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Oaks Christian Online School Student Athlete Competes in Dallas Texan Fall Festival

November 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

According to Vicki Conway, Director of Oaks Christian Online School, “Summer is exactly the type of focused, college-bound student that will thrive at our school.”

The main campus of Oaks Christian School in Westlake Village opened in the fall of 2000 and Oaks Christian Online School (OCO) opened for full-time, online students in the fall of 2011. The online school provides a rigorous and challenging college preparatory education for high school students all across the country in a Christian environment. Oaks Christian Online School continues to enroll part-time and full-time students throughout the school year and regularly hosts information sessions on its main campus – 31749 La Tienda Drive, Westlake Village, CA 91362, as well as virtual information sessions for prospective student families. Interested students can visit the website http://online.oakschristian.org to R.S.V.P.

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School Reform Is Making Advances across America

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Turning next to school choice, we have an interesting position paper from the Texas Public Policy Foundation. It reviews the progress Texas has made in liberating students from failing schools and offers some suggestions for taking reforms in Texas farther.

The paper rightly notes that “school choice” encompasses many mechanisms, from charter schools to tuition tax deductions and credits to voucher schools to (a more recent trend) “virtual” schools, where students can access software on the internet.

The Foundation’s report has useful information on all these areas.

Start with charter schools. Texas has come a long way from 1995, when the state legislature first allowed charter schools, to today, when the state has 185 of them collectively enrolling 120,000 students. This is an admirable growth, but there is much more to be done. The collective wait list for these schools has exploded, from 17,000 students in 2007-2008 to 40,000 in 2008-2009, and to 56,000 in 2009-2010. The problem here, as in other states, is that the vicious rent-seekers who oppose all school reform — i.e., teachers’ unions and their allies — put a cap of 215 on the number of charter schools.

This cap obviously should be eliminated. All the states should just let as many charter schools open as there are parents and students who want them. However, moves to remove this cap failed in the last legislative session, and while the state has agreed to guarantee bonds to allow new charters, it jacked up the regulations on them (even though they are already operating under the broad control of the public school system).

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Clay Road Baptist claims volleyball championship with six players

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Fellow eighth-grader Skrehot is a homeschool student who made the most of a chance to play interscholastic volleyball. Stewart said CRBS regularly offers opportunities for homeschool students and he was grateful to Skrehot’s parents for her contribution to the school and the team.

Skrehot’s mother, Sandy Skrehot, said the association has been mutually beneficial.

“Our daughter is educated from home through Texas Virtual Academy,” Skrehot said. “We have appreciated CRBS giving her the opportunity to participate in their athletics program for the past three years.”

Skrehot, Morel and Riley all played in and won a postseason all-star game Oct. 25 at Logos Preparatory Academy. Their leadership, particularly Morel’s return from injury, helped bring along the team’s younger players.

Stewart said opponents sometimes focused on sending the ball to the fifth-grade players, including Burt who took a serve off of her face during the tournament but finished the match.

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Texas official defends online course network’s quality, oversight and transparency

November 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In a story we published Tuesday, state Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston) told the Texas Independent he’s concerned about a lack of quality control in the state’s full-time online K-12 schools, and more generally in the Texas Virtual School Network, a statewide clearinghouse for online courses for K-12 students.

Started in early 2009 as a way to extend specialized courses to rural students, and to help special needs students and youths in juvenile detention earn high school credit, the virtual school network has seen a sharp enrollment increase over the last few years, though it dropped off sharply this fall.

Hochberg, who owns a software development company, said he hasn’t been impressed by the online courses he’s seen so far, and worried that sales pitches from for-profit course developers, not strategic plans developed by the state, are what’s driving the course network’s growth. Particularly troubling, he said, was that district officials must rely on sales pitches, rather than a look at the full online course, before deciding whether to offer it to their students.

But in an interview Tuesday afternoon, Kate Loughrey, the Texas Education Agency’s director of distance learning, said the state is constantly fine-tuning course offerings to meet districts’ needs. All the courses in the network are quality-controlled, she said, and TEA is developing new highlight reels of some courses to help districts see what they’re getting.

Today, Loughrey said, 17 school districts offer online high school courses in the state’s virtual network. Seven colleges also participate in the network, offering dual high school and college credit. About half the high school courses offered in the network are developed in-house by school districts in Texas, Loughrey said, while the other half are purchased from third-party software developers, like K12 Inc.

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Hochberg: Online education business growing fast, without quality control from state

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In 2007, the Texas Legislature created a pilot program for a clearinghouse for online classes, a place where a large school districts around the state could offer specialized courses remotely to rural students, kids with special needs, or even students serving time in juvenile detention.

Since then, though, that pilot version of the Texas Virtual School Network has evolved into a much larger initiative, with some courses developed by public school districts and colleges, and others created by for-profit companies. It’s aged into a permanent program with few benchmarks and loose oversight, says one lawmaker who helped craft the pilot program.

