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Inside the Online School That Could Radically Change How Kids Learn Everywhere

Emily Duggan, 16, expends most afternoons at a dance studio tucked behind a shopping plaza near her home in Exeter, New Hampshire. Blond and doe-eyed, Duggan has been dancing since she was two, everything from tap to ballet. She puts in about 12 hours a week at the studio, including class and rehearsals with the dance team for weekend competitors. Duggan also prides herself on get good grades in school. But two years ago, the stress of managing both dance and academics overwhelmed her.

She was depleted and losing weight. Some nights, Duggan faced four hours of homework after a day of school and dancing that stretched into the evening, I would just break down crying and telling, I cant do this anymore! she recalled.

Her mothers concurred. In January 2015, Duggan enrolled in New Hampshires self-paced Virtual Learning Academy Charter School, joining about 200 full-time middle and high school students and about 10,000 part-timers from brick-and-mortar schools statewide who take online VLACS courses a la carte. There is no entrance exam, screening or application required to attend VLACS, which is free for any New Hampshire student.

A week afterward, theres a follow-up bellow. Thats when I ask students why theyre taking my course, and what their goals are, told Kent. Some students simply need the course credit, of course, but others have a fitness target, struggle with obesity or are athletes who want to increase their strength or overcome an injury.

Students do the bulk of their learning independently. They make their own route through online lessons, digital texts and multimedia, and follow links to extra, explanatory resources. They upload all their work. Yet the students and mothers interviewed for this story said that they have more one-on-one interactions with teachers than they did in traditional schools.

Kent opened her laptop to show the dashboard that tracks her students. She can sort them by grade or by the last time they logged into class, submitted work or checked in with her. If a student has been inactive for more than a week, Kent will reach out to see if everythings OK.

That level of educator communication was the biggest change A. J. Rando noticed when his daughter, Olivia, a secondary school student and a black belt in karate, are participating in VLACS to accommodate training and competition.

Theyre proactive about it. If youre not attaining contact every couple weeks, the emails start, telling, hey, we should talk, told Rando. His daughter added that having teachers reach out, makes it less intimidating to talk to them. That helps a lot if you need to ask a question.

VLACS middle school student Olivia Rando, 11, stands beside some of the trophies shes won as a black belt in karate.Chris Berdik

Students are also matched with a guidance counselor and an academic adviser who help them create and follow a C3( short for college, career and citizenship) readiness scheme. The guidance counselors also spot red flag that a student is struggling and offer support during the usual teenage drama. Finally, tutoring is available through four abilities coaches.

Like all VLACS teachers, Kent has office hours most days, when students can log in to her online classroom, a Skype-like interface, for one-on-one chats about assignments or feedback on a recent test.

If students genuinely need to reach Kent outside of office hours, including evenings and weekends, shell oblige. She also responds to student emails instantly, even if her teenaged students arent always so prompt.

Being ever present is paramount to building that working relationship, she told. Students need to know youre there, insuring what they do, and that you care about and support them.

VLACS physical education and wellness teacher Lisa Kent at home in Amherst, NH, appearing over an online dashboard of her current students.Chris Berdik

Competencies

On a bright, chilly March afternoon, VLACS English teacher Bette( pronounced Betty) Bramante settled into a black leather recliner for an interview at her home overlooking Great Bay on New Hampshires seacoast.

Over the years, Ive come to appreciate the capacity of every learner to excel when you let them approach a topic through their interests at a pace and style that suits them, told Bramante, who began her career in the 1970 s as a secondary school English teacher. After all, I live with a perfect example.

She was referring to her husband, Fred, who was a poor student and graduated 206 th out of 212 in his high school class. After clawing his route through college, however, he had a distinguished career in education first as a secondary school science educator( where he and Bette gratified ), then as a long-time member and chair of New Hampshires country board of education, and now as president of the nonprofit National Center for Competency-Based Learning.

‘ When you think about virtual education, its often more about efficiency and getting more students through than it is about relationships.’VLACS founder and CEO Steve Kossakoski

In 2008, during Freds tenure with the board of trustees of the education, New Hampshire became the first country to necessitate high schools to issue course credit for mastering competencies, rather than for fulfilling the requisite number of hours, days or weeks of instruction( aka seat time ). That same year, VLACS welcomed its first students.

