This is going to be a loooooong post. I am seeing a lot of questions in Facebook groups about Colorado My Tech High and I wanted to answer some of these questions as well as give a thorough a review of the program. Grab a big cup of coffee and get comfy, because it might take you a little while to get through all of the information here.
Last July, I heard about a program that was pretty new to Colorado called My Tech High. The person that was talking about it mentioned that we could get funds for things like Gym Memberships, Music Lessons, and pretty much any other educational activity or curriculum. I was pretty intrigued and had to check out Colorado My Tech High.
2024 Update: I can tell by the amount of traffic on this post that many of you are looking for an update. My Tech High is having issues, to say the least, with the Colorado Board of Education. Here is the latest My Tech High 2024: More Questions Than Answers – My Homeschool with a View
What is My Tech High?
My Tech High was established in Utah as an options program for homeschoolers. It is in its second year of being offered in Colorado. This is a part time enrichment program that includes four class periods. The first class period is homeroom, where students have access to things like Brain Pop, Study Island, Generation Genius, and more. For the other three class periods they can choose between direct classes offered from My Tech High or they can choose to custom build their classes, utilizing a $200 per class allowance to custom build the classes. Each student also has access to a tech allowance that can be used for almost anything homeschool related. For the 2020/2021 school year the class allowance is $200 and the tech allowance is $1200 per student. These numbers can vary from year to year.
Does My Tech High Meet In Person?
No, My Tech High does not meet in person so it is available all over the state. It is strictly an online/virtual enrichment program.
What Ages/Grades is My Tech High For?
My Tech High is available for K-12. The highschool program runs a little bit differently from the rest of the program. There are also dual enrollment/college options available to highschoolers in the program.
What are Direct Classes?
My Tech High offers several direct class options. These classes utilize the Canvas program and provide you with materials, software, and lesson plans as needed for each class. There are tech mentors for these classes, and you can pretty much have as much or as little interaction with these tech mentors as you prefer. The classes are flexible and you can use their suggested schedule and assignments or use your own. I prefer to keep things in our homeschool as independent as possible so we’ve kept the interaction with the classes pretty minimal. I do appreciate the list of assignments because it gives the boys an idea of what to complete next.
Here are the direct classes my boys chose this year:
Carter
Minecraft STEAM Foundations-I haven’t been thrilled with this class and if we do MTH next year, this one is not going to be an option for us.
LEGO Spike Prime Robotics-This class is okay. I like that the kit was provided and sent directly to us.
Peyton
LEGO Robotics WeDo-Love the kit and the projects, feel “meh” about the Canvas based class.
Makerspace with Kiwi Crates- We love the Doodle Crate from KiwiCo, but again feel “meh” about the actual class.
What are Custom Built Classes?
For Custom Built classes, you put together a class description and then it has to go through an approval process. You get $200 to put towards the class materials, field trips, or to pay fees for outside instruction like dance classes, tennis classes, music lessons, etc.
For both of the boys’ third period classes, we decided to custom build their classes. They are both taking music lessons as part of their custom built music classes. They each got $200 for their custom built class, which was used up with just two months of music lessons. We use the Tech Allowance to supplement the cost of the music lessons beyond the $200 class fee.
What is the Tech Allowance?
The Tech Allowance can be used on pretty much anything homeschool related. You cannot use the funds for religious materials, sports equipment, food items (including food subscription boxes), and a few other things. You can use the money to pay for things like gym memberships, zoo memberships, field trips, board games, books, subscription boxes, or you can use it to pay for your homeschool curriculum. You can also buy things like computers and iPads but there are extra rules that go with those purchases. This fund is pretty flexible as long as you pay attention to the exceptions.
Where Does the Money Come From?
My Tech High works with partner schools in Colorado to provide a state-funded homeschool enrichment program. This part can get confusing so I will try to explain it. You enroll with My Tech High for the program, but then they enroll you as a part time student in one of their partner schools for the funding (I think). Since this is a state funded program, you have to submit the same information to them that you would submit to any public school for enrollment (birth certificate, vaccine records/exemption, etc.). You can only be in one state funded program, so you cannot participate in any other publicly funded enrichment program while enrolled in My Tech High.
