North Dakota Center for Distance Education
Website: http://www.ndcde.org/Home.aspx
Facebook
Articles:
Contact:
Dr. Alan J. Peterson
[email protected]
701-231-6007
http://www.ndcde.org/About-Us/Welcome-Letter.aspx
Vision
The ND Center for Distance Education believes that intelligent use of educational technology can transform the effectiveness of student learning, teacher methods, and administrator decision-making.
Mission
The ND CDE's mission is to ensure that all North Dakota middle and high school students regardless of location have access to educational opportunities that meet or exceed expectations for
Location:
Fargo, North Dakota
# of staff:
14 in administration; 11 full-time teachers + 40–50 adjunct teachers
Full time teachers are salaried; adjunct are contractors. Having adjunct teachers allows them to be more flexible as enrollments go up and down.
Awards:
No specific awards since Dr. Peterson arrived three years ago. However, the school started in 1935 as a correspondence program and has long been touted for its supervised (vs. solely independent) study. They are frequently asked to present at conferences and to other groups about their methodologies, which are highly successful in student success and high retention. He's giving 2 sessions at iNACOL this year. He was asked to be part of a documentary about online education, but the State did not approve his participation.
Phone interview conducted on: 8-28-13
Questions
1. How is your school accredited?
The North Dakota Center for Distance Education is fully accredited by AdvancED, which brings together more than 100 years of experience and the expertise of the two largest US-based accreditation agencies — the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA CASI), and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement (SACS CASI).The ND Center for Distance Education is also accredited by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and is governed by and maintains the standards set forth by the North Dakota Educational Technology Council.
Core courses offered by the ND Center for Distance Education are approved by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for establishing initial eligibility certification of student athletes.
2. Where does funding for your school come from?
The State. He goes directly to the state legislature for funding. The center is classed as a school district for North Dakota, but they do not receive tax funds for tuition. Their budget goes through the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Funds are separated into general funds and special funds. General funds are those they are appointed. Special funds comes from funds they raise through tuition and the like. They must get approval from the legislature every year to spend this money. In North Dakota charter schools are illegal. They make maximum use of public funds to determine the lowest price they can charge.
They are on the property of North Dakota State University, but the university does not have oversight. They used to be part of NDSU, but now the State has exclusive control. They are part of the State's Information Technology Department for budget.
3. What is the tuition for your school?
The cost of enrolling in a course at ND CDE depends upon whether the student is a resident of ND. For example ...
The cost for North Dakota students to enroll in an online or print course is $100, which includes all materials.
The cost for out-of-state students to enroll in an online or print course is $250, which includes all materials.
Complete pricing details can be found here ...
It's set up like a university—costs are aligned with expenses; tuition covers expenses.
The cost for all 1/2 credit courses is $250. In state residents pay only $100 because they can use State funds to pay for the balance.
4. Is there an application fee?
They keep the fees as simple as possible. Because most of their students are supplemental and not full time, there is no application fee. However, students who do want to be part of the diploma program are charged a $45 fee to review their transcript.
5. Do you offer financial aid?
Discounts are available for NDSOS member schools and when students complete on time and with a C or above.
6. What grade levels do you offer?
6–12
7. Are there age restrictions?
They are accredited by the state for grades 6–12, but most of their students are in grades 7–12. In terms of older kids, they do serve students over 19. The oldest they've had was 83 years old. A lot of really bright professors come to the university with exceptional children. They sometimes want to enroll their young children in our courses but they have to go by rules of the state. For example, a student can't take an 8th and 7th course at the same time. They can take high school courses, but only if they qualify as a high school student. Some of the more traditional aspects of the instruction have been inherited from the correspondence/general education policies. Many of these policies are being reviewed to better suit the needs of modern students.
8. What is the current enrollment of the school? How many are seniors?
As they are beginning this school semester (Aug/2013), they have over 2000. By the end of this school year, their individual enrollments will be around 4,000. Because of new efforts they've made with the school, they are getting more recognition from the state. As a result, enrollments have grown and they expect it to hit 6,000 in the near future.
They have around 200 students with some type of affiliation to the diploma program. They graduate about 50/year. The majority of students take 1–2 classes/year. They serve a lot of rural schools. The push has been going back to their roots (correspondence school) to offer opportunities for rural kids. There are about 100,00 students in the North Dakota school systems, k–12. About 40,000 of those in communities with populations of 300 or less. In larger communities like Fargo, students have about 185 courses to choose from. In these rural areas, they have closer to
60 choices. So NDCDE's mission is to bring their offerings of around 185 courses to all students, no matter where they live. In many cases these smaller schools cannot provide options because they cannot get qualified teachers. With the online model, there is no reason whatsoever that all kids can't have access to high-quality courses.
