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Teach the Children Well
by Joanne Jacobs, Tech Central Station,
09/09/2002
For more articles on disabilities and special ed visit
www.bridges4kids.org.
It takes a heap of lessons to make a house a homeschool. Some
parent-teachers use prepackaged courses and curricula, and
increasingly they're looking to the Internet for their
lessons.
Former Education Secretary William Bennett has jumped into
this rapidly growing market with K12, a soup-to-nuts
curriculum designed for parents to use with their children.
Bennett's for-profit company, based in McLean, Virginia,
started in 1999 to target homeschoolers with online lessons.
However, cyber-charters - public schools that provide lessons
over the Internet - are becoming K12's growth market. K12's
partnerships with cyber-charters are attracting homeschooling
newbies, while drawing flak from militant homeschoolers, who
fear "virtual" public schools threaten their independence.
K12 offers daily lessons in language arts, math, history,
science, art and music for kindergarten through fifth graders.
New grades are being added quickly; K12 will reach 12th grade
in a few years. Elementary students are online 20 to 30
percent of the time. The rest of the time is spent working
with pencil and paper, drawing, listening to music, conducting
experiment and working with phonics tiles and math blocks.
Parents get a non-virtual box of textbooks and workbooks,
phonics tiles, math manipulatives, magnets, thermometers,
magnifying glasses and seeds, maps and globes, prints and art
books, music CDs and videos.
K12 evaluates students' math and language skills; children may
be advanced in one subject, but need more time in another. The
program includes frequent assessments to check students'
progress, and access to advice from an experienced teacher.
This is not a kid-and-computer system. K12 is a support system
for a parent with the time and energy to be a home teacher.
Sandy Johnson, a former public school teacher in northern
California, home-schools her three children, who are in
kindergarten, fifth and eighth grade. "I'd used bits and
pieces of different curricula, but I'd never found anything
that I could commit to" before discovering K12, she says.
Johnson likes the way technology is integrated into the
curriculum without crowding out other learning activities.
"There are programs that use technology, like Switched-On
Schoolhouse, but it's all technology," she says. "I don't want
my kindergartner sitting in front of a screen all day." K12's
design made it easy for Johnson to tailor lessons to her
children: Her son is doing a mix of kindergarten and first
grade lessons.
"K12 has a clear vision of what ought to be taught," says
Michael Kirst, a Stanford education professor who joined the
education advisory board. K12 also draws on the Core Knowledge
curriculum, developed from E.D. Hirsch's best-selling
"Cultural Literacy" series, and Saxon math. Louisa Moats, a
nationally known reading expert vets the phonics lessons.
Homeschooling parents pay $150 to $300 per course, $895 for a
year's worth of academics (language arts, math, science and
history) or $1,195 for the academics, art and music. That's
more money than most homeschoolers are used to spending; about
1,000 families are using K12.
However, K12 is free to parents who sign up for a
K12-affiliated "virtual charter academy" in Pennsylvania,
Ohio, California, Colorado or Idaho. It's also available in
Florida and Alaska to limited numbers of students, and is
being tested for classroom use in brick-and-mortar charter
schools in Indianapolis and Chicago. These cyber-schools
recruit study-at-home students, who typically get a free
computer, printer and Internet connection, and may get access
to counselors, sports teams, field trips and other services.
K12 provides online lessons and learning materials. Parents
may be called "coaches," but essentially they're the teachers.
Taxpayers pay the cost, just as they would if the students
were studying in a brick-and-mortar schoolhouse. Only it costs
less.
More than 7,000 virtual charter students are using K12. Their
parents have traded homeschoolers' freedom from regulation for
free computers, curriculum and support services.
When Lisa Snell enrolled her son in California Virtual
Academy, a K12 partner, she had to file emergency release
forms for medical treatment and an emergency contact form -
even though she's teaching her own child in her own home. "If
the children are entering public school for the first time,
they have to have a TB test within 12 months," Snell wrote in
Education Weak, her weblog.
She decided the advantages of a no-cost curriculum outweigh
the hassles.
But some homeschooling advocates strongly oppose virtual
charters. "We've made great grounds in the last couple of
decades on home school freedom and we don't want to see us
taking a step back," Tom Washburne, direction of the National
Center for Home Education, told CNSNews.com. It's not just
that homeschoolers may be lured back to the public system.
Hard-core homeschoolers fear the public will confuse
homeschoolers with charter students, and demand the same
accountability rules for both.
In the March-April issue of Home Education Magazine, Larry and
Susan Kaseman argued that case, warning the cyber-charter
students must take state tests and may have to prove they're
meeting compulsory attendance laws. "Cyber charter schools
threaten to change people's understanding of homeschooling and
undermine our freedoms by leading to greatly increased
regulation of homeschools," they concluded. The Kasemans urged
homeschoolers to lobby against the approval of virtual
charters in their states - even allying with public school
advocates who want to limit competition.
Johnson has seen homeschool groups expel members who sign up
for cyber-charters. She sympathizes with long-time
homeschoolers who fought for the right to educate their
children in their own way. "But the movement's supposed to be
about parents choosing how to educate their children," she
says. Johnson thinks many homeschoolers will choose a
cyber-charter that offers a high-quality curriculum. If
California Virtual Academy expands to her county, she'll
enroll her children.
K12 has plenty of home-study competitors, including the
no-tech Calvert School, and Alpha Omega's LIFEPAC, which
includes a Bible class, plus American Education Corporation's
high-tech A+nywhere Learning Systems, Keystone National High
School, Class.com and others.
But there are few options designed for home use and for online
delivery that cover the complete K-12 curriculum, as K12 is
supposed to do in two to three years. With Bennett, author of
the best-selling "Book of Virtues" as its founder, K12 has the
chance to develop a strong brand name.
Of course, there's another big-name, education for-profit -
Edison Schools, Inc. - and it's struggling to survive in the
marketplace. But, unlike Edison, which must fight vicious
political battles to implement its school design in the worst
public schools, K12 has a business plan that makes sense:
Invest in developing a curriculum and let educated, motivated
parents do the implementation.
K12 doesn't threaten the status quo like Edison because the
supply of parents willing and able to be home teachers is
limited. But it's likely that K12's comprehensive curriculum
will empower more parents to try teaching their own children,
and perhaps encourage more states to authorize virtual
charters.
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