Re: Missouri Virtual Public School

[Free2teach1@aol.com]

Sounds like a plan. Think of all the money they'll  save with all those 
"virtual" teachers. Plus, students can  spend all of their time practicing for 
tests and raising their scores! The  virtual public school that reduces education 
and learning to an experience  in which kids sit in front of computers,  
isolated from  peers and/or subversive teachers, also operates on virtual  
accountability -- sort of like the accountability our  corporate government runs on.
 
Accountability is just a word created and being used to  destroy public 
school education - thus, it is really nothing more than  a figment of the 
imagination. That's what needs to be understood  before anything can change.
 
Given the existence of an idealized  vision of the community, movements of 
protest are likely to occur within the  political nation when the discrepancy 
between the image and the reality comes to  seem intolerably  wide.

--   J.H. Elliott
 
 
 
In a message dated 3/4/2006 11:47:27 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
campbellp@mail.montclair.edu writes:

A bill  to create the Missouri Virtual Public School (HB 1275) is being 
considered  in the MO state legislature. This bill potentially opens the 
door to  giving NCLB new teeth by giving parents an option to transfer 
out of their  districts.

As an educational technology advocate, I'm very excited  about the 
possibility of enhancing kids' educations via technology,  especially in 
rural areas that have limited access to more advanced  subject matter. 
However, as a public school advocate, I'm troubled by the  potential 
role these virtual schools may play in undermining public  education.

Year 2 AYP sanctions under NCLB allow students to transfer  from a 
school that is on the "needs improvement" list to another school  within 
the district that is not on the list. However, since NCLB only  allows 
transfer within the district, where are students going to go if all  the 
schools in the district are on the list? Furthermore, where can  
students go if there is only one elementary or middle school in the  
district?

So under HB 1275, can students "transfer" to the Missouri  Virtual 
Public School if their schools are placed on the "needs  improvement" 
list? If virtual schools are used as options in the NCLB/AYP  school 
transfer process, many students will benefit, but many more will be  
left behind. The research on distance education programs shows pretty  
clearly that certain types of students benefit from this environment,  
i.e, those that are more focused and self-directed with good time  
management skills. While a good percentage of the population of public  
school students fit this profile, a large number don't.

Of even  greater concern is the extent to which private, for-profit 
entities will  be involved in offering these services via the Internet 
with little to no  accountability provisions built in. Is the Missouri 
Virtual Public school  going to operate as a charter school? If so, how 
will it be managed?  Missouri's experience and the rest of the country's 
experience with  charters has been mixed at best. One of the more 
troubling aspects of  charter schools is their lack of accountability. 
While this is troubling  enough in brick and mortar institutions where 
students have face-to-face  accountability, it is even more troubling 
when no such tangible aspect of  accountability exists.

---

Peter  Campbell






Judy  Rabin
Monmouth University