West Virginia Virtual School and onTargetWV Helping Students Graduate

West Virginia Virtual School is helping more at-risk students from dropping out of school to complete their educations and earn a diploma, the West Virginia Board of Education learned Wednesday.

The West Virginia Virtual School provides credit recovery courses through the onTargetWV program. The classes, piloted in 2010-2011 and in 2011-2012, give West Virginia high school students the opportunity to recover lost credit through flexible scheduling, online coursework and the virtual school. During the pilot, student enrollment in the West Virginia Virtual School jumped from 1,980 to 2,083.

“Students as early as sixth grade can be identified as being at risk of not completing high school,” said state Superintendent of Schools Jorea Marple. “These students need opportunities and alternatives to stay on the pathway to high school graduation. West Virginia Virtual School is part of the solution.”

The virtual school is aiding other students as well with its blended Spanish courses. Through these classes, West Virginia educators co-teach in about 40 West Virginia schools, serving 90 classrooms. The program is providing Spanish instruction to schools that are unable to find a highly qualified world language teacher. A blended course approach also is being used to provide Cisco instruction to students.

The virtual school also is helping bring advanced placement courses and core course offerings to students at schools were curriculum is limited.

In addition, the virtual school has created a partnership with the West Virginia University Office of Extended Learning to develop online math courses for the new high school math curriculum.  Development of other science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses will follow.

In partnership with WVU, the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) is providing West Virginia math teachers and content coordinators from the WVDE to co-develop the courses with WVU instructional designers.  Courses will be added to the West Virginia Virtual School catalog for 2013-2014 school year.

I hope these kids can find “virtual” jobs with “flexible scheduling” a because what they are learning is that you don’t have to show up and be responsible. If they can’t stay in bed until 11 o’clock and then do a little school work, they’ll just quit school.
It’s a real shame that society these days doesn’t demand people to work hard to succeed. But never fear, Obama will pay for your home, bills and food with money collected from people that still strive to succeed.

I’m afraid teachers are going to go the way of the telephone operator.. its called progress!

Online classes for all students, likely would be better, much better, than what is coming out of Charleston and being sold as “education”.

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