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EDITORIAL
Virtual High School: District program appears to be working
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Some kinds of education reform need not involve political battles between unions and legislators. Some reforms involve rethinking how and where teachers and students interact, and creating new, more efficient learning opportunities through technology.
New Clark County School District Superintendent Dwight Jones is fully behind such reforms and rightly sees the Internet as a tool to not only improve the graduation prospects of credit-deficient students, but provide gifted and motivated teens with opportunities to achieve their potential.
Virtual High School is growing, the Review-Journal's Trevon Milliard reported Sunday. The 7-year-old program has 12,000 students this year and a goal of enrolling 30,000 by next year.
For the vast majority of those students, online classes give them a chance to retake courses they've failed. For years, high school campuses have struggled to provide enough makeup classes to the students who need them. Putting these teens in classrooms before school, after school and during summers has proved inflexible and expensive.
Now more students are being encouraged to take such classes through Virtual High. The online format might seem impersonal, but it holds students and teachers plenty accountable. Students must motivate themselves to work through the material. Teachers are available via phone, email and text messaging, and they provide personal instruction for struggling students. Meanwhile, district administrators have the ability to log into any class at any time from their desks to verify progress.
Virtual High also has 150 full-time students. Among them are Heather Chmura, who takes classes around her schedule helping manage her family's three businesses. "People say we're the anti-social kids, but look at me," Ms. Chmura said during a break at the Wetzel's Pretzels franchise she runs. "I'm dealing with people all day."
Jared Smith, a 15-year-old former Boulder City High School student, switched to Virtual High to better manage the practice schedule of his year-round swimming club. "There's a lot of wasted time in school," he said.
These students aren't slackers, and the test scores for Virtual High's full-time students reflect that. Last year, all of them passed the High School Proficiency Exam's reading test, 90 percent passed the science test and 87 percent passed the math test, all well above school district and state passing rates of roughly 70 percent. The school was one of only 10 in Clark County recognized as a high-achieving campus under No Child Left Behind standards.
With online classes becoming more common at colleges and universities, it's imperative that the Clark County School District offer more such alternatives to students serious about graduating and getting on with their lives. Online courses for middle school students are in development.
Virtual High is a growing success story for the school district. It embodies Mr. Jones' belief that the district not merely raise expectations for its worst students, but its best as well.
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@gbigs. Public schools take every student, no matter what. Catholic and private schools can pick and choose shich students they admit. CCSD teachers can be fired per the contract, but it requires documentation and due process from the administrators. How is that strangling the schools system? Are you saying the all of the teachers in CCSD are incompetent? If all the teachers are incompetent, then why are schools making AYP, and why are the schools with the most at risk students making AYP at a better rate than comprehensive schools? ESD has 23 high schools, get the most at risk students and had 18 schools make AYP.
gbigs-----Tool
@tanker. tenure MEANS YOU CANNOT BE FIRED, without extraordinary, costly and time consuming process. the unions strangle the schools by protecting the incompetent. if you want a comparison of results. just compare catholic schools, where there are no unions, and public schools....the success of private schools proves the absence of unions is all the difference.
@gbigs. I have read the current contract between CCSD and CCEA and can find no information that says that teachers can't be fired. There is a process that needs to be followed by administrator. You didn't address the homework issue. How is it a teacher's fault that a student didn't do any work? School attendence is required in Nevada, so how is the student absence is a teacher responsibility? Last time I looked, parents had a responsibility as well. Just as a point of information, teacher pay in Nevada is among the lowest in the country as well as the per pupil expenditure. The major source of funding for the schools in Nevada is from the state legislature. Teacher pay for the past 10 years has not kept pace with inflation.
I enrolled my own son in an online class to obtain an Algebra credit. He was NOT deficient yet. The format was AWFUL; he didn't learn anything from the course itself.I enrolled him because CCSD doesn't offer Resource Algebra to our Special Ed students who might be able to master the content but need a smaller class sizes than 40. If CCSD ever wants to really solve its graduation problems, Sir Jones should go back to offering Resource Algebra and Geometry. Otherwise these kids will continue to give up rather than take an adjusted degree that is not worth the paper it is written on. Many children can learn the CONTENT just not with 40 kids in a room and with distractions! The only way my son could obtain the CCSD credit was for me to PAY a private tutor to teach him the material, which he learned in 1 hr a week at home. He then passed the HS Math proficiency. How many parents can afford $50.00 a week for a private at home tutor? I KNOW it was a MAJOR hardship for us. DON'T enroll in Virtual classes. There is NO actual instruction; unless you can teach your child OR can afford a tutor to teach the skills. It is a learn on your own and at your own risk. Ceertainly, my son didn't pass his proficiency from the Virtual Learning but from the tutor's services. What a joke, and he is part of their success. Just proves: Figures can lie!
@tanker. the first way the unions wreck public schools is teacher tenure. protecting the incompetent ones. unions have also raised the cost for public teachers and their benefits substantially, thus leaving less for the kids. public schools are a failure, not because kids have attendance problems, its because these kids are getting substandard quality from the unionized teachers.
Online classes are just another public education gimmick.
Even if all 309,000 CCSD students became virtual, public education expenditures would still INCREASE. You know, CCSD would find some other scheme to waste taxpayer money on.
The only thing government-funded virtual schools are good for is teaching gym. That includes the so-called virtual "charter" schools, which are basically just a scheme by GOP donors to pocket more public education dollars at the expense of teachers and other special interests who donate to DEMs.
@gbigs. Please explain to me how it is the teacher's unions fault when kids don't come to school, or when they don't do homework. Which teacher is making them do that? Or might that just be a parent's responsibility?
gittleDick, hasn't a clue - it gets old, your single stranded DNA comments. I am sorry you tree doesn't fork, but please stay under the rock you came from.
While online schooling is what is going to happen it is bad news government schools are getting on board. If they would just stay out of it, eventually parents would switch to non government schools that spring up and offer this. The market would kill government schools. So sad some government schools are inovating. Our best bet is the teacher unions block this.