Bricks and Mortar vs. Computers and Modems: The Impacts of Enrollment in K-12 Virtual Schools

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carycruz Bueno
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Schools ◽  
K 12

Trends and Issues of Virtual K-12 Schools

2011 ◽  
pp. 1898-1901
Author(s):  
Belinda Davis Lazarus
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Virtual School ◽  
Virtual High School ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
K 12

Increasingly, K-12 schools are delivering instruction via Internet courses that allow students to access course content and complete assignments from home. According to a recent survey conducted by Education Week, 27 states in the United States have spent public monies to establish virtual public or charter schools. For example, over the past 5 years, the Florida Virtual School has spent $23 million and offered 62 online courses to over 8,000 students. Kentucky Virtual High School, which offers approximately 40 courses and enrolls approximately 750 students annually, has a budget of about $400,000 per. The Michigan Virtual High School is funded for $15 million for start-up costs with $1.5 million allocated annually for operational costs. And the Virtual High School International, a nonprofit collaborative of 200 national and international schools with a budget of $10 million, offers 160 courses to students in 16 countries. In spite of declining budgets, the growth of K-12 virtual schools continues at a rapid pace (Park & Staresina, 2004).

Lessons from K-12 Distance Education in the U.S.A., 1986-2008

2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathy Cavanaugh
Keyword(s):  
Distance Education ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Secondary School Students ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Effective Practices ◽  
School Students ◽  
Geographically Dispersed ◽  
K 12

<p>Distance education for elementary and secondary school students in North America has grown and evolved over a century from mail-based correspondence courses for small numbers of geographically dispersed learners to the millions of learners now using online courses in virtual schools. This article focuses on effective practices emerging from the modern electronic generation of K-12 distance education programs existing in the United States between 1986 and 2008.</p>

scholarly journals Accessibility that Supports Literacy: Virtual School Course Design Teams’ Instructional Planning for Students with Disabilities

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Frances Rice
Keyword(s):  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Course Design ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Virtual School ◽  
Instructional Planning ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Additional Support ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Contextualized Learning

As more students with disabilities in K-12 settings enroll in online courses, virtual schools and programs are working make courses accessible through stronger course design. When course designers approach the issue of accessibility, they must comply with legal requirements and mitigate the challenges many students with disabilities face for literacy and learning. These challenges include less well-developed content vocabulary and background knowledge, as well as inefficient skills and strategies for engaging with and comprehending online text. This study describes phenomenological research where course designers worked to meet accessibility standards and promote literacies online for all students, especially students with disabilities. Four strategies for promoting accessibility emerged as findings: (1) composing clear articulations of learning outcomes; (2) promoting personalized and contextualized learning, and; (3) planning for visual and audio representation of concepts. However, course designers may need additional support for addressing the interplay between literacies that promote access and accessibility features that promote literacies. 

Research on the E-Teacher in the K-12 Distance Education Classroom

2011 ◽  
pp. 1744-1778
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Murphy ◽  
María A. Rodríguez-Manzanares
Keyword(s):  
Distance Education ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Online Education ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Southern Regional Education Board ◽  
School Students ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Southern Regional ◽  
Regional Education

Compared to the post-secondary level, distance education at the elementary and secondary levels has received little attention from researchers (Kapitzke & Pendergast, 2005; Smith, Clark, & Blomeyer, 2005). This lack of attention is of concern given the rapid and broad growth of this form of education. In the United States, online education programs are experiencing rapid growth. For example, during the academic year 2005-2006, more than 90,000 middle and high school students were enrolled in state virtual schools in the Southern Regional Education Board, which represented a 100% increase in enrollments from the previous year (Southern Regional Education Board, 2006). While we might assume that research from contexts of post-secondary may inform K-12 distance education, Cavanaugh, Gillan, Kromrey, Hess, and Blomeyer (2004) caution against this assumption as follows: “The temptation may be to attempt to apply or adapt findings from studies of K-12 classroom learning or of adult distance learning, but K-12 distance education is fundamentally unique” (p. 4). The authors further observed that, although research in this area “is maturing” (p. 17), it has only been studied since about 1999. The current “explosion in virtual schools” (p. 6) creates a compelling rationale for continued efforts to conduct research on K-12 distance education.

Training Teachers for a Virtual School System

2013 ◽  
pp. 1398-1415
Author(s):  
Michael K. Barbour
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Virtual School ◽  
Teacher Education Programs ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Education Programs ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Cyber Schools ◽  
K 12

Online learning at the K-12 level is growing exponentially. Students learning in supplemental virtual schools and full-time cyber schools, using a variety of delivery models that include and sometimes combine independent, asynchronous, and synchronous instruction, in almost every state in the US. In some instances the knowledge, skills, and abilities required by teachers in this technology-mediated environment is consistent with what they learned about face-to-face teaching in their teacher education programs, while in many instances, the two are quite different. Presently the lack of empirical research into effective K-12 online teaching limits teacher education programs. However, teacher education programs still need to better prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to design, deliver, and support students engaged virtual schooling.

Virtual schools: The changing landscape of K-12 education in the U.S.

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1571-1581 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian N. Toppin ◽  
Sheila M. Toppin
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Schools ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Virtual School Startups: Founder Processes in American K-12 Public Virtual Schools

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Drushal Taylor ◽  
Delores E. McNair
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Virtual Schools ◽  
Organizational Adaptation ◽  
Virtual School ◽  
Financial Evaluation ◽  
Traditional School ◽  
Support Teacher ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Curriculum Decisions

<p class="3">Traditional school districts do not have a lot of experience with virtual schools and have lost students to state and charter virtual schools. To retain students and offer alternative learning opportunities, more public districts are starting their own virtual schools. This study was an examination of foundational processes at three California virtual schools in traditional school districts.  An analysis of the findings revealed that sites perceived the establishing founder, preliminary research, district support, teacher and staff selection, financial evaluation, and curriculum decisions as keys to the founding process.  The analysis also led to surprising conclusions, including the need for virtual schools to constantly change and adapt and the focus in this study of organizations over technology.  The findings have implications for traditional districts starting virtual schools. The study also indicates that changes in policy could reduce the need for organizational adaptation among virtual schools in traditional school districts.</p>

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