The Duggars and CollegePlus

[sanantone]

What makes you think they don't know or won't ask?

And I wouldn't be so sure about that second part. Let's suppose CP is monitoring this thread. What have they seen? A person who fully admits he/she is not a parent, not a homeschooling parent, not a former homeschooler, and not someone who will ever use their services bashing them without any first-hand experience with the company, versus a few homeschoolers with either personal experience, or a personal relationship with some CP customers, defending it. Sanantone, I know you don't realize it, but when I tried to point out to you that you simply do not understand CP's actual target market, your response bordered on, "Well, I've never had to design a curriculum for a 15yo that meets both my state's homeschool accountability laws and will also teach him enough to pass a series of college-level exams, while also maintaining his school portfolio, putting together his degree plan, scheduling all his regular high school events, teaching at his co-op, and concurrently educate my three younger children (with all the additional work that entails), and run my household including chores, meals, shopping and the like, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!"

Being a former AP student* does not make one an authority on homeschooling high schoolers and what all that involves. Any homeschooling parent who stumbles across this ridiculously long thread will not put much stock in what you've had to say, if they bother to read through it all. If your lack of experience as a homeschooler and as a CP customer doesn't put them off, your insistence on referring to CP customers as naive people who are engaged in some kind of defensive rationalization, as opposed to informed adults satisfied with their purchases, will. If CP is watching this, they are seeing someone who skirts *thisclose* to being nothing more than snidely dismissive of anyone who is happy with their company. As they do have plenty of satisfied customers, a non-customer banging on and even taking cheap shots at homeschoolers is probably not terribly worrisome to them.

Or, let's look at it another way. If you were brand new to this idea of CBEs and online degrees, and you had a houseful of kids you were responsible for in terms of both raising and educating - if you heard about CP and wanted to see what people had to say about it, whose reviews would you put more faith in? Actual homeschooling customers who are in similar situations to yours and have good things to say about CP, customers who may even be your own friends, or someone you don't know who has no direct experience with either CP or life as a homeschooling mom but keeps insulting your intelligence by implying you are too stupid to pick up a phone and call and ask any questions you might have before signing up for the program?

If anything, all you've done with this thread is help CP. It's grown big enough that it will probably make its way up the search engines, and as you've been unable to fully demonstrate why homeschooling families should turn to DF over CP for help, you may very well be directly responsible for sending them new customers somewhere down the line. I certainly don't see many homeschool moms approaching you directly for help once they've read all this. And since you included the Duggar name in the title, that will also get hits in the search engines. This could end up being the first time some homeschoolers ever hear of CP, and it may prompt them to do further research. Upon reflection, I could see where your overall plan of discouraging people from registering with CP may back-fire on you entirely.

People email me every week and ask if they can do this without CP. (Heh. While typing this, I got a notice through my contact form on my site and it's asking what I think about CP.) I tell them absolutely it's doable, but I do warn them of the work involved, because most homeschooling moms are already stretched pretty thin, and I can talk to them as someone who has personally experienced this kind of workload. For families who can afford to hire on CP, it's just like families who can hire on a maid to clean their homes. It's definitely a luxury over a necessity, but for those who can afford it, many have found CP to be a blessing, and your opinion on that to them is 100% irrelevant.

*When I went off to UF as a bright, young 18yo, I went straight into 300-level courses, thanks to my high school performance/grades/test scores. I know what that's like, Sanantone. It in no way prepared me or gave me any practical experience when it comes to homeschooling. You just don't know until you done it for yourself.

Basically, in this whole diatribe you're making assumptions about how CP will view this thread without any proof. The truth is that they did change their website after this thread started. CP used to list specific prices on its website.

Also, in this whole diatribe, all you're saying is that home school parents would have to do all of that anyway whether they're preparing for college or not, but they can't give their child a book that will prepare them for an AP, CLEP, or other test. You're also saying that they can't spend a couple of extra hours putting together a degree plan. Nope. It still doesn't make sense to me especially since I managed to complete a bachelor's and master's while working 40+ hours a week and helping my younger sibling put together a pre-med sequence.