Virtual schools see strong growth, calls for more oversight

[flashl]

Half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online by 2019, predicts a new report.

Rather than send her kids off on the yellow bus, Briana LeClaire has school come to her home. Her kids attend a virtual public school, connecting online to teachers and coursework. Everything from books to microscopes to radish seeds arrives via brown trucks.

Mrs. LeClaire describes it as the 21st-century, middle-class version of the private tutor. Her 6th-grader can move quickly through her strong subjects, such as literature, and spend more time on her weaker areas, like math.

Enrollment in online classes last year reached the 1 million mark, growing 22 times the level seen in 2000, according to the North American Council for Online Learning. That's just the start, says a new paper by the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank at Stanford University. Its authors predict that by 2019 half of courses in Grades 9 to 12 will be delivered online.

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Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, "you have to have high standards, tight oversight, scrutiny over what teachers are doing. Yet on the other extreme, also promoted by the federal government, are these loosely accountable approaches to schooling," says Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College who has researched virtual schools for more than a decade.

Christan Science Monitor

This is an area to be watched. Some Florida legislators are proposing new school 'seat' funding using virtual classes.

[goddess40]

1. is this were we insert the discussion about home schooling?

"Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, "you have to have high standards, tight oversight, scrutiny over what teachers are doing. Yet on the other extreme, also promoted by the federal government, are these loosely accountable approaches to schooling," says Luis Huerta, a professor at Columbia University's Teachers College who has researched virtual schools for more than a decade."

The republicans undermine the public schools under the disguise of making in better but let home schoolers go without any oversight.

I know this can start a pissing match but, while most home schoolers do a fab job their are those that do a horrible job. In different states they have different laws covering home schooling but I don't know any that actually hold the parent responsible for actually educating their children. In Wisconsin parents sign a one page form saying they will be responsible for their children's education but it doesn't ever go beyond that.

Back to the many purpose of the OP - in our district we have an alternative school that offers high school kids that can't make it, for a variety of reasons, in a regular high school a supervised virtual school option. They all have lap tops, at school only, and they have teachers there for assistance and to fill in the blanks for their virtual education. The school also allows for science experiments because all the equipment is on site. It's a great program.

[flashl]

2. I've seem virtual classes used for both alternatives and exclusive magnate schools. nt