Study: Virtual Schools Show Poor Performance
A new study from Raise Your Hand Texas says online classes for K-12 students may lower student performance and success and don’t provide cost savings for Texas.
More than 17,000 public school students enrolled in online courses during the 2010-11 school year, according to the study, called "Virtual Schools in Texas: Good for Kids or Merely Good for Profit?" In the fall 2011 semester, 6,000 students were enrolled full time in virtual schools through the Texas Virtual Schools Network, a group of school districts that share virtual courses.
According to the study, “Full-time online learning may have ...
Comments (4)
hans5162@ix.netcom.com hans
Naturally, the shameless right-wing policy prostitutes at the Texas Public Policy Foundation enter as the apologists for shoddy ineffective programs. This is competition and the competition with traditional public schools is losing.
Adele Roberson
Republicans are trying to destroy public schools because they are determined to privatize public schools and steal taxpayers money. Plain and simple.I would not be surprised if Texans fall for this scam... they fall for all the other scams Republicans promote.
Adele Roberson
http://www.texaswatchdog.org/2012/09/texans-carry-state-local-debt-load-of-9212-per-person-for-government-spending/1348758892.column
Texas taxpayers were on the hook for $233.2 billion in debt in 2011, the cumulative result of spending by local and state government officials. And 2012 will make it worse.
What do you think they are doing with all the money?
Rick Perry and his henchmen get on their pulpits every day of their lives and holler about the excessive spending by the Democrats in Washington. LOL
Alice Taylor
If young students could teach themselves we would have had self-monitored virtual classrooms decades ago. There is no difference between a computer and any other self-teaching correspondence course and we've had correspondence courses since the 1880's. If kids could teach themselves by watching a video lecture and taking an online test all we'd have to do is plop them in front of a computer and turn it on and if the state thinks that's going to work, I'm afraid it's going to be very disappointed.
I've see "virtual classrooms" (I'm a high school CTE and AP teacher) and I have high school students who take some of their courses online. A tiny few do very well. Most struggle. The ones that do well are those who have the self-disciplined personalities that mesh with this type of study. But most are just average kids who need a teacher to help them over the bumps and more importantly, are there to motivate and keep them on track.
I don't see how the courses are much cheaper to produce or set up, especially for regular high school classes in popular subjects if a certified teacher is sitting in the classroom with the kids as they work on the computer. The only advantage I see is for those students who need a specialty course, like AP Latin, that can't be taught in their school because of lack of teachers or enough students to make forming a class cost-effective. Then a computer course is better than nothing.