Virtually Educated
Starting this fall, some Chicago kids will be able to go to school without leaving home.
The virtual school provides all the supplies, including a computer. Students study from real books, do real projects and complete about 20 percent of their work online.
"If they finish early, we can move them into the next level in that curriculum,” said Virtual School principal Sharon Hayes.
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And if they have trouble somewhere, you can spend more time on the troublesome part. And if different children respond better to different instructional methods, different children can have different instructional methods.
Now what do the Critics say? Critics are those collections of names that reporters keep in their contact lists. Given any plan, a reporter can find a collection of people who will oppose it. Sometimes the reporter may actually contact these people.
Here, critics will insist that the children need to go to a real school or they will be denied the opportunity for socialization. I always wonder, when I hear such arguments, why the reporter does not ask whether being bullied (another favorite news item) is a useful part of socialization.
Critics will also complain that you don’t know how well the children are learning. Of course, those are the same critics who object to standardized tests in the classroom. And insist that the standardized tests don’t really tell you how well the children are learning.
Another problem that will arise is that the main service provided by the schools is to keep the children occupied while the parents work. That may be an essential function for some families, but it could be provided a lower cost and with less travel by unbundling the supervision from the teaching. Say, neighborhood facilities staffed by competent teacher's assistants. The computer does the teaching and the assistants provide the supervision.
Will that happen? Not until after the fight. Those critics have a vested interest in the status quo. Somebody wants to move their cheese and they don’t know any other cheese source.
The virtual school provides all the supplies, including a computer. Students study from real books, do real projects and complete about 20 percent of their work online.
"If they finish early, we can move them into the next level in that curriculum,” said Virtual School principal Sharon Hayes.
-------------------------
And if they have trouble somewhere, you can spend more time on the troublesome part. And if different children respond better to different instructional methods, different children can have different instructional methods.
Now what do the Critics say? Critics are those collections of names that reporters keep in their contact lists. Given any plan, a reporter can find a collection of people who will oppose it. Sometimes the reporter may actually contact these people.
Here, critics will insist that the children need to go to a real school or they will be denied the opportunity for socialization. I always wonder, when I hear such arguments, why the reporter does not ask whether being bullied (another favorite news item) is a useful part of socialization.
Critics will also complain that you don’t know how well the children are learning. Of course, those are the same critics who object to standardized tests in the classroom. And insist that the standardized tests don’t really tell you how well the children are learning.
Another problem that will arise is that the main service provided by the schools is to keep the children occupied while the parents work. That may be an essential function for some families, but it could be provided a lower cost and with less travel by unbundling the supervision from the teaching. Say, neighborhood facilities staffed by competent teacher's assistants. The computer does the teaching and the assistants provide the supervision.
Will that happen? Not until after the fight. Those critics have a vested interest in the status quo. Somebody wants to move their cheese and they don’t know any other cheese source.
posted by Selby Evans at 12:39 PM
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