Lisa Keegan: The Future of Education is Already Here

What if all the desperate problems in American education had already been solved?
Let's imagine that there were a burgeoning,truly, bipartisan movement of parents, teachers, school leaders, political leaders, and regular, run-of-the-mill citizens who have had it with American failure in education and want the nation to know there is a whole sector of success out there, getting the job done for kid, and it's tired of being treated as though it doesn't exist.
Imagine no more ... welcome to the Education Breakthrough, and the reality of emerging school choice in America.
The next few years may well be the most exciting time in the history of American education, becuase emerging in the shadows of its moribund and desperately underperforming big sister comes a baby the nation can be proud of.
This is the world of school choice, where parents choose schools that work for their own children and take an active role in their children's education. These are the nation's private schools, public charter schools, home schools, online schools, special needs schools--these are the schools that re tailored for the students they serve. This is the fastest growing, most efficient and undeniably the most effective sector of American education. This is a sector where being the best truly matters.
Click here to read more on why I believe the future of education is here.

Tom Vander Ark: What Do Virtual Schools Cost?

That's a good question. Education policymakers from Georgia to Oregon and many points in-between are trying to find an equitable answer.
The Digital Learning Council will issue its 10 recommendations for state policy makers this week. The process has kicked off a school finance discussion that includes these questions:

• What do virtual schools cost?
• What is the best way to use school funding to promote achievement, completion, and innovation?

Click here to read my complete post which includes some thoughtful ideas from an online school operator

Guest Commentary: Georgia Public Policy Foundation: U.S. Education has a Choice--Innovate or Become Irrlevant

Imagine that two little boys were playing ball in the field when the one with freckles said, "When I grow up, I'm going to be just like my Dad! He works in the factory putting zippers into blue jeans."
The other little boy, without any freckles, smiled as only little boys can smile and said, "When I grow up, I'm going to be just like my Dad! I don't know what he does but he wears a suit. I'm going to wear a suit, too!"
Odds are very long that neither little boy would grow up to be just like Dad. Zipper jobs at the blue jeans factory left the country, and whatever job the other little boy's dad had was probably reinvented and might also be extinct.
The message here is both little boys must be educated for a work world that will continue to evolve, not the one that allowed their Dads to earn steady incomes.
There is widespread recognition this will require new approaches. Learning without borders is the idea public education must embrace technology and new ways to make material available to students.
That is the message former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise brought to a recent conference hosted in Atlanta by the Public Policy Foundation and the Conservative Leadership Policy Institute. Wise and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush launched the Digital Learning Council this year to focus on new strategies for digital change in education. How to integrate learning without borders into traditional settings that might resist new ideas is the challenge being addressed by the Digital Learning Council and like-minded groups.
Click here to read more of Georgia Public Policy Foundation editor Mike Klein's take on the virtual education movement and why he believes U.S. education must innovate or become irrelevant.

Tom Vander Ark: The Pivot to Digital Learning: 40 Predictions

The education sector has not historically been very dynamic, but this year things changed.
Despite the recession, we have seen more start-ups and more cool applications than ever before. More investors have joined the space, and the big guys remain acquisitive.
The pivot from print to digital learning, classes to students, seat time to competence is on.
Click here to find out how I think it will play out over one, five, and 10 years from now.

Michael B. Horn: A Letter to the Georgia Education Community

The state of Georgia is no stranger to online learning. According to the Keeping Pace with Online Learning K-12 report, 13,000-15,000 Georgia students took online course in 2008-2009. The Georgia Virtual School, a state-run entity under the auspices of the state Department of Education, boasted 9,793 enrollments in 2008-2009 school year. Georgia has full-time online charter as well, including the Georgia Virtual Academy, a K-8 school operated by the online learning company K12 Inc.that served 4,400 full-time students in 2008-2009.
Even with this growth of online learning in Georgia, many continue to see it as merely a small part of education that adds choices that may better fit a student's needs. That is certainly true, but online learning is much more than that. It is a disruptive innovation that has the potential to help transform the present-day monolithic, factory-model education system into a student-centric and far more affordable fit for the 21st century.
As a result, there are still significant opportunities for Georgia to do much more with online learning. If the state plays its cards right, it has the potential to provide many more students and families with quality choices for their education and transform public education in the process.
Click here to read my complete message to Georgians on how online learning is an opportunity to transform public education in their state.

