State education officials are drawing up plans for an Illinois Virtual High School, a statewide cyberschool that would give students from across the state access to classes now offered only in affluent districts.
The Illinois State Board of Education has set aside $250,000 to help launch the site, and officials hope to start pilot classes in the fall. The entire virtual high school could be up and running by the end of next year.
Educators have long complained about inequities in the nation’s educational system, in which wealthy communities lure the best teachers and offer a full complement of elective and advanced-placement classes while poorer districts scrimp just to provide the basics.
Evanston High School District 202, for example, offers six languages, including Japanese and Hebrew. Tiny Neoga in Downstate Cumberland County offers only Spanish–and only two years at that.
A computer-based virtual high school could erase some of the imbalances by giving students in poor and far-flung districts access to a robust curriculum operating without regard to district boundaries.
“I see this as a chance for our kids to be able to compete with the New Trier kids because now we will have access to courses we never had access to before,” said Bill Steichmann, president of the Association for Illinois Small and Rural Schools.
Nobody expects students to attend just the virtual high school. But the virtual school would allow students to take classes their school doesn’t offer by logging on from their high school library or even from home.
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Still, some educators warn that a cyberschool can be a poor substitute for face-to-face learning.
“A major part of the high school experience is socialization,” said Michael Carr, spokesman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals in Reston, Va. “So if we are indeed going to create virtual schools, it’s probably best that they add to the high school classroom experience rather than replace it.”
Under the plan, the Internet-based school could have its own teachers and would allow students to tap into courses any time, anywhere without setting foot in a classroom. Chat rooms would replace classrooms. Homework and tests would be done on-line. Even academic counseling sessions would be just a mouse click away.
“The possibilities are endless,” said Brad Woodruff, who oversees secondary education for the State Board of Education and is heading the virtual high school effort for the board. “A virtual high school could open up a whole world of learning for students across the state … and would be a positive step toward narrowing the achievement gap and lessening the digital divide across school districts.”
In higher education, electronic classrooms are no longer cutting-edge. Colleges and universities blazed into Internet academics nearly a decade ago. But what educators now call distance learning has only recently been tried at the high school level.
If state education officials approve the proposal, Illinois would become the sixth state to offer a government-sponsored virtual education to all high schoolers. Florida, Utah, New Mexico, Kentucky and West Virginia offer, or will soon offer, various configurations of a statewide virtual high school.
Steichmann, superintendent of Neoga Community School District 3, said his district has trouble attracting foreign-language teachers and, as a result, offers only Spanish. And the Spanish teacher doubles as the literature teacher. When Steichmann worked for North Wayne School District 200, a shortage of science teachers meant the high school’s only science teacher taught chemistry one year and physics the next.
“The reality is, not every student in Illinois gets an equal shot at a great education,” said Steichmann, who is a member of the Illinois Virtual High School task force. “A virtual high school could help change that.”
But critics warn that distance learning can starve students of the much-needed face-to-face interaction with teachers and peers and the group-learning environment. They also say Internet-based classes are tough to monitor and do not necessarily assure high-quality curricula and teaching. Moreover, they point to high dropout rates in college-level distance-learning courses.
“Caution is the key word here,” Carr said. “A virtual high school can be a good thing, but it can also be misused. The key is not racing forward because this is new technology and `Gee, isn’t this fun.’ The key is to create a system that improves education and learning for students. I think it can be done, but there are a lot of ways it can go wrong.”
The nation’s first state-recognized, statewide virtual high school went on-line in 1997 with development of the Florida High School. The school now enrolls 1,900 students in 65 districts and employs 30 teachers, a principal and assistant principal. It offers a full high school curriculum.
A handful of other virtual high schools have been established across the country, including some run by private entities. Some offer a full curriculum and a diploma, and others offer only advanced-placement classes. Some have their own physical school building and faculty, and others are run completely in cyberspace and employ part-time teachers.
Details of the Illinois Virtual High School have not yet been worked out, but a task force that includes secondary and higher education officials has been meeting since last summer to come up with a plan. The group hopes to present a preliminary proposal to state education officials by mid-July and have the site up and running by the end of next year.
Launching a statewide virtual high school will certainly take more than the $250,000 set aside so far, and Woodruff said the additional funds are expected to come from state legislators or private sources.
The seeds for the Illinois Virtual High School were planted last summer when educators from the Teachers Academy for Mathematics and Science, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy and the Central Illinois Distance Education Network met to talk about expanding distance-learning opportunities in Illinois. The state Board of Higher Education pitched in $30,000 to begin planning the school and is helping create it.
Deborah Hutti, co-director of the Illinois Virtual High School Consortium, said the group has spent months hashing out potential problems.
For instance, group members want to ensure that every Illinois high schooler has access to the virtual high school. That could be problematic in some urban areas, where home and school computers are not as prevalent, and in rural areas where high-speed Internet hookups are scarce.
The group also has not yet determined what courses will be offered, how the courses will align with the state’s learning standards and how on-line teachers will be accredited. They also must watch out for pitfalls, such as high dropout rates, class sizes that become too large and cheating by students.
Tom Clark, who conducted a study of virtual high school campuses across the country for the Illinois Virtual High School Consortium, said state officials need to take care when creating on-line programs.
“Every state that builds one needs to develop a defensible, achievable purpose for its virtual school,” said Clark, who works with Transformational Associates, a Springfield firm that researches education issues. “Increasing access for at-risk kids to advanced-placement courses is a laudable rationale but hard to achieve. … In a lot of cases, virtual schools will become one more way for kids in affluent districts to increase their options for advanced courses–unless a concerted effort is made to really address equity concerns.” Some fear a loss of face-to-face contact.