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This week’s CommenTerry examines the North Carolina Digital Report Card, an assessment of the state’s alignment to the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning (see Facts and Stats below).

The Foundation for Excellence in Education developed the state report cards in concert with Roadmap for Reform: Digital Learning, a comprehensive guide to support governors, state education chiefs, state lawmakers, and policymakers transform education for the digital age.

Bulletin Board

  • The John W. Pope Civitas Institute will hold its monthly poll luncheon on Wednesday, October 26, at 11:45 a.m. at the Clarion Hotel in downtown Raleigh. Dr. Michael Munger, Duke University professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, will be the guest speaker. The cost is $15. To register, call 919-834-2099 or go to http://www.nccivitas.org/events.
  • The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a Citizen’s Constitutional Workshop on Saturday, October 29 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Fire Station 109 in New Bern, N.C. Historian Dr. Troy Kickler and political science expert Dr. Michael Sanera will discuss "What the Founders and the State Ratification Conventions Can Teach Us Today." The cost is $8.00 per participant, lunch included. Pre-registration is strongly suggested. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.

  • The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a Citizen’s Constitutional Workshop on Saturday, November 12 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at Kaplan Auditorium, Henderson County Library, in Hendersonville, N.C. Historian Dr. Troy Kickler and political science expert Dr. Michael Sanera will discuss "What would the Federalists and Anti-federalists say about the current political and economic crises?" The cost is $8.00 per participant, lunch included. Pre-registration is strongly suggested. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
  • The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle-school and high-school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project website for further information.

  • Visit JLF’s research newsletter archive. No tricks, all treats.

CommenTerry

Virtual, online, or e-schooling is a type of instruction that allows qualified instructors to deliver lectures, content, and assessments using Internet-based communication tools. (For an example of how virtual schooling works, visit Khan Academy at www.khanacademy.org.) Individualized instruction accounts for much of the popularity of the virtual school model. In conventional classrooms, teachers often try to adapt lessons to meet the needs of students with different ability levels (called differentiated instruction). Yet public school teachers often struggle to replicate the kind of self-paced instructional environment unique to the online learning environment. Virtual schools allow students to review difficult material slowly and deliberately. Similarly, they may spend less time on content already mastered.

This educational approach is extremely popular in North Carolina. According to preliminary statistics for the 2010-11 school year, the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) had the second-highest number of course enrollments of any state-operated virtual school in the country. North Carolina’s virtual course enrollments (one student taking one semester-long course) reached nearly 89,000 courses last year. This was a distant second to Florida’s 260,000 enrollments, but it far outnumbered Alabama’s 33,500 course enrollments, the third-highest total in the nation.

Despite remarkable growth, the North Carolina Digital Report Card indicates that North Carolina’s online education opportunities fall short in key areas. Under state law, neither home school nor private school students are eligible for publicly funded digital learning. In addition, digital learning in the state is limited to individual online courses for public high school students. Middle and elementary public school students have very limited access to online education opportunities. Finally, twenty-six states currently offer full-time online learning programs for public school students, but North Carolina is not one of them.

State law does not prohibit the creation of virtual charter schools nor use of high-quality individual or for-profit online course providers. North Carolina even has a statewide process to approve digital learning providers. Nevertheless, the state-run North Carolina Virtual Public School is the only online school provider approved by the State Board of Education. State legislators and education officials have not warmed to the idea of allowing others to compete with NCVPS. For now, it appears that the NC State Board of Education will continue to limit online course opportunities for students.

As I wrote earlier this year, teacher certification and licensure rules have the potential to seriously limit the scope, quality, and accessibility of virtual schooling in North Carolina and elsewhere for years to come. Teacher certification requirements are among the most onerous rules enforced by state education agencies. These regulations, which are poor indicators of teacher quality, typically disqualify those who reside outside a state from teaching in that state. Certification rules also prohibit qualified but unlicensed individuals who reside within a state — such as higher education faculty, private-sector professionals, private school faculty, and independent scholars — from teaching virtual courses.

While North Carolina’s virtual school falls short in a number of areas (see Facts and Stats below), we are fortunate to have a Roadmap for Reform. Next year, the N.C. General Assembly should examine the standards outlined in the 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning and the North Carolina Digital Report Card and propose legislation that would make North Carolina a leader in high-quality digital learning.

Random Thought

I suffered through Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred this weekend. If you did too, I am very sorry.

Facts and Stats

Digital Learning Council — 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning

  1. Student Access — All students are digital learners (NC meets 3 of 8 standards)
  2. Barriers to Access — All students have access to high-quality digital learning (NC meets 3 of 10 standards)
  3. Personalized Learning — All students can use digital learning to customize their education (NC meets 3 of 12 standards)
  4. Advancement — All students progress based on demonstrated competency (NC meets 0 of 4 standards)
  5. Quality Content — Digital content and courses are high quality (NC meets 2 of 2 standards)
  6. Quality Instruction — Digital instruction is high quality (NC meets 2 of 6 standards)
  7. Quality Choices — All students have access to multiple high-quality digital providers (NC meets 4 of 13 standards)
  8. Assessment and Accountability — Student learning is the metric for evaluating the quality of content and instruction (NC meets 2 of 6 standards)
  9. Funding — Funding creates incentives for performance, options, and innovation (NC meets 2 of 5 standards)
  10. Infrastructure — Infrastructure supports digital learning (NC meets 1 of 6 standards)

Mailbag

I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].

Education Acronym of the Week

NCVPS — North Carolina Virtual Public School

Quote of the Week

"Today, less than 10 percent of students around the nation are experiencing the benefits of digital learning. States must advance bold reforms to make systemic changes in education to extend this option to all students. The Roadmap for Reform provides Governors, lawmakers and policymakers with tangible steps to transform education into a model for the world, a system where every student graduates from high school with the skills and knowledge to succeed in college and careers."
— Foundation for Excellence in Education, "Roadmap for Reform: Digital Learning," October 13, 2011.

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