Virtual public schools are growing. These are private companies taking tax money from taxpayers to preform worse than brick and mortar school on state tests and have higher drop out rates. (Brown and Layton, 2011) I do believe despite these facts virtual or online education can have an effective place in public education. We are facing a time of severe budget cuts and growing student population. Our schools are comparable to hamsters running a wheel in a cage. Something needs to be done.
I believe that virtual schools can be a benefit when used for the right purposes by the right students, and run by the right people. Most of the students that attend full time online or virtual public schools are students that are in very real danger of not graduating. These are the students that should not be going to school full time online. This is usually the population that has no support at home. These are students who only have and can only get support from teachers and specialist at school. I just do not understand why we take these students away from the only support most of them have, and try to make them do it all on their on. Many agree that students that do not have a learning guide at home are the ones that fail or drop out. Students need that support in the home for online and virtual schools to be a potentially successful option for them.
I do not believe that online schools can replace what a child will receive in a brick and mortar school. Maybe a hybrid model would be the best option. Students could spend half the day doing work online and the other half in a school building interacting with peers, teachers, and any specialists they may need. You could put the school day on a rotation, where half the population goes in the morning and half in the afternoon. All teachers would have the same prep and lunch periods between these shifts which would allow for easy communication and collaboration among staff. Think of the one on one time a teacher could give if there classes were to go from 30 to 15.
Another option is to have local or online colleges bid for an opportunity to provide accelerated classes for those students that move faster and need more challenge or simply want to earn some college credits. For remedial students you could set up additional classes they could do from home to help catch them up to where the other students are.
If online learning where to become an option I would highly recommend that the state or the district invest in creating it themselves. These private companies are using our tax dollars to make millions. One company even states in an article written by Lindsey Layton and Emma Brown that, “We understand the politics of education pretty well.” (Brown and Layton, 2011) These private companies donate thousands of dollars to politicians and are contracted to provide online education to our students, and they do it unsuccessfully. Why are they not held as accountable as schools? Maybe if schools were able to make political contributions politicians would support failure and call it innovation as well.
References:
Layton, L., & Brown, E. (2011, November 28). Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virtual-schools-are-multiplying-but-some-question-their-educational-value/2011/11/22/gIQANUzkzN_story.html
I too felt that virtual schools will work for some but not others. I liked the line from Layton and Brown's article where they say, "“You take students who normally would struggle because of their home environment and then you put them in their home to learn,” Saunders said. “It doesn’t work that well.” It really goes along with your point about the types of students that are normally enrolling in the virtual schools. It supports the argument that virtual schools cannot replace the regular brick and mortar school. You also mentioned that using virtual schools can reduce class sizes. If the class sizes are reduced, and students that are struggling are the ones who remain in the regular school teachers would be able to provide them with much more support than they traditionally are able to receive. For that reason, I still believe virtual schools hold a valuable spot within education, but as you said, "virtual schools can be a benefit when used for the right purposes by the right students."
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