Virtual Schooling: A Guide to Optimizing Your Child's Education

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CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Foreword by Keith Oelrich

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Education of the Future—Here Today

Chapter 2: What is Virtual Schooling and How Does It Work?

Chapter 3: Getting Started

Chapter 4: Personalized Learning: Getting to Know Your Unique Learner

Chapter 5: Virtual Schooling and the Elementary Years

Chapter 6: Virtual Schooling in the High School Years

Chapter 7: Your Virtual Education Quick-Answer Guide

Chapter 8: Comprehensive Virtual Schooling Resource Guide

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

For

Michael, Randall, Madison, and McKenzie Kanna

&

Scott, Brian, John, Stephen, and Rebekah Gillis

FOREWORD

I love how Insight is revolutionizing the manner of which schooling is done. It has grasped the area between the freedom of homeschooling and the community of public schools.

The school cares more than any school I have ever been to, something you wouldn’t exactly expect from something done over the computer.

My daughter is doing great and I can see a difference in her acceptance of responsibility, wanting to succeed, and having goals in life. She is 16 and going to have a baby, and I do not know what we would have done if Insight was not there for our daughter. I am so grateful.

I’m a competitive figure skater, and when I went to school, I had to miss two classes a day so that I could keep skating. With Insight I can still do what I love and take fun classes. The fact that I can do all of my school anywhere I want is a huge plus and I don’t feel like I’m in a prison.

When we joined Insight we thought it would be a very cold way to do school. But we were very wrong. There is lots of personal contact; the teachers and the staff are awesome.

My mom is dying of brain cancer and is going through experimental treatments to fight it. I am 15 years old and the oldest child in my family. I take care of my mom when my dad is at work and have to care for my younger siblings. Insight has allowed me to continue with my education yet still gives me time to spend valuable time creating memories with my mom.

I wanted to thank you for your hard work on getting me into Insight School. Without all your hard work and help, I would not be a student at Insight, or have a high school diploma in progress. My last school was great, but this last year has been kind of hard for me and my family. My brother was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. In late June of this year he went for the worst and became hospitalized for weeks. The doctors thought he was getting better because he was starting to respond to us, but he decided it was enough and went peacefully on July 4. His memorial was truly amazing. Approximately 600 people showed up. Thank you so much.

These are just a handful of the thousands of stories I have heard from students whose lives have changed as a result of the opportunity to learn through virtual schooling. I have been working in online high schools for nearly 10 years. Between the years of 2000 and 2002, I served as CEO of a company called Apex Learning. At Apex, we were pioneers in the virtual high school industry—working with state governments and other education organizations to use online courses to increase access to Advanced Placement (AP) courses around the country. At that time, ten years ago, we were voices in the wilderness—very few educators believed that K-12 students could learn in an online setting. However, now, we are seeing tremendous growth in the use of online learning in K-12 schools, increased acceptance of online learning by traditional educators, and incredible demand for online learning by families.

Virtual learning is the fastest-growing segment of the education industry today. In 2007, one million K-12 students took some form of online course—up from just 50,000 in 2000. Now, 44 states have some form of state-approved online learning program serving K-12 students. In a recent survey, 57 percent of districts indicated that they were providing e-learning opportunities for their students, and 72 percent of districts indicated that they expect to increase their use of e-learning over the next year. Demand for online education is exploding.

The reasons for this growth in demand are many, but I think four drivers are particularly important:

1. Increasing access to educational opportunities: Online learning can serve as an effective way for allowing schools to serve students who otherwise might not be served. Across our nation, approximately 5 million children of high school age are not attending school. The reasons these students are not served are many: health issues; teens who become parents and have day-care responsibilities that conflict with school; students whose families need income support and must work in conflict with school. In addition, many students—even gifted students—drop out of school before graduation. Online learning can provide the flexibility—of time, location, or pace—that allows these students to fit school around their lives, instead of fitting their life around school.

2. Providing connections: Often, students struggle with making connections in a large, impersonal school setting. Students may struggle to connect with adults, or may find difficulty in making social connections with other students. However, interactions between teachers and students in an online setting tend to be more individual, more often delivered in a one-to-one or small-group setting. And students who may have struggled socially in a traditional setting are able to build social relationships in a way that is comfortable for today’s high-schoolers—through IM, texting, discussion boards. Interestingly, we hear frequently from our students that they find it easier to get to know their Insight teachers, and easier to make friends at Insight.

3. Building twenty-first-century skills: Today’s students need to build skills that will help them succeed in our twenty-first-century global economy. In addition to learning the basics of math, language arts, science, and the like, today’s students need to master disciplines such as project management, technical literacy, global awareness, problem solving, communications, and teamwork (among others). In an online school, students are required to take much more active control over their educational experience—building time management, self-motivation, and discipline.

4. Enabling personalized learning: Traditional schools often expect students to participate in a one-size-fits-all classroom with 35 other students of varying skills, learning styles, and interests. With online learning, however, students can move at their own pace, assessments and delivery of material can be adapted to that student’s learning style, and instruction can be made more relevant, in line with that student’s career or other interests.