Competencies are learning deconstructed. A single course, such as algebra, contains several competencies, which blend some core knowledge, such as understanding linear equations, with broader abilities like applied analysis or problem-solving. Instead of a C+ in algebra, for example, a competency-based report card could show that a student has mastered four algebra competencies but hasnt yet figured out quadratic functions or basic statistical analysis.

In a competency-based school, especially a virtual one, semesters “losing ones” shape. While VLACS has guidelines for course completion time and students use an online chart to track their progression, theres no bonus for mastering competencies faster than your peers or penalty for taking extra time.

During the interview, Bramante sat beside her laptop, awaiting an upcoming discussion-based appraisal with one of her students. Shorthanded as DBAs, these discussions are held for each competency. Regurgitating facts wont cut it in a DBA, during which teachers ask follow-up questions to probe students understanding and the reasoning behind their answers and decisions. Educators also ask students how they can apply that knowledge. If a student falterings, the educator will recommend that she go back and review certain course material before taking the written exam. At VLACS, the bar for mastery is a test score of 85 percentage or better.

English teacher Bette Bramante at home in Durham, NH.Chris Berdik

Performance Pays

Another big difference with VLACS is its funding source. Most virtual schools get country funding based on enrollment numbers. More students entail more revenue, and virtually three-quarters of full-time virtual students are in schools run by for-profit education management organizations.

By contrast, VLACS, a nonprofit, earns its funding based on the number of competencies mastered by its students. Heres how that breaks down, according to Kossakoski: New Hampshire allocates charter schools about $5,600 dollars a year for each full-time student, presuming the student completes six full credits. A one-credit course is one-sixth of that total, or about $933 dollars. If a student masters just half of the competencies that make up a course, for example, then VLACS earns half of the $933.

That calculation also applies to students at brick-and-mortar schools who enroll in a VLACS course to obtain competencies they are missing due to a previous incomplete or failed course, or to access advanced courses not offered at their home school. VLACSs courses are accepted for credit by every high school and many secondary school in New Hampshire.

Some outside experts question that pay-for-performance model due to the risk that teachers may thumb the scale to speed student progression.

Not merely does VLACS funding depend on competencies, so do teacher salaries, to a degree. They are based on an expectation of how many competencies their students will master over the course of a year. However, teachers can accrue bonuses by surpassing those expectations.

Some outside experts question that pay-for-performance model, either due to the risk that teachers may thumb the scale to speed student progression, or because such a system may not fully account for differences in students and subject matter.

When youre teaching high-ability students, a lot of these free market principles will bring you success, told Michael Barbour, an education professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, who examines online learning. But if Im teaching algebra to at-risk students, the majority of whom have already failed it two or three times, then Im going to have big problems with pay-for-performance. What kind of educator will you get to teach those children?

But Larry Miller, dean of the school of education at Florida SouthWestern state college and a co-author of the 2015 Center for Reinventing Public Education study, pointed out that VLACS teachers get their base pay whether they reached their targets or not, and most bonuses are a marginal incentive, in the single digits as a percentage of total salary.

Nevertheless, Miller did find a different cause for concern over VLACSs funding model. Specifically, when students at traditional schools take a VLACS course, the country pays VLACS without subtracting any funding from the brick-and-mortar schools.

The double funding has minimise rivalry and greased the wheels of partnership between VLACS and the states other school systems. Eventually, however, it could be a budget buster. Thats something theyll have to wrestle with as their impact grows, Miller told.

Virtual Gets Real

Two years ago, the John-Zensky family crisscrossed the eastern United States for two weeks in their minivan, hitting up cities and sites.

It was epic, told Danielle John-Zensky, standing in the kitchen of her Pittsfield, New Hampshire, home, flanked by two of her children, DJ, 14, and Delaney, 16.

Before DJ and Delaney became full-time VLACS students last year, they were home-schooled. We do a lot of road journeys, Danielle told. We like to travel when the rest of the kids are in school.

During a typical weekday morning, Delaney spreads out on the living room lounge with her laptop and DJ uses the desktop computer in the kitchen. They check out the online chart that shows how theyre progressing in each course.