How Do You Get the Money?
A major downside to this program is that you have to put out the money up front, and My Tech High reimburses you. You have to submit the receipts for reimbursement, and they only allow you to submit two reimbursements per student. You can put multiple receipts into each reimbursement, but you can’t submit a reimbursement every month or anything like that. If you are paying for something like music lessons that gets paid for every month, this can add up to a lot out of pocket as you need to let several months add up before submitting for reimbursement.
If you are using the funds to purchase curriculum, My Tech High offers the option of having them do a direct order for you. With this option, the curriculum must be available through Amazon or Rainbow Resource. This is not an option I utilized this year, but it is available.
How Much Work is Required?
Your kids need to actively participate in their classes every week. This doesn’t mean that they have to follow the class schedule or submit assignments by a certain deadline, but they need to be doing something related to the class. At the end of the week, a learning log needs to be submitted summarizing something they learned. The learning logs are pretty easy to do and only require 3-5 sentences to be considered complete.
In October for count day, we had to submit a picture sample of work completed that day. There was some back and forth as I initially was not okay with the criteria they wanted us to meet for the submitted work, but they came around and worked with us on that.
What Do I Like About My Tech High?
1. The money. This is definitely the biggest reason for me to do My Tech High. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t even bother with it. The whole appeal for me is getting the funds.
2. They don’t require a ton of work from me. The learning logs are a really reasonable check in/accountability. If I had to do more than that, I wouldn’t do the program. The appeal of this one is that it is just a way to do enrichment without requiring a ton of extra work for me.
3. They have pretty good customer service. The actual My Tech High people are great. There have been issues with the people from the partner schools either not knowing the rules or changing the rules, but the people from My Tech High are great to work with.
What Do I Not Like About My Tech High?
1. The direct classes are graded. This was actually something that blindsided me at first as we were told from the beginning that the only grades issued were for the learning logs. Once we started the classes there were assignments with deadlines and a grade book in the class modules. We’ve kind of found a work around on this, but I still think it’s really stupid to be grading Minecraft, because it’s Minecraft. These classes are solely for enrichment and I don’t think the pressure of performance should be part of it.
2. Our teacher didn’t know how to grade the learning logs. This issue was resolved, but our first learning logs were incorrectly graded. It wasn’t just me, but several others had the same issue. My Tech High has very clear criteria for the learning logs and the rules for the logs are easy to access. When I emailed the teacher asking her to correct the grades, she seemed like she genuinely did not know the grading criteria. At time it seems that there is a real communication problem between MTH and the partner schools.
3. I really don’t like the direct classes. I know I have already mentioned this, but I feel like I should emphasize it. Maybe this should go at the top of my list of dislikes. If I do this again next year, I will probably just do custom built classes. But then that is more work for me, so maybe not. We’ll see.
4. The reimbursement process is a pain. I have submitted reimbursements for their custom built classes and I have done one tech reimbursement for each of the boys so far. Both of my requests were approved on the first try, but it took me hours of work to prep everything for reimbursement. MTH requires certain information to be on the receipts, but not all vendors include that information. Then there are the music lesson invoices that have both kids on them so I have to go through and highlight and make separate files for each one. Then the receipt is sent in a different file. Oh yeah, and you can only submit a limited amount of files for each reimbursement, so it is one more step to go through and combine all the files. You get the picture, it is a lot of work. If you follow the rules you will get paid in a timely manner, I just wish the process was a little easier and less time consuming.
5. The rules keep changing. I tried to explain at the beginning of this post how My Tech High partners with other schools, and to be honest I still find how it works really confusing. This partnership means that sometimes the rules or requirements we were told and we essentially agreed to when we enrolled in My Tech High get changed by the partner school. There have been several occasions where I have had to say, “No that’s not what we signed up for.”
6. If you decide to leave the program before the end of the year, you are on the hook to pay everything back. If you read dislike #5 right above this one, you can see how this might make people upset. They change the rules on you in the middle of the year, but you are kind of stuck because you will be on the hook to pay them back if you decide that their changing rules aren’t right for your family.
