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On-Line K-12 Public Schools

MaggieD

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I had no idea until I saw a TV commercial for online K-12 through the public school system. It's available in many states and free. Many of the schools will loan out a computer, printer and internet connection.

While these schools enable truly individualized learning and flexibility in pace, schedule and learning styles, they also come with the structure, administrative support, oversight, accountability, and standards tests associated with all public schools. These programs are full time, meaning that they replace a traditional classroom environment with a location that the family chooses.
  • Parents of children in grades K-6 can expect to spend 3-5 hours per day supporting their child's education
  • In grades 7-8, learning coach time typically decreases to about 2 hours per day as your child becomes more independent
  • By high school, the parental learning coach role continues to be an important, supportive element; however, a student is expected to manage his or her own time with greater independence
  • You can expect that your child will spend 5-6 hours per day on coursework and homework, which most parents believe is "just right."

For a variety of reasons, many children simply do not thrive in a traditional classroom. These students include those who:
  • Are accelerated learners or are bored with the pace of their classroom lessons
  • Need more time than the standard classroom allows to master concepts
  • Feel they don't fit in, or are being bullied in their school environment
  • Are easily distracted in a classroom setting or have a learning challenge
  • Seek extra attention that's not easily found in many classrooms
  • Are homebound or undergoing medical treatments
  • Travel frequently or are uprooted throughout the year due to family situations
  • Are pursuing their dreams and careers in music, the arts, or in sports
K¹² provides families and students with the tools and support they need to achieve their goals. Whatever the reason, our program is working in our partner schools for families across the country who want well-rounded, academically successful children with strong character. And their children are responding with higher achievement and a new excitement about learning.

What do you think?

http://www.k12.com/schools-programs/online-public-schools#.Ue80ko2kqdx
 
I had no idea until I saw a TV commercial for online K-12 through the public school system. It's available in many states and free. Many of the schools will loan out a computer, printer and internet connection.





What do you think?

K¹² Free Online Public Schools for K-8 and High School Programs | K12



We looked into it a couple years ago, and it seemed very promising. The chief ingredient is you have to have either a self-starter student and/or a highly involved and motivated parent to make it work.


We would have gone with it, except K-12 doesn't (or didn't) include access to vocational school....
 
One of my nieces had to do online school because she was too damn lazy to get out of bed and catch the bus after my brother went to work and mom wouldn't ever make her go, so it became the thing that kept social workers at bay. It was pretty much a joke. My 6 year old could have gotten at least a C on the non-math part because it had brilliant questions like a picture of a horseshoe, and a few other animals like duck and chicken and asked which animal the shoe belonged to, and my niece was in 9th freaking grade.
 
It's good and bad. I would not opt for it.

Good for those who struggle with physical maladies and who, otherwise, would miss more school.
Good for parents who want to homeschool but cannot fully do so for whatever reason.

Bad in that it might separate children from social interaction and physical components of education - it reduces education to computer time, separating things like coping in a new environment, learning how to be independent without parents 24/7, and learning other social and hands-on components.

Further, bad in that parents who suffer from various issues such as alcoholism or paranoid tendencies could more easily separate, negate, and sequester their children with ill intent. School is often the only way some abused and maltreated children are helped.

Out of sight - out of mind . . . which isn't not a "everyone does it" in my view - but some people do . . . and that's a concern for me.
 
It's good and bad. I would not opt for it.

Good for those who struggle with physical maladies and who, otherwise, would miss more school.
Good for parents who want to homeschool but cannot fully do so for whatever reason.

Bad in that it might separate children from social interaction and physical components of education - it reduces education to computer time, separating things like coping in a new environment, learning how to be independent without parents 24/7, and learning other social and hands-on components.

Further, bad in that parents who suffer from various issues such as alcoholism or paranoid tendencies could more easily separate, negate, and sequester their children with ill intent. School is often the only way some abused and maltreated children are helped.

Out of sight - out of mind . . . which isn't not a "everyone does it" in my view - but some people do . . . and that's a concern for me.

Great take on it, Auntie.
 
I wouldn't mind it piped into prison cells; they could pick up their GED / Diploma and hell I'd say take time off their sentence if they do because the more educated they are one of two good things happen: 1) They don't do more crime or 2) They become smart enough not to get caught.
 
Expect to see a LOT more of this in the near future. Hopefully the quality will also improve.



I'm tempted to say that middle school should be EXCLUSIVELY online only... 95% of kids seem to lose their minds and turn into hyperactive baboons on PCP from age 13 to age 15. Middle school seems to be a hellish insane asylum everywhere in all times, if we let them skip that part maybe they wouldn't be so fracked up in High School....


