{"id":5595,"date":"2012-03-14T13:45:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T17:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/?p=5595"},"modified":"2012-03-14T13:45:37","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T17:45:37","slug":"explaining-floridas-booming-online-academy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/03\/14\/explaining-floridas-booming-online-academy\/","title":{"rendered":"Explaining Florida&#8217;s Booming Online Academy"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_5597\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 136px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"Julie Young, president and CEO of the Florida Virtual School.\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2012\/03\/Julie_Young.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5597\" title=\"Julie_Young\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/files\/2012\/03\/Julie_Young.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"136\" height=\"202\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Florida Virtual School<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Julie Young, president and CEO of the Florida Virtual School.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Education Week<\/em> has a nice explainer on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edweek.org\/ew\/articles\/2012\/03\/15\/25florida.h31.html?tkn=NTZFGVg4ptSadSBIoyKxkoAxReSPTXYKCWTq&amp;cmp=clp-edweek?intc=TC12TWT\">how the Florida Virtual School works<\/a>, including shortcomings in the way the school is funded.<\/p>\n<p>The piece also looks at school performance, referencing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/education\/k12\/article1209497.ece\">Tampa Bay Times story<\/a> that looked at whether any evidence exists that the school is out-performing district schools. Also worth noting is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/blogs\/gradebook\/content\/florida-virtuals-claim-2011-ap-passage-rates-based-fuzzy-math\">this follow-up<\/a>, which shows how the school jiggered its Advanced Placement test results to a more PR-friendly figure.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Education Week<\/em> story notes that Florida Virtual is an unusual animal in the world of online education.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The school only receives funding for students who successfully complete a course. That provides incentives to actually teach students, but penalizes the school for students who withdraw from a class prior to completion.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the school turns millions in profit providing classes out-of-state, licensing curriculum and training educators in online education.<\/p>\n<p>The results have pleased lawmakers. The Florida Legislature <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/2012\/03\/13\/wrapping-up-education-bills-in-the-2012-florida-legislative-session\/\">approved a bill<\/a> this year that will make it easier for students to pick and choose which courses they take and open up online courses to more elementary schools students.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s been your experience with the Florida Virtual School? Did you, your children or students prefer taking classes online? What are the pros and cons?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Education Week has a nice explainer on how the Florida Virtual School works, including shortcomings in the way the school is funded. The piece also looks at school performance, referencing a Tampa Bay Times story that looked at whether any evidence exists that the school is out-performing district schools. Also worth noting is this follow-up, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[1126,1125,1061,1050],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5595"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5603,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5595\/revisions\/5603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/florida\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}