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If Im falling somewhat behind in one course, Ill start with that, told Delaney. Then Ill work straight through my classes.

Some days the children finish by noon; other days they keep going until virtually dinner. When the schoolwork is done, the children take off in various directions. Delaney volunteers at the library, runs as a counselor in a nearby nature camp and teaches skiing all winter. DJ runs snowboarding or practices with the local secondary school baseball and soccer squads on which he plays.

When the kids arent engrossed in these extra-curricular activities, theyre helping to scheme the familys next road journey. DJ recently booked the plane tickets for a trip out west where they plan to visit seven national parks.

As VLACSs director of guidance services, Kyle Cote, put it, Theres an assumption that virtual school students are closed off, online all day and they dont ever meet anyone. Thats absolutely no truth to the rumors .”

The school tries to keep students connected to things beyond their computers. There are a few clubs, for example, in which students talk online about shared interests, such as books and movies. Students also must do ten hours of community service each year.

‘ Students need to know youre there, insuring what they do, and that you care about and support them.’Lisa Kent, VLACS physical education and wellness teacher.

VLACS now takes these real-world connects even further by pushing the boundaries of how its students can master competencies. In addition to regular course lesson schemes and written exams, VLACS students can demonstrate competencies through a number of projects related to different topics and tied to potential career routes. For instance, students in Lisa Kents physical education and wellness course can assume the role of a fitness teacher creating a new workout class for a health club that will meet certain fitness objectives( the class itself is hypothetical, but the student must do the workout for real ); students make a presentation and craft promotional material for the class.

In another example, a student of Bette Bramantes presumed the role of a museum curator. Utilizing historical research, the student created an exhibit to show how two local households from different social strata would have lived from day to day in the early 20 th century. The project was intended to demonstrate the competency of drawing evidence from texts and applying that evidence to a persuasive argument. The student created a list of artifacts toys, books and household goods and diagrammed their placement in a museum space that would allow visitors to follow the families narratives, which she wrote out on placards with citations for her sources.

Soon, students will have even more ways to earn competencies. In the autumn of 2013, the education nonprofit EDUCAUSE awarded VLACS a $450,000 grant to help develop learning through squads and learning through experiences, which will debut by this summer.

According to VLACSs website, Teams will feature collaborative projects in which students team up to study and solve real world problems in realms such as the health of woods and alternative energy.

In Experiences, students will be able to develop a competency through, tell, interning at a tech company, starting their own business or spending a summertime in China. Students will work with teachers and academic advisers to plot out relevant projects that demonstrate their competencies, such as programming an app during the tech internship or producing an online tour in Mandarin during the summer abroad.

Ultimately, the scheme is for VLACS students to compile a digital knapsack of competencies they have developed through whatever combination of coursework, projects, squads and experiences they opt. As Andy Calkins, deputy director for EDUCAUSEs next generation learning challenges program, which awarded the grant, pointed out, these choices will be available for full-time VLACS students as well as part-time students based in traditional schools.

In the next few years, as VLACS implements this new model, there will be two million-dollar questions, according to Calkins. First, will the school continue to succeed on traditional measures, such as standardized exams? And second, will it help students gain a strong define of so-called 21 st-century abilities such as analytical thinking and creative problem-solving?

Answering the second million-dollar topic will be tricky, Calkins told, because the development of measurements and assessments in these areas is still very new.

If these new blended approaches succeed, VLACS could be a national model for genuinely personalized, experiential learning, according to Julia Freeland Fisher, director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute, who wrote about VLACS in a 2014 report on competency-based education in New Hampshire.

To do competency-based education at scale you need to use technology, she told. Imagine 30 students in a class genuinely moving at an individual pace and then having to test them all at different times in different ways.

Fisher said that while early online schools were all about access to courses unavailable at a students home school or for students unable to attend traditional schools, VLACS is doubling down on pedagogical invention. Thats incredibly powerful.

The real power, according to Danielle John-Zensky, is what happens when you put students in charge of their own education. Summing up what thats done for her children, she told, Theyve learned to enjoy learning.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and invention in education. Read more about Blended Learning .

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