In larger schools in ND, ACT scores show about 30% of their graduating classes are prepared in all four sections. In rural areas, that number drops to 16%. The students in their courses are way above even the 30% average. See more about this below. The reason they can be more successful is because they can offer differentiation/individuation—courses with teachers who really know and understand their students specific strengths and weaknesses.
NDCDE is also working to establish partnerships with small schools with decent access to the Internet. There is no reason they can't work together to offer students productive interactive educational opportunities, esp. with modern innovations. He's interested in studying the big data—putting kids together in social situations, getting kids with similar thinking together, encouraging connections between kids in a far broader than the geographical one they occupy.
Dr. Peterson is running the organization as a business, so he is thinking about different schemes and working to determine the proper capacity for the school. There is a maximum. They've been setting records for enrollments. In the past 8 days (just before the official school semester began in brick and mortar schools, they've enrolled over 1,000 students. They have working hard on the infrastructure to be able to support this kind of demand, and are proud that it is working effectively.
I asked, "What is your secret?" and Dr. Peterson responded, "process-based management." In setting up the infrastructure, they look at the input and output processes and determine how best to measure these. They set reasonable expectations at the beginning, and manage to the desired results. Their theory is that if you do that, you get an alignment that allows you to absorb change. What you are creating is a robust system that cannot be torn apart if something unexpected—like 1,000 enrollments in 8 days—occurs. Their mission is to make possible the most amount of learning for students in the shortest time possible. Their systems are designed to support this, and every aspect of their mission statement.
By designing systems with input/output in mind, you can account for little things turning into big things. We think toward incremental changes. If a system is correcting after the fact, trying to improve and make a stable system after learning about the need for change, failure will be the norm. The idea is to create the stable system using information about what fails and why in businesses. Most schools are built to manage classrooms—physical structures. This has nothing to do with learning. They focus on one child. The system, then, is reflective of the learning occurring for each child online.
9. Are courses organized in classes with fixed start/stop dates or are they independently paced?
Their courses are organized as 20 wk or 40 wk classes, which can start whenever the student wants. The student has the option at the beginning to choose the course as an either 20 or 40 week course. They can change until the 10th week, but not after. They must pay more money to choose the 40 week option because it requires more time from the instructor/students who cannot enroll because of enrollment caps/teacher.
They use pacing charts and there is a place in their LMS where students see how much time they have left and how much work remains. It requires them to make a decision. Most students take classes in sync with normal school semesters. Their classes are totally asynchronous.
10. What requirements do you have for teachers? State certification for high school? Virtual Teacher certification?
Our teachers are highly qualified in the area they teach and as a teacher. They have to meet state certification requirements as well as their own internal competency requirements. They have an NDCDE virtual teaching certification program. This program helps prepare them from the unique requirements of virtual education and trains them on the LMS. It includes "Best Practices for Teaching Online 1 and 2." and a 10 step process they have worked together to create. They can get credit from NDSU for this courses. They want their teachers to be successful. A number of them are teacher retirees who aren't entirely ready to let go of teaching. Their certification program helps them get a firm understanding of the online environment.
11. How are teachers paid? Are they paid only when students complete a course? Does that impact the rigor of the course or the strictness of grading?
There is a set salary rate set by the state and based on their teacher classification. They are paid monthly and get yearly evaluations like other State agencies. The legislature sets the pay rates and amount of salary increase allowed each year. It relates to how many sections of students a teacher has. For example, a full-time teacher has six sections of 20 students each. Non full-time teacher section load is based upon what the teacher feels he or she can handle. The teacher must want the work load. That is critical to our ability to have good teacher–student relationships.
12. What are your short-term goals for the school?
To survive! Seriously, our eye is always on fulfilling our mission. Everything we do we measure against six attributes. We are very serious about the quality of our curriculum and very diligent about stabilizing processes. We are constantly analyzing systems. For example, we currently have a 94% completion rate. That is very good for an online school, but our next two missions will involve putting systems in place that will increase that completion rate. The idea is personalizing and differentiating; having interventions with students when they are needed; and targeting instruction. We think in terms of a school of one student.
