In addition, 13 full-time employees were cut from central administration, while nine positions opened by attrition was not filled.

A list of employees cut was obtained by Odessa American through an open records request, showed two of 60 employees that were named, executive director of athletics Leon Fuller and executive director of special projects Randy Talley, made more than $100,000 a year. Meanwhile, nine clerks at magnet schools, who make between $13,739 and $22,399 annually, had their positions cut.

For the rest of the article, go to ECISD in 2011: A year of budget woes and highs and lows

Jody said, “It’s nice to have options! I have a wonderful sixteen year old son who is very creative & intelligent. He is bored to death in school. We have so much stimulation in the world today. We ask our kids to sit in a chair for hours, non stimulated. Our local public school system is on the cutting edge. But, it’s not changing fast enough for him. K12 allows him time to do other things. He already is a budding entrepreneur and has a YouTube sight with 5,000 hits. We are grateful for this outside of the box option.”

For the rest of the article, go to 10 Parents Respond to the New York Times

The Virtual High School offers Spring Branch high school students free access to locally developed online courses, and into a statewide network of courses that are available for a fee.

The idea is to provide students the flexibility for “any time, any place” learning, and access to courses that might not fit into a student’s daily schedule, or might not be offered in a particular semester — or at a particular campus.

“It’s all about opportunity and choice,” said Joyce Roberta Miller-Alper, a longtime teacher in Spring Branch ISD and a former Texas teacher of the year.

Courses are designed with the same rigor as traditional courses without the traditional classroom parameters. There is still material to be read, research to be conducted and assignments to be completed and graded.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual High School offers students choice, flexibility

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Oaks Christian Online School Student Athlete Competes in Dallas Texan Fall Festival

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).

For the rest of the article, go to School Reform Is Making Advances across America

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Clay Road Baptist claims volleyball championship with six players

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Texas official defends online course network’s quality, oversight and transparency.

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Hochberg: Online education business growing fast, without quality control from state

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.

For the rest of the article, go to Online Educational Opportunities Grow for Students of All Ages

“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.

For the rest of the article, go to Round Rock school superintendent delivers state of district address