Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Public Online Schools (WSJ article)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204358004577030600066250144.html
My Teacher Is an App
By STEPHANIE BANCHERO and STEPHANIE SIMON
NOVEMBER 12, 2011

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In a radical rethinking of what it means to go to school, states and districts nationwide are launching online public schools that let students from kindergarten to 12th grade take some�or all�of their classes from their bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. Other states and districts are bringing students into brick-and-mortar schools for instruction that is largely computer-based and self-directed.

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Nationwide, an estimated 250,000 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, up 40% in the last three years, according to Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm that works with online schools. More than two million pupils take at least one class online, according to the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a trade group.

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Two companies, K12 and Connections Academy, dominate the market for running public cyberschools. Full-time enrollment in online schools using the K12 curriculum has doubled in the past four years, to 81,000, the company says. K12's revenue grew 35% to $522 million in its fiscal year ended June 30, when it reported net income of $13 million.

At some K12 schools, academic struggles have followed rapid growth. Colorado Virtual Academy, launched in 2001, notched strong test scores initially. But enrollment has soared to nearly 5,000�and scores have plummeted. The school falls below Colorado averages on nearly every standardized test at every grade level, with particularly big deficits in math and writing. Outside Colorado, too, many K12 schools have poor results on state standardized tests.

K12 officials say state scores can be misleading because students often enroll midyear and take the tests after just a few months online. They say that the longer kids stick with cyberlearning, the better they do: Only 39% of students pass state math exams when they've been enrolled in K12 schools for less than a year, compared to 48% for kids enrolled at least one full school year. The same trend holds true for reading.

It seems very logical to have online schools, within the brick and mortar structure. That way you have the socialization, music, art, gym and field trips.

There is a school called the Ischool, a new high school in NYC, that is trying this concept of online within brick and mortar.

I have thought about an online charter school for middle school but now we have decided to move and I am working on the grade skip for grade 4 when we go.

OMG! How exciting?! � Beats them little Work at your own Pace books I got in private school with just a tutor to help out if you got stuck. �At the time that beat the public school crawl through topics two years too slow. �At the time the churches were clamoring for a voucher system so you had a choice in your kid's education. �This is So much better. �You get a real choice with planetary scale options, rather than a few little local lock-step schools. �I'm excited to be here.

Here, hoagies

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/...e-education-is-ready-for-disruption-now/

Hoagies Facebook posted a positive article about this subject today.

I have a rather different take on what it means to be "socialized" in an academic setting. For me, it should include work with peers, classroom debate/argument/discussion, engagement with the material of study that also includes engagement with others' opinions and experiences about that material.

The idea of "learning" online and then "socializing" apart from "learning" doesn't meet my ideal of education at all.

Most online learning treats education as though it were a matter of pouring content into a bucket (=brain), instead of a form of inquiry.

For all that it would give our kids a path to learn at their own pace(s), I'm still extremely skeptical of this for K-12 students.

DeeDee

I really liked the way that the Duke TIP program structured their online summer Criminal Justice course: assigned books, articles, and Web links to be read independently; a discussion forum where the teacher and students could post questions and discussion topics, with a requirement for each student to post a minimum number of topics or questions and a requirement to answer a minimum number of other people's posts each week; and several mandatory live chat sessions for more lively discussion of the issues covered during the week. Weekly writing assignments were uploaded directly to the teacher's dropbox and were returned with commentary. It was online, yes, but required a lot more class participation and gave a lot more feedback than many in-person courses I have seen. "Online" doesn't have to mean "without interaction".

I love that MIT and many other colleges are putting video of their best teachers online, and I would encourage students and schools who are using these materials to set up discussion sections with others who are also using them, either IRL or through e-mail lists or forums or chatrooms, to get the most out of the material.

Although we may end up going the online route at some point, I would tend to agree.

Also, when I hear that Jeb Bush is involved, I can't help but think that (at least in FL) the online option was pushed through to help out the owners of the online schools, no doubt cronies of his.

Wouldn't it be nice if all kids, gifted or not, could get each subject at their own level at a regular school.

Our choice to pursue online public school through k12 was taken from us about a year or two ago here in Missouri. We can still enroll in k12 but only as a private school, so it costs $5000 a year or $550 a course, which isn't much different from the cost of a decent parochial school in this area.

It can be done, certainly-- and I'm glad Duke is doing it. It's very resource-intensive, though, and that's not the way education is going these days.

DeeDee

FLVS courses have, or at least had a few years ago, live teachers who monitor student progress and are available by e-mail during large portions of the day and by phone during their specified office hours, and who have phone contact with the child on a regular basis, so they are already paying a teacher. It wouldn't really be more resource intensive to throw up a discussion board for each section and make it mandatory for students to participate (which I think would improve most of the courses greatly), but it would require a different kind of work for the teacher - it would require being less evaluative and more engaged, and require thinking about the curriculum in a different way - and I think that that may be the crucial point in why it doesn't happen more. Sadly, a lot of teachers really do think of education as filling bucket rather than lighting a fire.