My Overall Thoughts on Colorado My Tech High
Doing My Tech High this year has been an okay experience. I am not jumping up and down saying I love it, but it’s not bad. It’s a good way to help fund your homeschool. I am a big believer that state education funds should go wherever the student goes, and My Tech High provides a way to sort of do this. It is not a bad program, but there is a lot of room for improvement. They definitely could change how they do their Canvas based classes (not impressed with those at all), and there needs to be more communication with their partner schools and teachers so the rules remain clear and unchanged throughout the process.
I am trying to decide if we will continue with the Colorado My Tech High program next year. My list of dislikes is long, but it is really stuff I can live with. The money is the biggest motivator to consider participating again, so we’ll see what I decide.
I know there is a lot of information here. If you have any questions, feel free to ask it in the comments. If I need to write another post to give more detail on any of the points I made, I will be happy to do so. Just let me know what information you need.
Curriculum Ideas for My Tech High | My Homeschool with a View
For More Information on Colorado Homeschooling:
Welcome to Homeschooling, Colorado! | My Homeschool with a View
Thank you for your thoughts and insight on this program. Could you share the school your My Tech High is affiliated with? Also, did you have the opportunity to get to know any other parents who were participating in the program? I would love to get some feedback from parents who have high schoolers enrolled in this program. Please update what your decision is or if you are hearing about any changes or modifications in the program – Or what you will do differently if you return.
My Tech High Colorado uses either Colorado Early Colleges or the Vilas School District. Everybody I know in the program is enrolled through CEC. There is a Facebook group for those enrolled in the program, but since it is a virtual program with people from all over the state, I would say you don’t really get to know other people involved. I know a lot of people that use the program, but I knew them before MTH. If you have specific high school questions let me know. I do know someone with a high school student in the program and it doesn’t seem much different from the rest of the program. I did enroll my kids for next year, and will probably just do custom built classes instead of the Canvas based classes My Tech offers. It doesn’t sound like there will be any significant changes next year. They emailed me after I published this post and said they are working to improve the reimbursement process and the Canvas based classes. I don’t know what those improvements are though.
I was wondering how much work/time it took for you to do your custom built class? Can thos custom classes be core subjects or do they have to be more like electives? Thanks
You can read more about how much time My Tech expects you to spend on each class on their website. As far as custom built classes, yes you can choose whichever classes you want. They just require one of your classes to be Technology or Entrepreneurship, but you can do core classes for the rest.
I would love to hear more about what things changed through the year that made you say, that is not what I signed up for. We are enrolled in MTH but I haven’t worked on reimbursement or direct orders because of these particular concerns.
Is this school year going any better for you and your kids? I have attended a zoom overview of the school and still have lots of questions. So glad I found this post!
Hi Kathryn,
I really need to do an MTH update post. To answer your question, I think it’s about the same this year, but I am figuring out how to deal with and get around some of the issues. A lot of things are just annoying and reminders of why we aren’t involved in the public school system (like being told voice lessons aren’t music). I don’t think they have improved anything at all this year like they assured us they were doing. I will say that I just got notification that my $1600 reimbursement hit my bank account, and that money covers a lot of sins. Since MTH is the only program of this kind in the state, we will keep going, but I would welcome a competitor moving into this market. If you are considering MTH, I say do it for the money. That really is the whole point of participating in MTH, and it’s a big enough benefit to deal with some of the issues. I highly recommend doing custom built classes instead of their direct classes. I think a homeschool mom can take a $200 budget and put together a much better course than MTH provides. I hope this is helpful!
I appreciate this post! I have a question about the part time enrollment; if you are enrolled in MTH/partner school, are you also enrolled in an umbrella school (like CHEC?). We are going to be enrolled in MTH for the next school year so I am just trying to understand that part, thank you.
You can enroll in an umbrella school or file an NOI. MTH is fine with either as long as you are not in any other publicly funded programs.
Hi Jessica,
We are looking into MTH and your post was extremely helpful, so thank you for doing the review. One quick question – I was under the impression that you were required to do at least one of their courses, plus the homeroom “course.” So, really, you could only do a max of 2 custom courses. Is this inaccurate? I would love have the option of adding the 3rd custom course if its available. Thanks!
