I wrote a post a few weeks ago applauding a Seattle middle school teacher who protested the No Child Left Behind-infused standardized tests by refusing to administer them to his students. I loathe the NCLB act and all the destruction and misery it has wrought. It is evil and no good has (or will) come of it. Tom Chapin managed to make a little cup of sarcastic lemonade out of all the politicians-screwing-up-education lemons.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

According to this article in the CS Monitor, more and more parents are keeping their kids home and sending them to virtual schools in which the teachers and coursework are accessed online. Any extra supplies are sent by mail to the students’ homes. One mom describes the idea of sending her kid to a virtual school as “the 21st-century, middle-class version of the private tutor.”

Kids who attend virtual schools can spend the extra time on the subjects they have a harder time grasping, and can more speedily attack the subjects they’re comfortable with. In an actual classroom, the teacher has the difficult job of having to walk that middle road: teaching at the average students’ learning pace. The unavoidable results of this are that the kids who are having a tough time get left behind, which affects them academically as well as socially and emotionally, and the kids who understand the information immediately can end up feeling bored and unchallenged.

The idea of sending kids to virtual school is gaining popularity:

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.

But, as with every new notion, the implementing of it often involves some working out of the inevitable kinkage. Monitoring learning hours accurately, issues with funding, and having better “official oversight” in place is still being worked out. I think it’s worth the effort to have it be a workable option for kids who either don’t have access to adequate schools, or who don’t fit into their available school for whatever reason.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a city with a decent public school system, and (so far) I have the time and energy to be there when my daughter is doing her homework and to spend time helping her with her extra reading every day. Which is all by way of saying I feel confident that between her day at a good public school and being home in the evenings with her not-utterly-exhausted parents, my kid is going to be covered on all educational fronts.

However, if Seattle schools sucked or if my daughter had issues that I didn’t feel the public education system was handling effectively, I would be stoked of I had solid online options available.

Further Reading:

NPR: Public Schools Expand Curriculum Online

Resources:

North American Council for Online Learning
Virtual School Clearinghouse
University of California College Prep
K12

Posted by Alexa Harrington