Powerhomeschool is the official homeschool curriculum using Acellus Academy. The main difference between the two programs, is that AcellusAcademy is accredited (having teacher support) and it comes at a much higher cost. The same content and software is available for homeschooled students, using PowerHomeschool. In other words, through PowerHomeschool, a student is using the Acellus desktop client to load their courses and take their tests.
The image image was taken directly from https://www.powerhomeschool.org
Overall Review: 2/5
PowerHomeschool / Acellus is pretty bad. It’s vexed with bugs, and support is near impossible to get. Beyond the bugs, I’ve also had a hard time getting my son to review content. Acellus/PowerHomeschool seems to only allow you to watch course content once. In short, Acellus has numerous problems, from bugs, content review and technical support.
Bugs
Recently my son was doing a review of his Algebra I course and he was struggling on core concepts. I loaded up Acellus and noticed that he was skipped through key content (that he was struggling on). This should be impossible, as with the Acellus client a student can’t pick and choose what they want to study. He clicks a video, takes a quiz, and is automatically moved to the next content area. So I have to wonder how the screenshot below occurred:
That image shows four sections were skipped. Not my son’s choice, but the system moved him from 5. Algebraic Language to 10. Order of Operations – Part II. Powers was skipped altogether. This pattern of skipped content repeats throughout the Algebra I coursework.
Lacking Content Review
One of my gripes, back in May, was that my son was unable to review previous material in a course he was taking. When he was two months into a course, I wanted him to review content from the early stages of the course. To our surprise Acellus / PowerHomeschool does not allow you to pull up content to review, except in two situations:
I tried sending a question through their official support form, which returns an error (referring to my question as spam):
- Formal Review
- If you failed a question
Formal Review
A formal review appears before a Unit test or Midterm. It’s an automated review process that covers the content of the Unit and gives a test of what’s going to be on the exam.
If you score well on the review and want to review again – you can’t. The Acellus / Power Homeschool process is “one and done.” You can’t review something you did well on, nor any content that was already completed.
Failed Questions
Students who miss a question in Acellus/PowerHomeschool can review that question. If the student gets 100% on a quiz, none of the questions are reviewable later on, as all questions were answered correctly.
Obviously this is unlike any other content system out there: Study.com, Aleks.com, MiAcademy, Khan Academy, Skillshare, Coursera – I don’t know another content provider that locks content after a student passes it. As long as you are still a paid subscriber, you should always be allowed to return to a previous lesson or training.
Support
Mentioned earlier (under bugs), the support staff at Acellus is pretty challenging to work with. They tend to wait days to respond to a question and constantly demand my kids ID number. This time I provided it with the initial email, and support responded with, “we can’t find your child in our system.”
I tried emailing support, as I’ve done in the past, and after a few days of waiting I got this response:
We are not finding record of your student’s account in Acellus Academy, our online private school.
Acellus courses are used by thousands of schools & programs. We only have access to records for students enrolled in our private school.
If you’ve purchased access to the Acellus program through another organization or through a school, you’ll need to contact them directly for assistance. (Students should be able to see the name of the school or program listed in the top right hand corner in the student account. Parents can also find this through the parent interface.)
I hope this helps!
Acellus Staff (Email Response)
I thought this was odd, so I went back to my emails, and saw that throughout May – June I had discussions with Acellus staff regarding their product and various bugs/issues we were having with their homeschool product. Three months later, their staff is denying ownership of the homeschool application (PowerHomeschool) and tells me to reach out to them. I can’t reach out to them because their web form is broken.
Support is playing a game. They are saying, “well we only deal with Acellus Academy,” (that expensive system using teachers and offering accreditation), and referring me to the school that I’m working with. It’s the homeschool program. So where’s that support? I used to be able to email support@acellusacademy.com – but that seems to have dried up.
As a paying subscriber, where can I get answers to the bugs we find (that block his education)?
Conclusion
Acellus’ homeschool program (Power Homeschool) is a bust. It’s cheaper than many others, coming it at $25/month, but if it doesn’t allow for kids to ad hoc review previous content, how effective can it be? It’s like having a book and after you read each chapter a teacher cuts out the chapter and burns it. Not being able to review content videos, retake quizzes is a hinderance to learning and memory retention.
Beyond the obvious technical problems with content review, the bugs that appear, such as the system skipping content and then quizzing him on said content weeks later, is even worse. I’m almost at the point of throwing out Acellus entirely and going back to the much more expensive system of Study.com. At least we had a good experience with Study.com.
Outside of the price, I really don’t see the benefit of this online program. Keep your eyes open to better curriculums that allow ad hoc review, lesson rewatching, quiz retaking and run without blocking bugs.