At Insight Schools, we have the pleasure of seeing these scenarios play out, every day. We operate a network of rapidly growing online high schools—both public and private—across the country. Every day, we receive notes from students, parents, or teachers thanking us for making online education available for them. Our students are using online learning to fit school to their lives, and to pursue their high school education in a way that best suits their needs, learning styles, and interests. Most rewarding of all, in a recent survey, over 90 percent of our students in ISWA agreed with the statement: Insight School cares about me. We are very proud of that, and work hard to make sure our families feel part of a vibrant learning community.

This book is a valuable resource for families looking to gain a better understanding of the different kinds of online learning options that are available. Thank you for your interest in virtual education and your interest in your helping your child find the best educational option possible!

Keith Oelrich

Founder/CEO, Insight Schools, Inc.

Portland, Oregon

INTRODUCTION

Bill Gates had them both.

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, Gladwell points out how access and parent advocacy were catalysts for Gates’s founding Microsoft and igniting the PC revolution, which he would go on to dominate. It is well known that Gates dropped out of Harvard, but few know that Gates’s parents withdrew him from public school because he was bored and enrolled him in Lakeside, an elite private school in Seattle.

That same year the Lakeside Mother’s Club put together a rummage sale and spent the proceeds on a computer terminal for the school. This would be standard for today, not in 1968.

The Lakeside computer terminal was a new type of computer that shared processing power with a much larger computer in downtown Seattle. Gates would learn programming without being slowed by the laborious punch-card process used by the majority of computer terminals in existence at the time. Gates’s access to the computer terminal had allowed him to get thousands of programming-hours under his belt when he and fellow student and future business partner, Paul Allen, saw the cover of the January 1974 Popular Electronics magazine featuring the first do-it-yourself computer kit—the Altair 8800. That time spent programming and gaining knowledge about that rare thing in 1968—a computer—positioned him to seize the opportunity with the Altair 8800 and go on to make history. Writes Gladwell, "Gates got to do real-time programming as an eighth grader in 1968."

*   *   *

What if millions of eighth graders across the United States were given access to burgeoning industries, innovative technologies, and subjects they found exciting? What if their parents advocated for and supported that access?

Gates had parents who fought for their son’s needs and access to a new field that few knew about at the time.

The need for this powerful combination of access and advocacy is the reason we wrote this book.

In April 2008, we recognized that a definitive guide to virtual schooling had to be created in order to share with parents the power of access that virtual schooling could give a child. We knew we had to first explain the concept and then define the many approaches out there—from blended models and concurrent enrollment to mobile technology.

Our credentials are rooted in our expertise in the homeschooling movement. Collectively, we have held the titles of president of the board of education, director of government affairs, credentialed teacher, credentialed administrator, virtual school developer, and our jobs include a White House appointment. This background, along with our personal experience as virtual schooling early-adaptors with our own children, uniquely empowers us to be prognostic in defining the education model poised to transform education in the twenty-first century.

This book will show you how virtual schooling got started, where it is today, and, more importantly, where we see its true potential.

That potential is in your child—just waiting to be discovered.

CHAPTER 1

THE EDUCATION OF THE FUTURE—HERE TODAY

It is 7:30 on a Monday morning and McKenzie, age 12, wakes up, kisses her Chihuahua, Ringo, says good morning to her parents, and gets ready to jet off to her classes at an academy that specializes in teaching math, science, and engineering. She attends school on Mondays and Wednesdays, taking classes in pre-algebra, history, and English with 15 other students. Her teachers stay in contact with her, as well as with her parents, by e-mail and a program called SnapGrades, which informs them almost daily about McKenzie’s progress.

Thursdays are different for McKenzie. She catches up on work for her classes, works on her weekly history essay with guidance from her tutor via e-mail (and from her dad from his classroom 20 miles away and from her mom who works in a home office), and works on her grammar skills in a self-paced course at UniversalClass.com. Next, McKenzie uses an online math program to help her grasp challenging concepts, reads a chapter in her history book, then meets with her French tutor at a local coffee shop. The meeting is conducted entirely in French since McKenzie hopes to become fluent and one day live in France.

On the same Monday morning McKenzie’s 15-year-old sister, Madison, takes her terrier for a walk while she listens to a lecture on psychology from a Pulitzer Prize–winning professor and then a lecture on history from a Stanford University professor, both downloaded from iTunes U to her iPod. Once back at her desk, she puts in a DVD and watches a lecture on geometry for a course. Next she uses her computer to attend a class from a self-paced online MIT biology course, then meets with her supervising teacher to review her progress in preparation for the high school exit exam. Later in the day, her language arts tutor, an associate professor at Stanford University who works for the gifted and talented program, meets her at the local park where they discuss Pride and Prejudice.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Madison, who has a passion for Jane Austen, physically attends a course on British literature at Sacramento State University. The professor acknowledges her during