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Does anyone know about this:
Virtual High School
http://www.govhs.org/
Our small middle school is now signed up to use their "gifted and talented" selection of programs to meet the needs of kids at our school who want more. Most of the on-line courses are not part of a regular middle school curriculum - things like:
Animation and Effects Section DR: Flash MX Basics
Career Awareness for the New Millennium Section DR
History and Pop Music Section DN
Programming in Visual Basic Section DS
But they do have regular courses like:
Algebra 1
Academic Writing Section MB
Their offerings do not form a curriculum and it appears that the value is for small schools that cannot offer a wide array of elective courses.
The problem is that our school is using it to avoid providing acceleration for the regular curriculum. Instead of replacing CMP for 7th and 8th grade math, they offer this plain vanilla Algebra I class using a Holt-Rinehard-Winston CD-based textbook. Instead of dealing with the real curriculum issues, they just looked for a stopgap measure.
Some of the courses look interesting, like music composition, but I know nothing about the rigor of the courses. It appears to me that the major attraction is the approach, not the content or rigor of the courses.
Does anyone have experience with this program? By the way, the course descriptions say that they are approved by NEA and
"Accredited by: NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association)"
What the heck does this mean? My reaction is that these courses are a good way for busy athletes to get easy credits.
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3 comments:
The NCAA accreditation simply means that credits earned through the on-line high school can count towards eligibility requirements.
Hmm, they have a CEO and a Board of Directors. Interestingly, the head of sales apparently ranks higher than the CEO and COO. Plus they've got a CLearningO. Has anyone heard of any of these people? Maybe this is a competitor of the William Bennett think (K12).
What the "Accredited by: NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association)" tag implies to me is that if you have student-atheletes who need to raise their GPAs to remain eligible for atheletics, you can use these courses to keep them on the football field or basketball court.
See the excellent Michael Lewis book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game for a similar situation.
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