Greenway boasts high completion rates among online consortium

With the increasing popularity of online education for high schoolers, the Greenway School board listened to an annual report from Infinity Online Director Jo McClure. Infinity is the online education consortium which Greenway has been a member since 2004. The district was one of the original members of the consortium when it began.

It is estimated that more than 1.5 million students take online classes nationally, and of those, 200,000 are full-time online students. As of 2011, 39 different states have state-run virtual education programs.

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“Minnesota is one of those that does not. Interestingly, Minnesota has one of the largest numbers of online students, but they do not have a statewide program,” said McClure.

In place of a state-wide program, there are currently 24 online consortiums and other certified virtual education providers throughout the state. Minnesota does have a number of policies regulating online learning though, such as having the different providers adhere to national education standards.

The benefit for a school district, such as Greenway, to be involved in an online consortium, is that they have a say in the educational standards of the program, as well as what classes will be offered, and so forth. Since the beginning of Infinity, when only eight districts were involved, there were a total of five courses available, and only 30 students enrolled. In 2010, 43 districts have become part of Infinity, offering 58 different courses to more than 1,000 enrolled students. All Infinity teachers are from member districts, giving students access to a large number of teachers within a relatively small regional area.

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PLATO Learning Introduces vCourses for Launching Effective Virtual Learning Programs

PLATO Learning, a leading provider of online education solutions for kindergarten through adult learners, has introduced vCourses; rigorous, research-based courses designed to meet the needs of 21st century learners.

While all PLATO Learning courses are interactive, engaging, and effective, vCourses have been optimized specifically for virtual programs. PLATO vCourses benefits include a streamlined workflow for teachers and administrators, an intuitive and easy to navigate user interface for learners, and support services that ensure schools and districts can implement an effective virtual program quickly and cost-effectively.

“As the online learning population continues to grow rapidly, we will continue to support schools and districts by providing a virtual learning experience that sets the standard for the industry,” said Jamie Candee, vice president of product and marketing for PLATO Learning. “Virtual courses are becoming an expectation of learners and families. With PLATO vCourses, schools and districts can meet that expectation, and offer a learning option that will help them retain students.”

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Online learning more popular in FF, Minnesota

More Minnesota students, including those in Otter Tail County, are taking advantage of the scheduling flexibility and growing online class choices. However, a state report released Monday found students taking the classes full-time often fell short of their peers in traditional schools.

Fergus Falls iQ Academy, however, has taken steps to make its online program better.

“We have a new Learning Management System (LMS) that allows access to many new academic resources for teachers and families,” said Molly Johnson, who heads Fergus Falls iQ Academy along with Jesse Thorstad.

iQ Academy Minnesota, a program of the Fergus Falls Public School District, offers an interactive curriculum for students in grades 6-12, what Johnson refers to as “a robust virtual learning environment” and a supportive teacher and student network.

Fergus Falls IQ Academy, still enrolling students in September, had over 300 online students in 2010-11.

Another major new feature this school year includes the Scantron Series, which involves performance tests to help measure student growth.

The Office of the Legislature Auditor reported that an estimated 20,000 students in kindergarten through high school took at least one online course last year. That’s less than three percent of the state’s K-12 students, the report said, but the number has been growing.

Statewide, for the 2009-2010 school year, the number of students taking classes part-time online classes doubled to about 3,800 and the number of students taking online classes full-time tripled to about 8,300, from 2007.

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Audit flags dropout rates, scores at online schools

Even as they surge in popularity, online schools in Minnesota are troubled by high dropout rates, poor math scores and inadequate state oversight.

That’s the conclusion of a state audit released on Monday that shows how the virtual schools, whose full-time enrollment has tripled in recent years, are faring.

It’s unclear why many online students are falling short academically, said Legislative Auditor James Nobles, adding, “We need to find out, is there anything more we can do for these students?”

During the 2009-10 school year, Minnesota’s full-time online students finished only 63 percent of the courses they started. Just 16 percent of those in high school were proficient on state math tests, compared with 41 percent in the same grades at schools throughout Minnesota. And fully one-quarter of the 12th-graders dropped out by the end of the school year, vastly more than the 3 percent of all students who did so statewide.

