Parents are seeking options.

To start, it will be important to find out who handles online course registrations at your school and make sure you’re talking to this person. They will best be able to answer the following questions. If you’re not sure who this person is, we recommend calling the front desk at your high school or middle school to find out.

If your student’s Fall schedule hasn’t been determined yet, you may need to check with your child’s school counselor to figure out which courses they will need to take this year to stay on track for graduation. Explore our student course catalog to find equivalent courses that fit these requirements and double check with your counselor to ensure they will count as intended.

This is an important question to have answered before you enroll. By law, Michigan students have the legal right to take online courses through Section 21f of the State School Aid Act, so your school should cover at least two online courses if your student is in grades 6-12. It can allow for more than two online courses per if certain conditions are met.

Check out this infographic to get a quick overview of 21f legislation, relevant criteria, and reasons your request can be legally denied. When you’re ready, you can use this form to generate an enrollment request that can be shared with the person who handles online registrations at your school.

This is another important question to ask the person who handles online registrations at your school. Before you enroll, be sure to clarify that your child’s online courses will be included on their official transcript if they pass. 

Once your student completes an online course through through Michigan Virtual, they will receive a completion certificate displaying a percentage. It will be the local school’s responsibility to convert this percentage to a grade value based on their grading policy. Some schools have different grading standards for online courses than they do for face-to-face courses. It’s important to inquire about this before you enroll so you and your student both know what success looks like in their online course.

To accommodate the wide variety of school calendars in Michigan, we offer many different start and end dates for our online courses, which you can see on our calendar.

Before picking a start date for your child’s online courses, you should first ask by what date your student will need to complete their online coursework in order to earn credit. Once you have this date, you will be able to choose an enrollment window that works best for your child.

For example, if your child attends a school that requires students finish their first term before winter break, you might first look for the appropriate end date and work backwards from there.

Once you have enrolled a student in their online course, you will not be able to change the end date you’ve selected, so exercise caution when choosing your enrollment window!