When Dr. Peterson arrived in 2009, there were 500 students. Three years later there are 2000. They are planning and then validating through practice. His staff are process leaders. There are five critical measures they monitor constantly. Staff models for teachers and teachers model for students. Their aim is always to find out what the key indicators are. If someone is off track, the staff member or teacher does something to solve the problem.
For example, students can take achievement tests to give us a sense of where they are and what they know and don't know, but the reality is that this process must occur on a nearly daily, real-time basis. So teachers become adept at oral testing; talking to a student when there is an issue. Relationships with students are critical. It is imperative to begin that first week. There is a lot of collaboration in the first 14 days. If a student hasn't started in the first two weeks, the teacher calls the student and calls the parents. Statistics show that if students don't get started within the first two weeks, there is a 50/50 chance they will complete the course, so regular interaction—especially at the beginning—is critical.
When analyzing the issues that cause a student to not be successful, there is never just one issue. If there are six issues, three will be behavioral and three will be academic. Our teachers must think about these things and address them. To help them, we offload as much clerical work as possible. There is no double entry activity. We want our systems to be as slick as possible so that teachers are spending their time helping students learn.
13. What is your long-term vision for the school?
I'd really like to work with the State to help as many rural communities as possible. I'd like train teachers so that they can stay in their rural community and provide high-quality instruction. We can train the teachers and pay a brick and mortar school for the teachers' time to teach students who live in other places. That way we can help give teachers full-time employment and keep talented teachers in smaller communities. Teachers often migrate to larger communities for better opportunities, but we need people in our rural areas and we have the same values for the education of our students in those areas as we do elsewhere.
14. Where does your curriculum come from? (Who builds it?)
We purchase our curriculum. We only want individual courses, not anyone's entire academy. We make them ready and put them in our LMS. We virtual from many resources, including the Florida Virtual School Global Academy, K–12 Aventa, Pearson, etc. We have a rigid process for evaluating. We use our rubrics to assess their course quality. The teachers have helped us identify 56 indicators of a good course. We have used these indicators to create the rubric we use to evaluate all courses.
15. How would you describe the philosophy behind your content development?
We use our detailed rubric to assess quality. We have a full-time person who manages the selection of curriculum and our teachers are involved. It is supply chain management. There are always issues with outsourced content. We do not purchase and abandon. We have regular conference calls with our providers. We pay attention and insist on improvements. We do believe that it's the teacher, not the curriculum, that really makes the course and ensures the learning, but the content has to be good. We stay on our providers for developer updates.
16. Who maintains your curriculum? How involved are your teachers in the course curriculum?
Our teachers don't do much with the curriculum. We don't want them to miss what we have them there for—we don't want our teachers serving as course designers. We want them interacting with students. It's also important to us that all students complete the same content. Altering content to address specific needs is like lying to students. All our students complete all the content requirements. Our personalization comes in helping them understand that content not in changing it to help them pass. So we have a committee to oversee new content selection and a full-time person to manage that process and ensure it meets common core standards.
17. What LMS do you use?
We use Brain Honey.
18. How involved are your teachers in student interaction? How do they communicate with students (email, chat, phone, face-to-face) and how often?
This is our focus.
19. How much professional development do your teachers receive?
Each teacher has $1000 to get whatever professional development they want. We have also paid for a Linda.com membership for each them. In addition, we give them access to three courses from the School Improvement Network. We also have a relationship with the University of North Dakota that allows teachers to self design courses for up to 6 credits. We own the curriculum UND uses. It consists largely of videos teachers can use to renew certification.
20. Describe the application process for students.
Students who come through a school, just purchase the courses. If they come for our diploma program, they submit a transcript that we evaluate and work with the student to put together a degree plan.
21. What are the most common challenges your students face?
Time management
22. What are the biggest challenges your school faces?
Getting money from state; meeting the many needs of students; helping students in reservations; there is no quick fix for old problems, but we are really trying. Our focus is on improving education in rural areas and on reservations.
23. How do your students compare to those in brick-and-mortar schools? (statistics on graduation rate, college acceptance, SAT/ACT/AP Scores, etc.)
Many of our students are taking our courses as supplements, so it's difficult for us to know. However, the ones who
are in our diploma program are way above average in the four designated areas.
We offer an SAT Prep course via Pearson My Foundations lab. This helps students raise their scores by three points or so. It shows what areas students need to focus on and offers learning paths. It's really good for math. It's mastery based.
