From the issue dated October 22, 1999
Backers say specialized on-line courses can benefit students in low-income districts
By SARAH CARR and JEFFREY R. YOUNG
Distance education might soon be as fashionable in America's high
schools as cell phones and baggy pants. A growing number of colleges,
schools, and companies are delivering high-school courses over the
Internet.
Most of these "virtual high schools" aren't trying to replace
traditional schools, however -- cyberspace isn't filling up with P.E.
and band classes, at least not yet. The virtual schools focus mainly
on Advanced Placement and college-preparatory courses in the kinds of
subjects that many traditional high schools don't have enough
teachers or money to offer. Proponents say distance education can
give high-school students in poor districts opportunities for
advanced classes that have traditionally been available only in
upscale areas.
Students usually enroll in only one or two virtual courses, meeting
the rest of their requirements in traditional classrooms. The
financing of the courses varies, depending on the nature of the
program: In some cases, students and parents are expected to pay,
while in others, school districts or state departments of education
cover the costs.
The virtual-high-school programs are so new, however, that little has
been done to assess the quality and effectiveness of their courses,
even when great care has been taken to produce them. And some
observers worry that fly-by-night operations might emerge and try to
peddle inferior courses to unsuspecting high-school students on
line.
Among the states whose governments, universities, or schools have
created virtual high schools are Arizona, California, Florida,
Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, and Utah. The programs
transcend state boundaries, however, and many of the courses are open
to students anywhere.
In some cases, universities are leading the creation of virtual high
schools. For instance, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln created
a for-profit spinoff, called Class.com, to sell high-school courses
over the Internet (The Chronicle, April 16).
In other cases, schools or school districts are teaming up to start
on-line programs. A Massachusetts-based education consortium, for
example, is working with 220 high schools in 30 states to develop and
share on-line courses. A number of for-profit companies are also
developing or offering high-school courses on line.
Colleges and universities involved in offering on-line high-school
courses say they're not interested in taking over the business of
teaching younger students. Instead, they're focusing on offerings
that are hard to find in many high schools: remedial courses, such as
English as a second language, and courses for gifted students, such
as advanced composition classes.
"We would like to help educators do their jobs better," says John A.
Blair, the president of Nebraska's Class.com. "They know very well
how to offer their core courses. It is in the endpoint areas that we
have identified a need, and it is our intention to help educators
solve that problem." Mr. Blair hopes that Class.com courses and
curricula will help high schools deal with other problems as well,
such as teacher shortages and over-enrollment.
Raymond Ravalgia, the deputy director of Stanford University's
Program for Gifted Youth, agrees that colleges should play a role in
providing courses in specialized areas. He says both high-school
teachers and textbook publishers frequently are unable to provide
adequate resources for gifted students.
"Textbook publishers develop their materials geared at some
conception of the average student," he says. "They are generally not
interested in micro-niches of students, so this is some place natural
for universities to step in."
In the Stanford program, which began in 1992, grade-school,
middle-school, and high-school students can take a range of advanced
courses, including some for credit at the university. The students
and their families pay for the classes in the majority of cases, with
some opportunities for financial aid, but Mr. Ravalgia hopes that
ultimately more schools will offer to pay for the courses, which
typically cost $435 per quarter.
At the University of California, officials created an on-line
high-school program to help level the playing field for the state's
students. Students applying to attend the university's campuses are
ranked for admissions purposes on the basis of grades and
standardized-test scores using a point system, and those who have
taken honors and advanced-placement courses are awarded additional
points. But high schools in some areas don't offer honors or A.P.
courses, leaving their students at a disadvantage.
"What we are trying to do isto make Advanced Placement courses
available to students who otherwise wouldn't be able to take them,"
says Elaine Wheeler, the project director of the University of
California College Preparatory Initiative. "Our philosophy is that
nothing beats a quality teacher teaching good curriculum to students
in a classroom, but we are trying to provide something where nothing
is currently happening."
This semester, the university system is offering courses such as A.P.
calculus, honors psychology, and microeconomics to students at 27
high schools. The program is supported by a $4-million allotment from
the state. Organizers of the College Preparatory Initiative also hope
that the students who are accepted to the university will be better
prepared for college-level work as a result of the on-line classes.
Brad Huff, the science coordinator at the Fresno County Office of
Education, says that this fall, 24 high-school students in the county
are taking an A.P. chemistry course offered through the Universityof
California programs. Students from the Fresno schools study,
communicate, and take tests completely on line, and meet once a month
for hands-on laboratories.
Mr. Huff says he hopes such courses will help lessen the disparity
between class offerings at large and small schools, and help more
students from the region gain admittance to the university..
Meanwhile, some high schools are working on their own to provide
distance education.
One of the largest school-sponsored efforts is the Virtual High
School, run by the Concord Consortium in Massachusetts (http://vhs.concord.org/).
The non-profit group is working with about 220 high schools, though
only 110 of the schools are currently offering courses. The effort is
financed by a five-year, $7.8-million grant from the U.S. Department
of Education.