Dumb idea anyway..."Oh I KNOW! Let's take a bunch of deranged, awash-in-hormones, brain-dead, clueless savage teenagers and STUFF them all elbow-to-elbow in a prison-like building, while forcing them to do things they think are boring and not letting them have time to blow off steam, five days a week... and we will throw in lots of bells and too-short periods to get between classes to jangle their nerves, and intercoms nobody can understand.... yeah THAT will go well! We'll call it Socialization!"
 
One of the flaws I see is the time required by parents everyday up until high school.
 
While I'm of the opinion people should go to a real school (excluding people with special circumstances), this is good. It gives people more options for schooling, and one can't complain about that. I actually know a few people that did this for high school, Florida Virtual School, worked out for them.

I wouldn't mind it piped into prison cells; they could pick up their GED / Diploma and hell I'd say take time off their sentence if they do because the more educated they are one of two good things happen: 1) They don't do more crime or 2) They become smart enough not to get caught.

It would be a good idea for prison inmates, but I don't think it should shave off some prison times. Criminals are devious, wrecking their brain to finish some schooling is a small price for a shorter sentence to go back to doing what landed them there in the first place.
 
If the family is fortunate enough to have a stay at home parent I think it might work well in some situations and better in others.
 
I think that computers are going to be the main provider of information in the future, but I suspect we will still largely have physical schools and real live teachers, even though the rolls might be a little different.

The trend in business has been away from allowing people to work at home. Not because businesses want to be mean, but because they found that most people who were working at home didn't actually do much work.

Just yesterday there was an link on cnn.com to an article about a college that has canceled all of it's online classes because the failure rate was so high. My kid will be finishing up his first online college class this week, and if it were not for me constantly checking up on him, he would have flunked the class - he didn't do his first three assignments and came within minutes of missing other deadlines. Most college age students really aren't mature enough to complete an on-line class, let alone grade school students.
about getting up in the morning and being in a certain place by a certain time for a certain event.
 
One of the flaws I see is the time required by parents everyday up until high school.

That is an issue. Being a stay at home parent isn't as efficient for our society as real schools are.
 
I think that computers are going to be the main provider of information in the future, but I suspect we will still largely have physical schools and real live teachers, even though the rolls might be a little different.

The trend in business has been away from allowing people to work at home. Not because businesses want to be mean, but because they found that most people who were working at home didn't actually do much work.

Just yesterday there was an link on cnn.com to an article about a college that has canceled all of it's online classes because the failure rate was so high. My kid will be finishing up his first online college class this week, and if it were not for me constantly checking up on him, he would have flunked the class - he didn't do his first three assignments and came within minutes of missing other deadlines. Most college age students really aren't mature enough to complete an on-line class, let alone grade school students.
about getting up in the morning and being in a certain place by a certain time for a certain event.

Too many think of online Education as a cure all. It is often not what it promises. It requires a very motivated and organized students, and faculty that knows what they're doing. I think as a rule, both are lacking at this stage.
 
It's an option. It's either very easy or too limiting to have it just being modular-based. Good for some things, but for others.


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Dumb idea anyway..."Oh I KNOW! Let's take a bunch of deranged, awash-in-hormones, brain-dead, clueless savage teenagers and STUFF them all elbow-to-elbow in a prison-like building, while forcing them to do things they think are boring and not letting them have time to blow off steam, five days a week... and we will throw in lots of bells and too-short periods to get between classes to jangle their nerves, and intercoms nobody can understand.... yeah THAT will go well! We'll call it Socialization!"
No idea if it's related, but at 40 I still have school nightmares where I can't find the class or haven't studied for a test or forgot my locker combination. Apparently it scarred me for life :)
 
No idea if it's related, but at 40 I still have school nightmares where I can't find the class or haven't studied for a test or forgot my locker combination. Apparently it scarred me for life :)

I had those exact same dreams up until I was about your age.

When I was about 22, just on a whim I signed up to take the Officer Candidate Admission test for the Army. I passed, my buddy to encouraged me to take it failed it. I really wasn't ready to be an officer in the military, nor did it fit into my career goals, but for some really weird reason I went to OCS. I resigned from the program after completing just over half of it, after realizing that I just didn't want a career or that much responsibility in the military. Being a peon in the national guard was just fine for me. But to this day, I occasionally have dreams that I went back to OCS. I don't think that it was OCS that emotionally scarred me, it was the fact that I quit.

These days, I usually can't remember my dreams, but when I do, they are rarely related real life situations.
 
