When reading about Virtual schools in this module I was truly surprised to learn several things. One, I was surprised to find out how many students are actually attending virtual schools in the U.S. over 199,000 students in over 311 schools as of the 2011-2012 school year and the numbers continue to grow (Miron, Horvitz, Gulosino, 2013). I knew that there were many students enrolled in these schools and that they were enrolling for various reasons but the actual numbers were surprising. I was additionally surprised to find out that numbers continue to grow with the graduation rates as low as 37.9% (Miron, Horvitz, Gulosino, 2013). As a former high school teacher, this low graduation rate surprised me because in a traditional brick and mortar public school setting this would never be acceptable to administration, parents, or the public. Lastly, I was surprised to find that most of these schools (70%) also fail to meet AYP (Miron, Horvitz, Gulosino, 2013). This was very interesting considering the fact that when traditional public schools do so it is highly publicized and students many times begin going other places. These things surprised me as well as concerned me. As I continued to read and research I found two things that really concerned me, the low graduation rate 37.9 % and the fact that only 28.1% were even considered academically acceptable according to state school performance ratings (Miron Horvitz, Gulosino, 2013) This is especially concerning to me as a school administrator in that many of these students find their way back into public schools before they graduate high school. This can be for a variety of reasons, but many times distance education programs are “difficult to sustain over time” (Moore & Kearsley, p.178, 2012) I have seen this many times in my own community. If the virtual schools are not academically sound, then the public schools must make up much of the instruction that these students may have missed during their time within a virtual school. So, the question that I have left is why or how is there going to be any regulation of these virtual schools so that they are not just a money-making enterprise. They need to be held accountable for the students they are educating and not just take the money and time of the students while providing a sub-par education. I have personally seen many students get behind with promises made from virtual schools and end up back in public school having spent a good bit of money and now having to make up credits and graduate late. At the end of the day, I think the idea of virtual schools are fantastic, and I believe that many programs, like ACCESS and other programs that are truly sound educationally can benefit students across the board. Many times the maze is very difficult for students and parents to navigate and they can easily be led astray but organizations whose sole purpose is to make profit. Many people have had the same questions according to the news clip I have included here.
I think that the suggestions for “realistic assessments of quality” (Moore & Kearsley, p. 190, 2012) could help in evaluating many of these virtual schools to make the whole group more reputable as a whole.
References:
Miron, G., Horvitz, B., & Gulosino, C. (2013, May). Virtual Schools in the U.S 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy and Research Evidence. Retrieved June 16, 2016, from http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/nepc-virtual-2013-section-1-2.pdf
Moore, Michael G. (2012). Distance Education: A Systems View of Online Learning, 3rd Edition
No comments:
Post a Comment