Over the past few months this blog has discussed a number of issues related to learning, education and tutoring. Today I’d like to talk about a new development in education, online public schools. This virtual middle and high schools are popping up across the country and currently the provide an education to over half a million children.
Virtual public schools developed because of several educational needs that were not being met by traditional public schools. Some states developed a virtual public schools because they had classrooms that were over populated and they didn’t have the funds to build more classrooms. Other states, like Florida, developed virtual public schools to offer supplemental classes to help its students either take classes to help them perform better in their regular classes or to help prepare them for college.
Currently online public schools are under fire, not because of the quality of education they are delivering, but because teachers and regular school districts are losing state funding that is being diverted to these schools. This is the same controversy that has been generated around other types of charter schools. The solution to this problem is to evaluate the effectiveness and value of online public schools to determine objectively if they are worse than, as good as or better than regular public schools, before a verdict is passed on online public schools.
While online public schools are being questioned, online tutoring is being used with success by thousands of students and professionals each year. Perhaps the success of this online learning genre can be used to help develop more effective online math lesson plans and online science lesson plans.
