High School Courses

With K12, you can chart your own course.

K12 provides nearly 200 high school courses designed to help each student find his or her own path, and follow it to post-high school success—whether that's in college or in the workforce. With the K12 high school courses, it's your education and your choice.

Courses Built on Quality

While the K12 high school curriculum is tailor-made for high school students, many of the characteristics that underpin our high quality K–8 courses are built into our high school courses, including:

• Careful work built on educational research to identify the "Big Ideas" of a subject area as well as the concepts that are stumbling blocks for many students
• Clear layout of the objectives to be mastered in each lesson, unit, and semester, crafted from educational research, the best state and national standards, and deep content expertise
• Easy-to-navigate online content, including summaries and reviews, with more time and effort spent on the hardest, most important topics and skills
• Engaging interactive content to illustrate and explain the toughest concepts in ways no static page (print or Web) could ever match
• Beautiful, printed materials matched with the online courses (in most cases actually built for the online course) so that the images, phrases, and organization of these references clearly reinforce the key concepts, explanations, and work done throughout the course
• Terrific offline experiences with labs, books, and writing designed to give sufficient practice in key skills that students must master, as well as challenging problems and assignments to develop each student's ability to apply what they've learned in new circumstances
• Clear assessment tools to measure mastery of lesson objectives, using both online and off-line tasks to carefully probe mastery

How the Courses Work

The actual operation of high school courses differs from K–8 courses to make the high school experience successful, given the far more complex world of content, skills, and time management required.

• Each course has a regular weekly schedule of assignments and activities.
• Students are regularly involved on a course-by-course basis in threaded, teacher-monitored discussions with each other about key topics and ideas being covered.
• A full-time high school teacher qualified to teach his or her subject area is deeply engaged with the students' work every week. World language courses can also be taken as independent study with or without credit.
• Parents are not expected to be engaged in the academic work directly—the usual parental moral and practical support for high school kids is enough (and plenty!).

Special Programs Maximize the Benefits of Courses

Through programs offered in most K12 partner schools, high school students may be able to get a head start on their college education or career aspirations.

• In partnerships with local colleges and universities, eligible students may enroll in courses at participating institutions and earn "dual credits"—apply college credit to both their high school diploma and a post-secondary degree.
• Career-minded students can choose from a broad range of compelling, high-interest courses geared towards specific career paths to gain a competitive edge for the future, discover their path after high school, or explore a possible college major.

How to Get K12 High School Courses

Our high school courses are available:

• As part of our full-time K12 high school program offered through our online public school partners, plus the K12 International Academy, The Keystone School, or The George Washington University Online High School—our three online private schools.
• For direct purchase with teacher support or as independent study (world language only) for home study or as a supplement to traditional schooling.