Online High

I got this from the NEA MorningUpdate. My opinion: The Democrats have either not looked at the many good online schools out there doing superior work or they are playing partisan politics. See below.

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The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (2/26, Walters) reports that on Monday, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) again said that “he will veto any Assembly-passed bill to continue virtual schools that doesn’t include an enrollment cap.” The governor “defended his version of the bill that would cap enrollment at the current number of students, plus their siblings and any other students who met the Friday deadline to enroll for fall.” The state Senate “passed that bill last week.”
The AP (2/26, Foley) reports that during a hearing Monday, “Republican members of the Assembly education committee” continued their criticism of Doyle’s “last-minute insistence that lawmakers cap enrollment in virtual charter schools.” Doyle’s announcement “infuriated Republicans and one Democratic senator, who thought they already had a bipartisan agreement on a bill.” Proponents of virtual learning “claim the enrollment cap would deprive some students of an educational option that might work better for them than traditional public schools.” Many Democrats contend “it would be irresponsible to allow the schools to grow rapidly without knowing how well students are being served and the effect on public schools and property taxes.”

This site has Google Adsense advertisements. While this is good for our continuing to be able to offer this service, it is not without peril for you.

Why, you may ask? Because some of those “colleges” and “high schools” are diploma mills. While I try to stop them from showing up (and there is a process to do so), these are unethical enterprises. As with most unethical enterprises, they are quite good at being unethical. In other words, I stop one URL and they create twelve more. Some less obvious and some that are more obvious.

I periodically do look to see what is actually showing up on the site and stop the more obvious. But sometimes they look fine because, oh yeah, the unethical are good at being unethical.

How do we get past that? I encourage you to ask my thoughts on a particular school in the forum. The nice thing about asking there is that others get the benefit of the conversation.

Spring is in the air. Well, almost, and a young boy turns his fancy to college admissions essays. Which is as it should be. However, if it is too good, if it is too mature, if it is really written by a parent or a professional admissions essayist, this is not a good thing.

Some admissions offices even call this “DDI” meaning “Daddy Did It.” If it is too good, admissions offices have been known to cross-reference your essay with the essay portion of the SAT. Oops. Easy to forget that admissions officers now have a second readily available writing sample.

Dude, do your own work.

From the Boston Globe:

Sometimes it is the choice 10-cent word or two, a spot-on sublime or consummate, that is the giveaway. Maybe it is a series of suspiciously skilled turns of phrase, syntax the envy of Strunk and White, or some pitch-perfect metaphors that raise the red flags.

Jefferson Lara got into trouble soon after he started high school. His involvement in a gang fight while he was in ninth grade in Fairfax County knocked his plans askew. He was sent to a disciplinary program, spent a year with relatives in Peru and returned to Northern Virginia to stock grocery store shelves. His luck changed when he took auto repair classes and got a job offer from a Nissan dealer, but that wasn’t going to happen unless he had a high school diploma.

To find out how Jefferson fixed his situation with a combination of residential and online classes, read the rest of this Washington Post article.

Periodically, I head over to Elearners.com, the premier website for distance learning. I have been reading the blog of a 44-year-old man who has gone back via distance learning to earn his college degree. He likes it so much that his daughter is now attending this online high school.

One good reason for having his daughter attend an online high school was brought home to him this week when:

a co-worker told me that his son’s high school was on lockdown due to a suspicious man seen on campus, possibly carrying a large knife. This fellow staffer, usually a pretty calm man, was a little concerned about the safety and security of his son. In fact, he was corresponding back and forth with him using text messages in order to know more about what was going on at the school. His son told him that things were pretty much chaotic, with some of the students even ignoring the lockdown and leaving the campus right in the middle of the trouble.

Yup. When people want to talk with me about concerns about socialization with homeschooling/online high schooling, I tell them a true story like the one above. Yes, some public high schools are wonderful. And some, gentle readers, are not.

For those who are not sure they have what it takes to be a successful online learner, I would point you to my brand-new article in the Articles Section called, not surprisingly, The Successful Online Learner.

I most assuredly am willing to accept most publicity for my book, Complete Guide to Online High Schools: Distance learning options for teens & adults, but this one takes the cake.

You do, of course, see the causal relationship between online high schools and bed & breakfast inns.

I do appreciate it, though.

This survey was sent in my direction. If you are an online high school student, you might consider participating.

I am a doctoral student working on my dissertation at Capella University in the school of professional studies.

If you have question about my research or the survey I can be contacted at samgladstein@gmail.com

While the online high schools forum has been there for some time, it has not received much notice. I have, however, just today answered some questions there. I hope you will consider posting more and/or posting follow-ups to my answers. I think it could become a wonderful interactive resource and it is certainly something that I will be paying more attention to in the coming months.