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Student Interview: Penn Foster High School

March 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

High School Testimonials

“I owe Penn Foster a tremendous amount of gratitude and highly recommend their school to anyone looking to accomplish the same goal that I accomplished. Everyone who works at Penn Foster is great. They encouraged me the entire time.”

M. Kelly

Penn Foster High School Graduate

“”Penn Foster is a very easy way to learn material and it’s nice to work at your own pace. I am very thankful that I chose Penn Foster for my educational needs. I was accepted into College!”

D. Young

Penn Foster High School Graduate

“Penn Foster High School is a great program. The flexibility they offer is great if you have a busy schedule, children, and work full time. I just finished my high school program and I’m now looking forward to going on to college. Penn Foster also has very nice student services.”

A. Martin

Penn Foster High School Graduate

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Online program will help guide Okla. students through Algebra

February 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

An online pilot program to help eighth- through 10th-graders who are struggling with Algebra I is being launched at 16 high schools and 23 middle schools throughout Oklahoma.

About 10,000 students from low-performing schools are participating in the first year of the program, which is free to their school districts, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

“We wanted to reach students who are most struggling in Algebra I as they prepare to take end-of-instruction tests—one of the requirements for Achieving Classroom Excellence,” said state Superintendent Janet Barresi.

Teacher training is conducted by webinar and will continue through Feb. 8. Training is also free to participating districts.

“This is one of the state department’s efforts to assist low-achieving schools by providing additional resources to teachers and students,” Barresi said.

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“How to start a successful virtual learning program?

December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Virtual learning can help districts address many needs, such as filling a gap between courses a school offers and courses students might want to take but aren’t currently offered—and a new report offers insights on starting a virtual learning program from a number of seasoned experts.

Statistics indicate that more than 1.5 million students attended fully online or blended learning programs during the 2009-10 school year, and more school districts are turning to online instruction for its expanded curriculum offerings, flexibility, and cost-saving potential. Some experts predict that roughly half of high school courses will be offered online by 2019.

In “How to Launch District Virtual Learning,” a new report from the Blackboard Institute, 17 virtual learning experts agreed that getting buy-in from teachers, administrators, parents, and the community is absolutely essential to success.

The report’s authors interviewed a panel of 17 virtual learning experts, all of whom have led online instruction initiatives. Those experts agreed on seven important questions that schools and districts must answer before initiating or expanding a virtual learning program. The experts split into three categories, although most shared expertise beyond those categories: blended learning, course expansion, and professional development.

Those seven questions are:

  • What challenge are we trying to address?
  • Who are our champions?
  • What is our messaging?
  • How are we going to pay for it?
  • How do we get teachers on board?
  • How are we going to create and deliver the courses?
  • How will we measure success?

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“Online Schools Go Old School to Nab Cyber-Truants”

December 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Minnesota’s online schools have quietly persuaded county prosecutors to accept an expansive view of the state’s outdated truancy law and use the courts to reel hundreds of cybertruants back to class, but both prosecutors and educators agree the makeshift arrangement can’t last.

It’s important work, school officials say, at a time when enrollment in online schools is soaring, but so are dropout rates. Online students made up a disproportionate share of truancy cases last year, and virtual schools worry about a backlash against their industry if they are perceived as havens for slackers.

“It is very easy to become truant in online,” said Stacy Bender, dean of students at Minneapolis-based Minnesota Virtual High School, which has 1,300 students spread throughout the state. Unmotivated students can just stop logging in and then lie about it to their parents and within two weeks, they are truant, she said.

To catch online truants, Bender and her colleagues in online schools in Minnesota use mathematical formulas that compare the hours spent on online lessons and academic progress. The formula allows for high achievers who work quickly, while catching students who are just going through the motions.

Bender has been key to spreading the interpretation, both in her current job and previously at the smaller Wolf Creek Online High School in Lindstrom. She runs a website, mnonlinetruancy.weebly.com, and has written on the subject for a trade journal and presented it Nov. 10 at the annual conference of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. She said she has also put 3,500 miles on her Honda Civic since January working on truancy issues in counties throughout the state.

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Online High Schools Attracting Elite Names

November 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In June, about 30 seniors will graduate from a little-known online high school currently called the Education Program for Gifted Youth. But their diplomas will bear a different name: Stanford Online High School.

Yes, that Stanford — the elite research university known for producing graduates who win Nobels and found Googles, not for teaching basic algebra to teenagers. Five years after the opening of the experimental program, some education experts consider Stanford’s decision to attach its name to the effort a milestone for online education.

