Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Missouri Virtual High School Partners with Kaplan, eCollege

by Michelle Rutledge
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/20734
Missouri Virtual Education program, in its plans to develop a virtual high school for fall 2007, has selected Kaplan to provide its online high school curriculum. Kaplan will partner with eCollege to provide a platform and software developer BocaVox to "provide course content, curriculum development, online instruction and administration tools," according to Kaplan. Northwest Missouri State University Center of Information Technology will serve as project manager.
"This partnership will give our small school districts in Missouri access to a larger range of courses, especially advanced courses," said Curt Fuchs, Missouri Department of Secondary Education's virtual education director. "For home schooled students, dropouts, home bound, or even credit recovery, Kaplan Virtual Education along with Northwest Missouri State University will be providing another option that Missouri students have not had before."
The online high school plans to offer opportunities for full-time and part-time students who need advance courses, make-up credit and those who have scheduling conflicts. According to Kaplan, some of the courses that will be offered include physics, algebra and biology as well as advance placement courses in calculus, literature and U.S. History.
Some 700,000 K-12 students were enrolled in online courses in the 2005/2006 school year, according to research from the Sloan Consortium.
Read More:
Missouri Virtual School program
Kaplan
eCollege

Virtual school enrollment ends today

Tuesday, May 29, 2007By Mark Bliss ~ Southeast Missourian
Students may still have a chance to sign up for Missouri's new virtual school after the initial enrollment period ends at 8 a.m. today, the program's state director said.
About 1,900 elementary and high school students had enrolled in the state's new online classes as of late last week, said Dr. Curt Fuchs, director of the Missouri Virtual Instruction Program or MoVIP.
The three-week online application process began May 7, but many Missourians are just now learning of the new program. "I have people calling just about every hour," Fuchs said from his Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education office in Jefferson City.
"We could accommodate about 4,000 students this first year," Fuchs said. Those students would be able to take online classes free of charge.
That's twice as many as originally anticipated, he said. The Missouri Legislature doubled the funding for the program, providing $5.2 million to fund the online classes, Fuchs said.
Initially state education officials thought that they might have more students apply than slots available. In that case, the state envisioned filling the seats through a lottery system.
But Fuchs said it appears a lottery won't be necessary. "It looks like everybody who registers probably will get a state-funded seat," he said. "I am really thrilled I am not going to have to turn anybody away."
The DESE expects the online school will offer some 14,000 semester-long classes starting this fall.
Through late last week, students had signed up for 7,000 classes. In Southeast Missouri, students have signed up for nearly 500 online classes so far, Fuchs said.
No classes are being offered for middle-school students in the coming school year. But Fuchs said the plan is to add middle-school courses in the second year of the online school.
The state has hired two vendors, Northwest Missouri State University of Maryville and Connections Academy of Baltimore, to manage and provide the curriculum, teachers and instructional materials needed to offer the virtual classes.
Northwest Missouri State is handling the online classes for high school students. Connections Academy, a private firm, is in charge of the elementary school classes.
High school courses account for about 60 percent of the online enrollment, Fuchs said.
"I am not surprised by that," he said.
Classes for elementary students require a greater commitment of time from parents, he said. "At the elementary level, that parent is a facilitator," Fuchs said.
To make it work with children of elementary-school age, parents have to be available to work with their children online during the day, he said.
"You really, at the elementary level, can't be a working parent," Fuchs said.
Parents have to sign an agreement for their children to enroll in elementary classes, he said.
Northwest Missouri State will hire teachers from all around the state to teach the online high school courses.
Connections Academy plans to set up an office in Jefferson City and bring in teachers from the Central Missouri area to teach the elementary school classes.
One teacher will be allowed to teach up to 120 students in a single course, Fuchs said.
Some 700 educators applied for the online teaching positions. Most of the teachers will teach full time in the virtual school, Fuchs said. For the online high school classes, part-time teachers will be hired to complement the full-time staff, he said.
The virtual school has drawn a lot of interest from residents of rural Missouri.
Fuchs said he expects a lot of Missouri's home-schooled students will be full-time online students. That would mean taking six courses over the course of a semester, he said.
Fuchs said many homebound students, who are unable to attend schools for medical reasons, are signing up for the virtual classes.
"This is just a perfect solution for them," he said.

First Round Enrollment in Virtual School Closes

Tuesday, May 29, 2007, 10:01 PM
By Bob Priddy
A new kind of school begins holding sessions in mid-August. The first phase of enrollment has just ended.
About 17-hundred students are the first enrollees in Missouri's virtual school program. Education department officials are pleased they have not had to turn any children away from the program and, in fact, might allow about 700 more to sign up on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Program director Kurt Fuchs says about 25 percent of the students are full-time, mostly home-school students. The rest are going to be part-time students. He says some students will take courses through the virtual school system to get around schedule conflicts at school. Others want to accelerate their learning or take courses not available in their own schools.
He says some parents are willing to pay tuition for their children to get into the program. Fuchs says he expects to start enrolling children in the tuition program late next month.
Students in the program will have access to course material 24 hours a day. Each student will have a teacher and teacher assistant working with them.
Twelve counties still have no students signed up for the virtual school program.

South Carolina Creates Virtual School Program

Charleston.net
5/22/2007

Home-schoolers and students attending public, private or charter schools can take online classes after Gov. Mark Sanford on Thursday signed a new law creating the South Carolina Virtual School Program.

The law, which will be administered by the state Department of Education, will allow students a chance to enroll in online courses that might not otherwise be available to them."It's an incredibly important step forward because, among other things, it represents another choice in education," said Sanford, who was joined in the Statehouse via the Internet by students at the Governor's School for Science and Mathematics in Hartsville.

Virtual schools are modeled after regular classroom courses, but students communicate with teachers online and e-mail their homework and other assignments. The law builds on a pilot program first offered last May with summer courses such as geometry and Web design available to students in 11 school districts.

The law will allow students to earn credits in Advanced Placement, remedial and specialty classes online. It will also ease scheduling conflicts, provide individualized instruction and help students meet graduation requirements.

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