Posted on 02/01/2008 8:19:54 AM PST by reaganaut1
MILWAUKEE — Weekday mornings, three of Tracie Weldie’s children eat breakfast, make beds and trudge off to public school — in their case, downstairs to their basement in a suburb here, where their mother leads them through math and other lessons outlined by an Internet-based charter school.
Half a million American children take classes online, with a significant group, like the Weldies, getting all their schooling from virtual public schools. The rapid growth of these schools has provoked debates in courtrooms and legislatures over money, as the schools compete with local districts for millions in public dollars, and over issues like whether online learning is appropriate for young children.
One of the sharpest debates has concerned the Weldies’ school in Wisconsin, where last week the backers of online education persuaded state lawmakers to keep it and 11 other virtual schools open despite a court ruling against them and the opposition of the teachers union.
...
Many parents attracted to online charters have previously home-schooled their children, including Mrs. Weldie. Her children — Isabel, Harry and Eleanor, all in elementary school — download assignments and communicate intermittently with their certified teachers over the Internet, but they also read story books, write in workbooks and do arithmetic at a table in their basement. Legally, they are considered public school students, not home-schoolers, because their online schools are taxpayer-financed and subject to federal testing requirements.
Despite enthusiastic support from parents, the schools have met with opposition from some educators, who say elementary students may be too young for Internet learning, and from teachers, unions and school boards, partly because they divert state payments from the online student’s home district.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It’s not even the jobs—the virtual schools employ licensed, union-member teachers. It’s the $$$ and the control that they are fighting for.
You also don’t need layers and layers of “administration” (i.e. no Vice-principals to badger the kids about their behavior, etc.) That’s where the big money is spent.
Watch this one.....the Unions will try and organize the mothers that home school. They’ll try and get them to go on strike against the fathers and husbands. Kids will be on the picket lines......won’t eat their oat meal and toast. They’ll refuse to continue to learn more than teachers are capable of teaching them. The shame of it all.
“It’s not even the jobs—the virtual schools employ licensed, union-member teachers.”
Yes, but the student-teacher ratio may be substantially higher in a virtual school than a traditional one, which will reduce the number of jobs for teachers.
Public schools are low quality, high cost product. Who needs bricks and mortar to learn?
Public, ne, government schools are just ancient era, dead buggy whip, featherbedding factories. The sooner they go, the better.
This is a great system since we have to pay the taxes anyway. Plus there’s no guilt associated with gettin’ it on with your kid’s teacher!
Never forget that public education was first intended to indoctrinate children into tools of the state. Leftists will oppose any control given back to parents to educate and define the values of their children.
“partly because they divert state payments from the online student’s home district.”
Of course it’s about the money. Not about how to best educate children. If the public schools did a good job at a reasonable cost people wouldn’t be looking at other alternatives. If the end result is a well-educated person, we all win.
>>Why should a student sit before a teacher with a PE degree, teaching, say, the history of the Revolutionary War, when they can go online, and YouTube a lecture by the world’s expert at say Harvard?<<
So his parents can work all day.
The biggest problem with virtual public schools is that the children are still receiving an inferior education because they are still using the terrible textbooks that are used in the public schools. Virtual public schools might be a viable option for those parents whose main concern is keeping their kids from being “socialized” by spending most of their hours in the public school setting though.
I like it. It gets back to the basics. Parents are put in charge of their kid’s education.
We’re using K-12, it’s very intense and attacks learning from different angles. My kindergartener told me about the Andes mountains the other day. I was impressed.
The whole Home Schooling movement is a Push back of average Americans against the LIBERAL indoctrination and utterly inappropo “Education” they are trying to give our kids. I have to admit, I an seriously considering doing this.
Frankly, I'm not too worried about being oursourced just yet. And the competition might prove to be a good thing.
I'd say that the institutional controversy is mostly about money and headcount.
We used an "on-line academy" with our daughter for a year. She was enrolled in the Adams County (CO) schools for the program. For the most part we were pleased with the results, but it took quite a bit of oversight to ensure that she did her work; and according to our daughter it was evident from the on-line group sessions that some of the other kids weren't getting a serious education. And that's where concerns about "control" have some merit.
"Control" can be a legitimate concern, because the school district is held accountable for the performance of their on-line students; but they're pretty much in a position of having to trust in the efforts of people who are not similarly held accountable by the state.
Most parents in these programs take their responsibilties seriously, but some do not; and the district's ratings and funding are affected by the latter as well as the former.
Less buildings, less free meals, less teachers, less administration, less sex and pregnancy (students and teachers) less special interest projects, less concerns for safety.....WE CAN’T HAVE THIS. WE MUST STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!
Though not quite the same, my boys are homeschooled and have been for years. They have learned more in less time than any public (or even private) school could have dreamed of teaching them. Most importantly, the curriculum fits my beliefs - not the beliefs of some pinko teacher's union.
If this online public education is even a small step away from the current leftist-controlled system, it's a positive change.
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