“This is significant,” said Bill Tucker, managing director of Education Sector, a nonpartisan policy institute. “One of our country’s most prestigious universities feels comfortable putting its considerable prestige and brand behind it.”

As the line between virtual and classroom-based learning continues to blur, some see Stanford’s move as a sign that so, too, will the line between secondary and higher education. Several other universities — though none with the pedigree of Stanford — already operate online high schools, a development that has raised some questions about expertise and motives.

“From my perspective, colleges, concentrate on what you’re good at,” said Ronald A. Crutcher, president of Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., who added that he had recently declined an offer from a for-profit education company to join other small liberal arts institutions in forming an online high school in their image. “Be consultants, but don’t contribute to a trend that I think has some real problems.”

About 275,000 students nationwide are enrolled full time in online schools, according to Susan Patrick, president of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a nonprofit advocacy group. Most of these are free public charter schools, but colleges — private and public — have begun to get into the business as well.

The University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and the University of Missouri have awarded diplomas to about 250 and 85 students, respectively, annually for the last several years. The George Washington University Online High School opened in January.

Capitalizing on its reputation in foreign language instruction, Middlebury College in Vermont last year worked with K12, a for-profit company, to develop online high school language courses serving 50,000 students nationwide. An individual student’s course costs $749 per year, and Middlebury will share the profits. Ronald Liebowitz, Middlebury’s president, said that while “it looks like mission creep beyond belief,” the opportunity to raise revenue carried the decision.

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New Laws Take Aim at Bullying

October 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The issue of bullying rose on state legislative agendas this year, with 21 states passing anti-bullying laws—some of which expanded schools’ responsibilities to keep a check on any harassment that goes on among their students.

States set out to write clear definitions of bullying and to regulate school policies and responsibilities in reaction to the U.S. Department of Education’s stepped-up focus on the behavior, renewed public concerns following a series of high-profile student suicides, and an increase in cyberbullying.

The most far-reaching of the new crop of laws is arguably New Jersey’sRequires Adobe Acrobat Reader, which requires each school to have an anti-bullying specialist and to report incidents to the state.

Laws passed this year by other states vary in their scope and prescriptiveness, reflecting debate about the respective roles of state, local, and federal governments in dealing with school issues like bullying.

But anti-bullying legislation is a relatively new priority, and legislatures are still refining their strategies.

“In 2005, there were fewer policies, and they were all over the place. In 2011, we’re seeing greater consistency. … Some requirements for schools are increasing, and there’s greater specificity about what constitutes bullying,” said Jennifer Dounay Zinth, a senior policy analyst for the Denver-based Education Commission of the States.

States began passing anti-bullying laws in earnest in the early 2000s, according to Josh Cunningham, a research analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures, also in Denver. By late 2005, 17 states had passed anti-bullying legislation. By last week, only Michigan, Montana, and South Dakota had no such laws, according to the ECS.

In addition to states like North Dakota that adopted anti-bullying bills for the first time this year, many states that already had such laws in place strengthened or revised their requirements for schools this year, including California, where three bills involving bullying were signed into law last week.

New Laws Take Aim at Bullying

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Will Amazon’s $200 tablet spark interest among schools?

October 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Amazon’s unveiling of the Kindle Fire, a tablet computer that costs a few hundred dollars less than Apple’s iPad, sends a bright-hot message: The online retailer is ready to rival Apple in an effort to be the world’s top provider of digital content.

It might sound odd coming from a company that pioneered online sales of physical books in 1995. But since it first entered the digital market in 2006 with its video download store, Amazon has bet consumers will pay for high-quality digital content.

Besides the millions of physical items it sells, Amazon’s trove of digital content now includes more than 1 million eBooks, 100,000 movies and TV shows, and 17 million songs. This is about 1 million fewer songs than iPad maker Apple Inc. sells, but more than twice as many eBooks and many thousands more TV shows and movies.

Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos is confident that its content is what will help the Kindle Fire do better than others who have trotted out tablets.

“The reason they haven’t been successful is because they made tablets. They didn’t make services,” Bezos said in an interview after his company unveiled the tablet at a New York media event Sept. 28.

The price will probably help, too: When it goes on sale Nov. 15, it will cost $199, which is less than half of the $499 you’ll pay for Apple’s cheapest iPad and $50 less than book seller Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook Color eReader. This leaves buyers with plenty of money left over to spend on content.

“It’s important to remember at the end of the day that Amazon’s core business is retailing, and this is a way to sell more digital media on a sort of 7-inch vending machine,” NPD Group analyst Ross Rubin said.

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