New things

Once again this year I'm involved with our alternative education program. It's quite a bit different and, of course, there are some things that bother me about it. I'll not expand upon those issues and try to resolve them ASAP. What I'd like to look at are the good things. We will be nearly totally online for the student learning. A company, who will not be mentioned by name just yet (I've only used the system for a little over a week and would like to see more about it before I give a good/bad word for them) , sells seats in a program of study. Administrators can choose from lists of classes, levels and designs to put the students in. It really is a pretty simple process and straight forward. The lessons that I have previewed are well thought out and relate well to our standards. So far, the students that try are doing well, and those that click and hope are failing. Just like regular school, there has to be desire for success to occur.
Outside of this small segment of our school population, I see this program being used as a summer school/remediation system, which will greatly ease trying to teach earth/space sciences, biology, chemistry, horticulture, health, physics, physical sciences etc in one program. One teacher can manage multiple classes and levels without too much trouble. More importantly, for our seniors that really need to graduate, there are types of classes where they take a pre-assessment and test out of any part of a given class, speeding up their attainment of the needed credits. There are control and flexibility built in. For example, my current chemistry classes have built in labs. My students are not yet doing the labs, which I have turned off. The program supplier states that these labs are designed for the students to do at home with "ordinary household items". Then, the first item in the first lab is a beam balance that measures milligrams. I'm still looking for one in my science department! My department chair is really helpful and sending me one, but to expect "normal" students to own such a thing is a bit unrealistic. When I jokingly asked if anyone had one, I suddenly thought of what purpose this type of scale might have in this population...oops :) Oh well.
I am happy with the program so far and think that my district will see other uses. Right now we have students who choose not to be in school and are 'cyberschooled'. Our district pays for them to get a computer sent to the home and ( I think) pay for internet service. Then the students are left to themselves to complete the program on their own schedule. Last year a cyberschool student was thrown out of the program at the end of the 3rd quarter for not attempting any assignments. What happened to the computer? What was the net service used for?? How could a student be ‘in school’ for 270 school days without working not be reported for that long??? No matter what the answers, it was expected that this student be taught and try to get him passed on the next grade...in 1 quarter?!? Rough huh? By using this program and a team of core subject teachers in a structured setting with set times, at least we can be sure that something is being attempted and that the computers our tax payers pay for are being used appropriately. There are other options and possibilities that will surely be a cost savings over some existing programs. This company claims somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000 current students. Maybe they're on to something. I'll keep you up on this as I get deeper into the series, but definitely see something with potential.