The Cisco CCNA is the recognized entry credential for network careers, and nearly every path to it for a young student runs through a school district’s CTE academy or through self-study materials written for working adults. There is a third arc, built in three stages, that a student in grades 8 to 12 can follow without a district program. Each stage has a defined cost, including one stage that costs nothing.
Stage One: The Free On-Ramp
ElyIT offers free, self-paced introductory courses through Cisco Networking Academy, including Computer Hardware Basics and Introduction to Cybersecurity at roughly six hours each. These are deliberately low-stakes. A student works through them at home, at no cost, and the family learns the only thing that matters at this stage: whether the interest is real. Students who finish wanting more are the ones the next stage is built for.
Stage Two: The Live Course
The CCNA course itself is live and instructor-led, running 12 weeks online with sessions via Microsoft Teams, using Cisco’s Packet Tracer for network simulation labs. It is never self-paced, because carrying a young student through CCNA-level material, subnetting, routing, switching, and network security fundamentals, is exactly the situation where scheduled instruction and immediate answers earn their keep. Arizona families can pay for the course with ESA funds through ClassWallet, where ESA refers to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account.
Stage Three: The Exam
The CCNA is earned by passing a single exam, the 200-301, delivered by Pearson VUE and purchased separately from any course for $300 plus applicable taxes; families should confirm the current fee at Pearson VUE checkout when scheduling. ElyIT prepares students for the exam, Cisco issues the certification, and no provider can guarantee a pass. What the credential opens is a field with real footing: computer network support specialists earn a median annual wage of $73,340 according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS data from May 2024.
Why This Arc Works
The structure manages risk in the right order. The free stage costs nothing and filters for genuine interest. The live stage supplies the instruction and accountability the material demands. The exam stage converts the work into a credential Cisco stands behind and any employer can verify. A family never commits to the next stage until the previous one has justified it, which is how a serious credential becomes reachable for a student years before the industry expects to meet them.
Details are on the Cisco CCNA course page, and the free introductory courses are listed with the rest of the catalog under courses.