Hello,
You can do three custom built classes, but one has to be either a technology or entrepreneurial type of class. We did one of their classes this year to cover the requirement, which seems to be what a lot of people do, but you can absolutely custom build the tech course if you prefer.
Just found this review and it’s very helpful in understanding how the program works! I have attended two MTH Zoom meetings and submitted applications for my 3 kids, but still didn’t quite understand the program (other than a nebulous promise of reimbursement which makes homeschooling possible for us). I have questions! I understand that one of each kids’ periods needs to be technology or entrepreneurship. Do you know if subscription boxes fulfill this requirement? I am specifically looking into Mark Rober’s CrunchLabs boxes for my older kids, and KiwiCo for my rising Kindergartener. I am curious whether 1) these are eligible for reimbursement, and 2) they fulfill the technology period requirement. Do you have any insight?
Thanks for your comment! For the Technology requirement, the best thing to do is contact MTH directly. Your subscription boxes seem to me like they would meet the requirement, but sometimes MTH will surprise you. So I would send them an email and get an answer directly from them in writing.
Tara, were you able to get an answer on your question from MTH. I have the same question. I would like to participate, but do custom classes only. I like your suggestions of the subscription boxes and I’m wondering if they said those would be approved. Thanks!
Amber, yes I did contact MTH and they confirmed I can do those boxes and that they will fulfill my kids’ tech requirement! I’m very pleased, so far, with how easy it is to get very thorough email replies from them. Still waiting to hear if my kids are accepted (again!) since they changed systems and I needed to reapply. So I’m eager to finish enrollment and get started on creating classes for them.
Thank you so much for this post! I just found out about MHT and have been researching it to make sure it is something we want to do.
What are the best titled custom built classes? Do you have any suggestions on how to write custom built class descriptions so that they will be more likely to repay what is bought? I am thinking of trying to use the direct purchase option as much as we can and then using the reimbursement option.
You said CEC asked you for pictures and other things outside of what MHT requests. Can you please elaborate on this? Will MHT contact the Charter school and communicate with them? I read a clause from MHT that states they can change the program requirements at any time. I wonder if CEC falls under that clause or if MHT has the final say.
Thanks!
Hi Darlene! Thanks so much for commenting. The best advice I can give for building custom built classes is to build the classes around things you know you will buy. Since custom built is more restrictive than the technology allowance, make sure that you have things you are buying that will use up that money.
I wouldn’t worry too much about how they are titled. MTH will give you a menu of class titles to choose from. The description is more important. I’ve heard that MTH prefers for people to use their standard description, but I feel like that leaves too much room for things not getting approved. I keep my descriptions very specific, include lists of items I plan to purchase, and sometimes add the link to item or class if it applies. I figure it is better to be specific so I can come back and say this was approved under this custom class if needed.
CEC is a partner school with MTH and all of the funding comes through the partner schools. They really have the final say in things and at times they are annoying. We’re going into our 4th year with MTH and the money makes it worth it. If I ever feel like they are overstepping and asking for more than I feel like they should under the homeschool statute, I will just say no and walk away if needed. No amount of money is worth sacrificing our homeschool autonomy and it really is that simple. It is truly in their best interest to keep the families happy because they are getting funding for our kids. So far, there are inconveniences but I haven’t felt that anything has crossed that line so far.
I LOVE my tech high. I wish it were more funding like they do in Florida and other states.
Being a single parent of 6 kids, this has helped me ensure they get extra hands-on, or tutoring. It’s been great. .
Yes, the receipts are a pain, but well worth it.
The above mentioned about the 4 classes, 3 of them we can customize… This is great. One of those has to be a tech class or an entrepreneur class. Which I think is great. This is basic and for grades K-8th grade.
The rules are a little different for high schoolers for the classes. 9-12th graders have 2 semesters so their 4 classes can change the 2nd semester AND that is extra funding as well for another 4 classes.
My kids loved a few of the direct classes we did use. I will not use them again because of the detailed grading system. It wasn’t a hard thing, I just don’t like the grading system like a public school setting for the younger children.
The free homeroom resources my kids LOVE. Imagine math facts going through a castle is the best part that they love. Of course, I love it. We can’t buy that as homeschoolers and can only get that through mytechhigh.