Can Virtual High Schools Live Up to the Hype?
LA Johnson/NPR
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http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/can-virtual-high-schools-li...
At the end of Angela Kohtala’s leadership skills course, her high school students have to plan and carry out a community service project. Maybe it’s fixing up their school courtyard, or tutoring younger students in an afterschool program.
Afterwards, they create a PowerPoint with pictures of the project. This isn’t just a nice way to develop presentation skills — it’s mandatory to prove that they really weeded that garden or sat with those kids in the first place.
You see, Kohtala’s students are spread across the state of Florida, while she herself lives in Maine.
Kohtala teaches in the fastest-growing sector of K-12 education: the online public school. She is at Florida Virtual School, one of the biggest in the business.
The organization, which is technically a Florida school district, enrolls over 200,000 students across Florida and the world. The vast majority are part time, taking an average of just one course. But another 200,000 K-12 students are studying online full-time, most at the high school level, in at least 33 states.
