Week #3

How has your thinking about online schools and online schooling changed since the first week?

Tough question.  I came into this course with very little understanding of online schools and schooling in K-12. I though that (and still think that) online schools are a great idea and now I'm starting to collect evidence to support this notion. The one area that concerns me, now that I've perused a few of the state and charter online school websites, is the lack of transparent around student outcomes. In some cases, it's completely missing. In other cases, the outcomes are really vague or aren't particularly meaningful (e.g. 96% parents agree that our teachers are helpful). I realize that some of the schools are newer so they may not be able to provide longitudinal evidence a student success but I do think it's important to provide some information. For example, in states where high stakes testing matters I would want to know how online students fared. Or I'd want to know what the average AP scores were? I think knowing this type of information might help a parent make a more informed decision about which online school to select for their child.