Christina Martin: Union's School Funding Fears Unfounded, Study Finds

Online charter schools offer kids even in the far corners of Oregon the chance to receive a public education tailored to their individual needs. Yet many districts and union representatives oppose Oregon's virtual charter schools claiming they drain money from local districts.
Due to these complaints, Oregon's legislature will consider allowing school districts to deny additional students access to virtual charter schools if 3 percent of the district's students have already enrolled in an online option.
But a report released earlier this month by the Cascade Policy Institute shows that these fears are unfounded. Overall, online school have had little impact on spending and actually can allow district to spend more per student.
Unlike ordinary public schools, online charters do not receive local funding and they receive substantially less per-student funding than traditional public schools. That means a student to an online charter school usually enables the student's home district, and the charter school's sponsoring district, to spend more money per remaining traditional public school student.
While virtual charters have little financial impact on school districts, they have a huge impact on each child who thrives in an online school. Instead of talking about limiting options further, legislators, district officials, and union members should celebrate success and look for ways to increase kids' educational opportunities.
Click here to read the full report.

Guest Commentary: Chris Sturgis and Susan Patrick--When Failure is not an Option

Explorations into next generation learning are sweeping across the country. Technological advancements are opening up new educational opportunities that emphasize personalized, student-centered, performance-based, anytime,anywhere educational opportunities.
In other words, it is time to turn away from the Carnegie unit and embrace competency-based pathways.
Competency-based policy is best described as flexibility in awarding credit or defined as an alternative to the Carnegie unit. Yet, this does not capture the depth of the transformation of our education system from a seat-time based system (Carnegie) to a learning-based system (competency pathway).
Competency-based learning follow these simple principles:

• Students advance upon mastery.
• Explicit and measurable learning objectives empower students.
• Assessment is a meaningful and positive learning experience for students.

States leading the development of policies to allow competency-based pathways include New Hampshire, Oregon, Ohio, and Alabama, to name a few. Evidence from the early innovators—including Diploma Plus, Chugach Alaska School District, Florida Virtual School, Re-inventing Schools Coalition (RISC), and Equity and Achievement for Standards-based Learning Institute (EASL)—are encouraging.
Yet, there is a dearth of formal documentation, research, or evaluation on competency based approaches.Elimination of seat-time regulations is too simplistic of a solution.
Creating a culture of continuous improvement is one of the keys to successfully implementing a competency-based educational environment.
Click here for the executive summary of When Failure is not an Option: Designing Competency-Based Pathways for Next Generation Learning.
Click here for the complete report.

Tom Vander Ark: Back of the Envelope Calculation on U.S. Adoption rate of Blended Learning

Here's my thinking.
Home schooling will double to more than 3 million students.
Virtual schools (mostly charter) will see full time enrollments climb to 1.5 million.
With home education, that’s almost 5 million kids educated at home, or nearly 10 percent.
New blended schools, mostly charters, will serve more than 1 million kids.
A couple chains like Rocketship will serve a couple hundred thousand kids.
There's more to my pencil calculations, including a chart and a graph.
Click here to read more and tell me what you think.

Guest Commentary: The Hechinger Report--Do Online Credit Recovery Courses Work?

The Hechinger Report was launched earlier this year as a nonprofit news organization producing in-depth reports on education. It's goal is to fill the reporting gaps created during the downsizing of traditional news media outlets.
This month, Hechinger reporters have turned their attention to Solving the Dropout Problem?The article's focus is on the role that online credit recovery programs play in reducing dropout rates.
Online credit recovery, that is allowing students who have failed a class to retake it and "recover" the credit toward graduation, is gaining in popularity. The reasons are simple.

• Online "cassrooms" can go where the students are--in storefronts, in malls, at home.
• Older students, who may not fit in at a traditional high school with younger students, can take the classes any where, any time.
• The cost for online recovery classes is less, a big plus for school districts in this cash-strapped age.

The Hechinger Report article questions the rigor in these online courses and whether these courses can reduce dropout numbers. "Questions remain over whether credit recovery effectively mirrors the difficulty and quality of traditional courses in all school districts. Almost no research exists on how much, or how little, students learn in credit-recovery courses," according to the report.
Click here to read the complete article.

Tom Vander Ark: Blended Learning Update

Most secondary schools will soon be blended and that’s good news for students.
What is "blended learning"? In the K-12 context. my definition of blended learning is:

1. Shifting instructional responsibility for at least a portion of the day to an online or computer-based environment.
2. Boosting learning, staffing and/or facilitating productivity.

By decade end, most secondary students will do most of their learning online and most will attend a school that is at least partially blended. The shift from print to digital and classes to students will allow more students to graduate from high school in three years with one year of college credit.
Click here to read more of my thoughts on blended learning and why I believe that as tools and platforms get more sophisticated we’ll see blends that increasingly customize the rate and mode of learning experience for every student.