As she sat with several friends in the school's lobby, 11th-grader Ebony Epps said she plans on attending summer school to make up credits and continue working toward her diploma. She described her first semester taking online courses, saying she would probably never do it again.
"All the classes were online - even PE," she said. "And a computer can't teach us math."
There's nothing wrong with online courses in and of themselves, but they're certainly not a silver bullet. There's a right way and a wrong way to implement them, and this was definitely the wrong way.
I also note that WASC gave the school a 3 year accreditation. If that doesn't show the pedagogical/ideological bent of WASC, I don't know what can.
2 comments:
Kids think that because the online things they do for fun are easy that online classes are easy. Not so fast. Online classes require a certain amount of responsibility because nobody is there to make you do the work. This is a huge downfall for many college students who try to make up credits this way. And the students I have had who have done credit recovery via computers do not have the depth of knowledge they would get in the classroom. But politicians like it because they can point to computer labs and say they have done something for education.
And more and more often, online classes are being used to cover a guidance counselor who doesn't want to do the work necessary for schedule changes. VHS is easier (for the school, not the student) and it's cheaper because you can dump a teacher.
Post a Comment