No idea if it's related, but at 40 I still have school nightmares where I can't find the class or haven't studied for a test or forgot my locker combination. Apparently it scarred me for life :)

Wow, same exact thing here. Also, another reoccurring dream is when I have a class I've forgotten about and just realize it at the end of the semester.
 
I wouldn't mind them because I think they work for specific students but only if they were not about market share, profit and return on investment. That is not the intention of education IMHO.
 
I wouldn't mind them because I think they work for specific students but only if they were not about market share, profit and return on investment. That is not the intention of education IMHO.

Do you think public schooling is fulfilling its mission of educating our children in an effective manner?
 
Wow, same exact thing here. Also, another reoccurring dream is when I have a class I've forgotten about and just realize it at the end of the semester.

It is usually a sign you have maybe too much stressful stuff on your plate. at least for me. I only have those when I have 12 things needing to be done ASAP and only time to do 3 of them.

I think that computers are going to be the main provider of information in the future, but I suspect we will still largely have physical schools and real live teachers, even though the rolls might be a little different.

The trend in business has been away from allowing people to work at home. Not because businesses want to be mean, but because they found that most people who were working at home didn't actually do much work....
I did that when I was working on my JD/MBA. The law firm I had worked for had trouble finding somebody to replace me who didn't royally irritate the clients I had worked with so they hired me to tele-commute and spent a freaking fortune on it beyond what they were paying me. Basically, they had extra business phone lines installed where I lived (fax and voice), remote computer access, and were shipping files back and forth (this was when affordable scanners were sketchy on the OCR's and not so readily convertible to PDF files). My problem was it got to the point that it was interfering with my school work because I was being bombarded from the time I got home until I left. I knew I would have like 10-20 messages waiting for me when I got home, as well as a big box of things to do from Fed Ex. I honestly was not paid for even half the time I was working but I felt guilty that they had dropped a mint setting me up, so I couldn't really just walk away without seeming like an ungrateful smuck so I suffered through it. Not something I would ever do again, though I do work at home quite a bit as the big boss man because two screaming kids is more peaceful than a bunch of phone lines going off at once, employees in and out, clients just randomly walking in without appointments because they just happened to be in the area, etc.
 
I had no idea until I saw a TV commercial for online K-12 through the public school system. It's available in many states and free. Many of the schools will loan out a computer, printer and internet connection.

What do you think?

K¹² Free Online Public Schools for K-8 and High School Programs | K12

I had a few friends who took advance math classes online because they were done with all the high school math classes, and they seemed to like it. I also know some people who took AP classes online to prepare for the test (the course wasn't offered at school). I've used a couple through MIT opencourse just to look at things I'm interested in. For them to work I imagine the student has to be motivated/ independent.
 
It is usually a sign you have maybe too much stressful stuff on your plate. at least for me. I only have those when I have 12 things needing to be done ASAP and only time to do 3 of them.


I did that when I was working on my JD/MBA. The law firm I had worked for had trouble finding somebody to replace me who didn't royally irritate the clients I had worked with so they hired me to tele-commute and spent a freaking fortune on it beyond what they were paying me. Basically, they had extra business phone lines installed where I lived (fax and voice), remote computer access, and were shipping files back and forth (this was when affordable scanners were sketchy on the OCR's and not so readily convertible to PDF files). My problem was it got to the point that it was interfering with my school work because I was being bombarded from the time I got home until I left. I knew I would have like 10-20 messages waiting for me when I got home, as well as a big box of things to do from Fed Ex. I honestly was not paid for even half the time I was working but I felt guilty that they had dropped a mint setting me up, so I couldn't really just walk away without seeming like an ungrateful smuck so I suffered through it. Not something I would ever do again, though I do work at home quite a bit as the big boss man because two screaming kids is more peaceful than a bunch of phone lines going off at once, employees in and out, clients just randomly walking in without appointments because they just happened to be in the area, etc.

Yes, I agree. A definite sign of too much on my plate and time to prioritize.
 
The response didn't answer the question...

Well, I did answer your question Paul, "Do you think public schooling is fulfilling its mission of educating our children in an effective manner?" but I'll expand on what I mean by the funding thing. We have some of the best public schools here (or at least in my neck of the woods) that even compete on an international level. The problem though, is our best schools are in wealthy areas where funding is plentiful and resources are bountiful. Not so in poorer areas of my state. Not even close to the same level, and our academic results show this gap. Another factor, of course, is parent involvement in wealthy school districts. You don't get the same amount at all in poorer schools. Many of the kids are not even having their basic needs met as in rest, nutrition, safety etc....
 
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