Participating schools must develop and teach at least one course on
line, in exchange for which their students can take on-line courses
from other member schools. Bruce F. Droste, director of the Virtual
High School, calls it "the barter system for education."
Teachers must take a 26-week training course -- on line, naturally --
before they are let loose in a virtual classroom. Mr. Droste says
that the cooperative effort allows a high-school teacher to design
and deliver a "dream course" on a subject of personal interest.
Courses on ethnobotany, A.P. statistics, or American popular music
might not be in enough demand at a single school, but they can fill
up quickly on line. Class size is capped at 20 students.
Companies are also looking to cash in on distance education for high
schools. APEX Online Learning, for instance, focuses on creating and
delivering Advanced Placement courses on line (http://www.apex.netu.com/).
The company, started by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, offers only
four A.P. courses so far -- calculus, statistics, microeconomics, and
U.S. government. Bryan Barnett, the company's chief academic officer,
says more courses are in development. Each costs $395.
The company isn't an accredited high school, so it can't grant
academic credit for its courses, though students are free to take
A.P. tests in hopes of receiving college credit for their work. And
APEX is working to form partnerships with high schools and colleges
under which those institutions would grant credit for APEX courses.
Last month, APEX officials forged such an arrangement with Michigan
Virtual University, for instance.
Another company, Archipelago Productions, is developing materials for
on-line high-school classes (http://www.archipelago.com).
The company does not deliver courses on its own, but instead sells
its materials to high schools or colleges that want to use them. It
is a division of Harcourt General, the textbook and trade
publisher.
What concerns some school officials and others is that the
possibility of profits might also attract questionable operations.
The College Board, which creates and administers the A.P. tests, is
particularly concerned that companies could promote on-line courses
as preparing students to take A.P. tests.
Says Lee Jones, executive director of the A.P. program for the
College Board: "It makes me wonder to what degree the College Board
needs to be involved with determining standards for delivery. If
people are going to use the A.P. name, we want to have some mechanism
in place to measure quality." Mr. Jones also says that the board is
now considering whether it should offer its own A.P. courses on the
Internet (The Chronicle, October 8).
Some aspects of a high-school education, such as science
laboratories, are more difficult to replicate in cyberspace than
others.
For one of the Virtual High School's courses in physics, the school
mails students laboratory kits so they can perform experiments in
their schools or homes. "We went out and bought a lot of large
fishing-tackle units" to package the kits, says Mr. Droste. The kits
include various tools and instructions for doing the labs. At other
virtual high schools, students must come to campus for a weekend to
complete the laboratory requirements of science courses.
Some
educators are trying a different approach -- setting up virtual
laboratories. Wolfgang Bauer, a physics professor at Michigan State
University who is teaching an on-line A.P. physics course this
semester, is creating interactive simulations for it, including a
Java program that shows students a video of a computer being thrown
off of a building.
Students can stop the video at any point and find out the speed and
height of the falling object at that instant. Students are asked to
plot this data and compute gravity's influence on the object's
acceleration.
"I think that's a very valid lab experiment," says Mr. Bauer. "The
only thing they don't get is the satisfaction of dropping the
computer five stories and smashing it themselves."
He argues that virtual labs can actually provide better training than
can a traditional laboratory. These days, even physicists do much of
their work with computer simulations, Mr. Bauer adds.
One of the students in the course, Brian McNeil, says that so far the
on-line labs have served their purpose. "They are quite simple by
definition -- the concepts they explain are simple, and not difficult
to understand in the abstract," he says. He adds that he may miss
having real lab sessions "later on, when the subject matter turns to
thermal physics, electricity, etc."
Mr. McNeil's only complaint so far is that the course is too easy,
covering concepts he had encountered earlier, in an independent-study
course. "I expected it to be rather more difficult than that," he
says, "given that it is the on-line version of a 200-level physics
course at a large university."
One college admissions official says she hopes the additional options
don't add too much to the pressure on high-school students.
"The bar is already so high for students," says Robin G. Mamlet, the
dean of admissions at Swarthmore College. "One worries that all this
will do is add to their burden, and they will not only take courses
at school, but also on line. There is a joyless drudgery in taking as
many courses as possible."
Ms. Mamlet acknowledges that on-line courses will be a boon to
students who do not have access to A.P. and honors classes, or who
want to take courses their schools do not offer. She said she would
be wary, however, if a student opted for an on-line course instead of
taking a traditional course that seemed more challenging.
"If a student chooses not to take the harder courses when able to do
it face to face, but takes them on line, that would be an issue I
would want to explore," she says.
Most leaders of the on-line programs don't intend their courses to
make face-to-face interaction obsolete. But the director of Christa
McAuliffe Academy -- a private, accredited, on-line school based in
Washington -- says he hopes to present students with a viable
alternative to more-traditional schools, even requiring courses like
P.E.
The director, Glen Blomgren, says he's spent 10 years working to have
Christa McAuliffe accredited as a degree-granting, distance-learning
program, and now he wants to make the curriculum "available to the
masses." Currently more than 300 students are enrolled at Christa
McAuliffe.
"My plan is to be serving a million students within five years," he
says. "We feel like we are poised on the edge of a huge explosion
with this."