I found this via Derek’s Blog, which not having followed the link in the eSchool News item I posted last week it may very well be the same report, but he posted a link to a virtual school report in his entry entitled “Virtual Schooling and School Reform“.
And this information would have been more useful to post yesterday, before the event actually happened, but apparently they hosted a live online chat with the report’s author (i.e., Bill Tucker) yesterday afternoon, along with Liz Pape who is the CEO of Virtual High School and Barbara Stein, the Co-ordinator of the NEA’s Guide to Teaching Online Courses. However, the information about the event and the transcript of the chat can be found here.
Another resource that Education Sector has on virtual schools that I was able to find was an article called Virtual Schools, Real Innovation, which one of their people published in the New York Times last year.
Now I’ve had a chance to superficially skim the report that is linked in there, but not really to actually read it. Having said that I wanted to provide some additional information about those involved. The report itself was produced by Education Sector. They claim to be “an independent education policy think tank devoted to developing innovative solutions to the nation’s most pressing educational problems.” They also state that they “are nonprofit and nonpartisan, both a dependable source of sound thinking on policy and an honest broker of evidence in key education debates throughout the United States.”
However, it should be noted that this independent and nonpartisan group has been a strong supporter of choice in public education, charter schools, and a number of other “right” or conservative thinkers when it comes to education.
Just thought I’d throw that out there for people to consider as they read through this report, so that they can keep this specific perspective in mind when reading the context of this report.
Tags: virtual school, cyber school, high school, education