Advocates of online learning point out that many students are already behind academically when they enroll. “The majority of the students that come to us were struggling in their previous school, and they’ve come to us as an alternative,” said John Huber, head of Insight School of Minnesota, an online high school guided by the Brooklyn Center School District.

State guidance of online schools is also a problem, the audit concluded. The Department of Education, short-handed, has done little to oversee online schools or clear a longstanding backlog of applications to start new programs, the report found.

The report, requested by legislators, comes as the popularity of online learning is growing. Roughly 12,000 K-12 students — about 1.5 percent of Minnesota’s student body — took courses from state-approved online schools last year. The number of part-time students in online schools has nearly doubled in the past four years, and the number of full-time students has more than tripled.

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100 years of Cotter

Still, innovation continued. In the summer of 1995, at a time when most people were only vaguely aware of the existence of the Internet, Cotter administrators announced the creation of the Virtual School of Winona. Backed by the Fastenal founder’s foundation, the goal of the Virtual School was to put a networked computer in the home of every Cotter student, digitally linking them with each other, their school and the world.

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Legislation to reshape charter schools in state

In its latest ranking in 2010, Pennsylvania was 12th out of 41 states.

Minnesota, home to the first charter schools, ranked first. Florida, Massachusetts, Colorado and New York rounded out the top five. Nine states don’t have any charter school laws.

“In general, Pennsylvania law provides an environment that’s open to new start-ups, public school conversions, and virtual schools and supportive of autonomy,” according to the report. But the report said the legislation could improve in several ways: by prohibiting caps on growth, increasing the accountability for the authorizer, allowing more entities besides school boards to approve charter schools and allowing the same organizations to start multiple charter schools.

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Online School Still in Trouble

GLENVILLE, MN–The State of Minnesota is cracking down on an online charter school for violating state laws.

As we reported last month in a KIMT Special Report, the Minnesota Department of Education says BlueSky Online is graduating students who haven’t met minimum state curriculum guidelines.

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BlueSky Online School, in hot water because of alleged violation of graduation standards, says it will fight to remain open.

A charter school where the Minnesota Department of Education says students have graduated without meeting state requirements must be shut down by the organization that oversees it, or state officials say they’ll step in themselves.

BlueSky Online School is still violating the law two years after the state began investigating problems at the public school, officials at the education department said Monday. State officials have asked the school’s authorizer, Novation Education Opportunities, to either terminate or not renew its contract with BlueSky, effectively shutting down the school by this summer.

BlueSky’s interim director, Don Hainlen, blasted the department’s move as a decision reached by “bricks-and-mortar people who don’t know anything about online schools.”

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Reader’s view: Duluth school district mute about new ideas

Years ago, when online schools were becoming popular, I approached the Duluth schools and suggested they look into the possibility of establishing such a school in order to keep money within the district. We had been home-schooling our own brood since 1990, and as a former paid educator with eight teaching credentials in three states, I offered assistance. My father had been the director of instructional resources in a major school district in California, so I did have a clue about the

logistics of “distance” learning, as it was called back then, even if the distance was marginal.

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New year, new school? Virtual schools ease transition

Educators say many families switching their kids’ schools mid-year are turning to virtual schools like Connections Academy, for a variety of reasons.

First, more families than ever have embraced virtual education in general: Some 2 million American K-12 students now get some or all of their education virtually, according to research firm Ambient Insight. Second, the format of virtual schools eases a student’s adjustment period – and physical transitions for both student and family. Finally, family finances sometimes come into play. Virtual public schools – like all public schools – are tuition free and virtual private schools like National Connections Academy cost a fraction of traditional “bricks and mortar” private schools. Yet they deliver the academic rigor and highly personalized educations that are hallmarks of independent schools. So families with children enrolled in traditional private schools who are struggling to meet hefty tuition obligations often find they can save significant money and still get an independent school-caliber education.

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