While the program may be specific to Texas, it reflects a growing challenge across the country. An October New York Times/Texas Tribune story considered the “policy maze” officials in any state must navigate as online education grows:

It threatens many concepts that are fundamental to the identity of public education: districts defined by geographic boundaries and brick-and-mortar buildings. Among the challenges, however, is dealing with what it means to be publicly financed in a digital education world, where much of the curriculum and even employees can come from profit-making companies.

Gene V. Glass, a senior researcher at the University of Colorado’s National Education Policy Center, told the Tribune the for-profit nature of the industry, and its consolidation in the hands of five major companies, was problematic. “They are responsible to their shareholders, not to the kids or anyone else. They are in it for the money,” he said.

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Online Educational Opportunities Grow for Students of All Ages

October 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

At a time when online educational opportunities continue to grow in the higher education field, many primary and secondary schools are also finding that online schools can be beneficial to younger students as well. From struggling learners who need an option that better suits their needs to advanced learners who want to tackle classes that aren’t offered at their schools, online education has opened up many new doors for students throughout the country.

For students who are struggling with the traditional school setting, pursing an education online can make it easier to receive the accommodations they need to be successful. For those with ADHD, the class can be paused at any time to take a break when necessary. For those who are struggling readers, computer software can be used to read the text for them. Yet, when additional questions arise, students can contact the teacher to receive the extra assistance they need to be successful. Online schools also provide struggling students with access to supplemental and remedial assistance as necessary.

While educators recognize the value of online education, public school systems are struggling with finding ways to integrate virtual education into their classrooms. In addition to determining the boundaries that have long been geographically formed, the use of online schools has also opened up questions regarding how to publicly finance online educational opportunities. The issue becomes even murkier when dealing with employees from for-profit companies that are developing and implementing the curriculum.

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Round Rock school superintendent delivers state of district address

October 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

High school students in the Irving school district are issued laptops. Katy fifth-graders are given cellphones for wireless access and searching the Internet in class. The Plano school district offers its secondary students virtual classes. And several other districts allow students to BYOD — bring your own devices — with wireless Internet access to school for instruction, he said.

“We restrict the bringing of these devices to school. We don’t allow cellphones to be used for instruction,” Chávez said. “We’ve got to change that.”

Round Rock can’t roll out the technology all out at once, but he suggested the district start with allowing students to bring their own devices to school beginning next year. He also said he wants to provide each high school student with a laptop. Chávez said he will name a district technology advisory task force to make recommendations.

The district is using the last of 2008 bond money to build an elementary school, and Chávez said he anticipates growth could make another bond election necessary as early as November 2012.

The superintendent touted ideas for new academic programs as well, including an early college program that would allow students to earn college credit.

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Online Classes Booming, But With Red Flags

October 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

HOUSTON — The school day was difficult, said Will Clarkston, a soft-spoken 20-year-old who, in his own words, can’t sit still.

His dyslexia sometimes leaves him grasping to text the right acronym to his friends. He often loses his train of thought because of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Though he graduated from a public high school here two years ago, he was not prepared to go to college.

“The maturity level, his frustration threshold — he just was not ready,” said his mother, Carol Clarkston.

Six weeks ago Will Clarkston began taking online courses in financial management. Now, he can have his course materials read to him. Or, when his mind wanders, he can hit pause and take a walk. If he does not understand something, he can contact a teacher. He has done so well that he now plans to attend community college in the spring and, eventually, to open his own process-serving business. Carol Clarkston said she has seen a transformation in his self-esteem.

Virtual education offers opportunities for primary and secondary students at both ends of the learning spectrum. It allows more advanced students to take courses beyond their grade level or to study subjects their school districts might not offer. For students who are struggling, it can provide crucial supplemental or remedial help outside of the school walls. And for students like Clarkston who require different styles of teaching that a traditional classroom cannot provide, its flexibility can be a godsend.

Public schools are grappling with how to most effectively integrate virtual education into their classrooms. It threatens many concepts that are fundamental to the identity of public education: districts defined by geographic boundaries and brick-and-mortar buildings. Among the challenges, however, is dealing with what it means to be publicly financed in a digital education world, where much of the curriculum and sometimes even employees can come from profit-making companies.

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Online Educators Gaining Both Classes and Critics

October 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Texas has had a state-operated virtual school network since 2007. Schools have long been able to offer online courses, either with curriculum developed in-house or through private providers. In 2007, the Legislature passed a series of laws that created a framework for sharing courses across districts and put a financing mechanism in place.

Through the Texas Virtual School Network, two dozen school districts, community colleges and universities offer online courses in which students across the state can enroll. To develop the curriculum, the districts can subcontract with private companies, universities or even other districts. (The New York Times Company is a majority owner in Epsilen, an online education company that provides services to the Texas Virtual School Network.)

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Northland Christian student earns $500 scholarship

October 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

arah Holley, a student at Northland Christian High School, recently received a $500 scholarship from Virtual High School, which has partnered with Northland Christian to provide on-site online courses to students to prepare them for college. Holley discovered an interest in analytical research by taking VHS’s course on European Film and Literature. Holley plans to become a teacher so she can share her passion for literature.

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