to spend more time. All of that said, I’m excited to be finished with Tech Trep Academy and move back to our simple umbrella school and purely our own happy little curricula.
Do you have any questions or experiences you would like to share? Comment below!