MODERATOR’S NOTE
Since the niece, @WolfTheSpiderDrone , has joined the conversation, let’s address responses to her.
Hello,
I am the uncle of a 15-year-old girl who’ll soon be reading and posting on this forum herself. She needs help getting her education sorted that neither her parents nor the school system seem to be providing. I don’t want to badmouth her mom (my sister) or her dad, both of whom are wonderful people (and far more upstanding citizens than me in general), but my impression is that parental guidance is rather lacking in this department. (If my sister or brother-in-law happen to read what I’ve just written, I guess they can be angry with me if they want—I’m only doing what I think is right.)
I don’t know exactly how smart my niece is, but there’s no question she’s far above average and has the aptitude to succeed at a prestigious college. She learned German and the piano very fast when I taught her a bit of those things, and she’s also a self-taught Japanese learner who’s taught me some of that language. When I explain science to her, she tends to not only immediately get the point but to see the implications. She’d be a professor’s dream.
She doesn’t even know that she wants to go to college, and I told her that I’ll respect her decision if she decides not to. However, I intend to do what I can to make sure all possible doors are open to her when that time comes. She can opt not to step through one, but at least I’ll have done what I can.
She lives in Idaho and her parents are Mormon. Although they’d be considered liberal by Mormon standards (especially Idaho Mormon), they still display a lot of the fear of Wicked Progressive Ideas being taught in school that you’d expect. It’s mostly because of this fear (I gather) that they’ve decided to do “unschooling,” where (as I’m sure most of you know) you turn the kid loose to explore their own interests and encourage them along the way. This approach gives me some trepidation, and that’s partly because I “unschooled” myself when I was in high school, with…you might say dubious results. I came out of high school being a bookworm-on-steroids and a burgeoning cosmopolitan, but I also had an abysmal GPA and my ACT score, although respectable (28) was much lower than it would’ve been if I’d properly studied math. In my opinion, what a student needs is a balance of the two approaches—give them every opportunity to develop as individuals, yes, but also acknowledge the reality that standardized tests matter a great deal and plan accordingly. My self-indulgent read-a-thons would not have suffered in the least for my prepping for the ACT like I was going to war. (I omit GPA here because I assume my niece will be unschooled so it’ll be a moot point.)
I realize I’m being rather long-winded and giving a lot of info that’s really not necessary if I just want advice, but advice isn’t all I want. I’m hoping that my niece will find real community here (or somewhere online—this is just the first site I’m trying out) and be able to vent her fears and frustrations, not merely get advice. I’m hoping that my saying quite a lot so that you get some sense of who we are will help to foster that environment.
But in terms of advice: what should I be doing right now to help her, other than getting us both involved on this site? I’ve been out of high school and college for a long time and I’ve no idea how much things have changed since the late 90s/early 00s. I’m willing to do most anything to help her, but I lack knowledge myself.
She’ll be chiming in soon as well to introduce herself. Everyone be extremely nice to her or I’ll grind your bones to make my bread. 
(Be as rude as you like to me.)