24. How would you describe the students who attend your school? Honestly speaking, what would you say brings most of your students to your school? Is it their option of last resort?
There is not a standard profile—there are lots of reasons. We have a student advisor who keeps track of the students and their particular circumstances.
About 50% of their students are from North Dakota. They have a lot in Alaska, other states, some abroad (12 countries or so). They have some in Saudi Arabia, Japan, for example. They are affiliated with American Medicorps. A number of their students have missionary parents, so they travel throughout their high school years. They could be any place. They had two students three years ago who appeared on Good Morning America to talk about their journey of traveling with their parents on a sailboat to circumnavigate the globe. The whole family went; their daughter graduated with us. She used some of our print correspondence and did some online work when she could get access to a computer.
We also have many athletes—snow boarders, we have an olympic skater graduate from here. They have a nationally ranked tennis student who lives in Florida and takes courses. Other students are homebound. Many reasons!
25. Does your school provide virtual clubs or opportunities for students to meet physically?
No; they do participate in synchronous Collaborate sessions where they can meet together in a virtual classroom, but because most of our students are supplementing their brick-and-mortar classes, we have not found a need for social interactions.
26. How would you describe the teachers attracted to online teaching?
Goofy! Seriously, they are dedicated, hard-working, really sincere people. They do not necessarily have any affinity for technology—they just want to help kids and appreciate the way the online framework allows them to do that.
27. How would you say your teachers compare the online teaching experience to the F2F teaching experience?
It's much different! Being good in one doesn't mean they will be good in the other. Most would not give up virtual instruction because it can become very personal. This is the way it is headed. Future schools will look more like us. Classrooms will have computers that deliver individualized instruction. The focus will be on learning. Our current educational system is not working well. The future will bring more flex academies, more innovation. It's interesting that in our nation, home school kids are doing quite well with amateurs teaching them and online programs as supplements. What kids really need is often not coming from the brick and mortar environment.
28. Examples of universities that have accepted your students?
All over the country; we have students studying astrophysics, some are practicing doctors and other professionals. They are going any place and every place. Basically, they are going where they want to go.
29. Could you recommend a couple of students I could interview about their experiences?
If you send me an email, I will forward to Principal and we will find students who are willing to do that.
[Two students were interviewed: A. Mohr and M. Mears.]
30. What other online high schools would you recommend I interview?
They are not necessarily virtual high schools exclusively, but I'm intrigued by innovations at a high school program developed at the Salt Lake City Community College.
[When I remarked on the number of schools currently operating in Utah, Dr. Peterson explained that Utah has an educational and software dev network similar to the Silicon Valley of education. There is a lot of educational innovation going on in Utah.]
New Orleans Virtual Initiative within the school district
Falcon Acedamy in Colorado has an interesting flex academy with interesting application of the blended model.
Banner image taken as screen shot from http://www.ndcde.org/Home.aspx 8/28/13.
Articles:
Contact:
Dr. Alan J. Peterson
[email protected]
701-231-6007
http://www.ndcde.org/About-Us/Welcome-Letter.aspx
Vision
The ND Center for Distance Education believes that intelligent use of educational technology can transform the effectiveness of student learning, teacher methods, and administrator decision-making.
Mission
The ND CDE's mission is to ensure that all North Dakota middle and high school students regardless of location have access to educational opportunities that meet or exceed expectations for
- the quality of curriculum,
- ongoing contact time with highly qualified teachers,
- the selection and use of suitable educational technology,
- monitoring course delivery efficiency and effectiveness, and
- student learning.
Location:
Fargo, North Dakota
# of staff:
14 in administration; 11 full-time teachers + 40–50 adjunct teachers
Full time teachers are salaried; adjunct are contractors. Having adjunct teachers allows them to be more flexible as enrollments go up and down.
Awards:
No specific awards since Dr. Peterson arrived three years ago. However, the school started in 1935 as a correspondence program and has long been touted for its supervised (vs. solely independent) study. They are frequently asked to present at conferences and to other groups about their methodologies, which are highly successful in student success and high retention. He's giving 2 sessions at iNACOL this year. He was asked to be part of a documentary about online education, but the State did not approve his participation.
Phone interview conducted on: 8-28-13
Questions
1. How is your school accredited?
The North Dakota Center for Distance Education is fully accredited by AdvancED, which brings together more than 100 years of experience and the expertise of the two largest US-based accreditation agencies — the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA CASI), and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Council on Accreditation and School Improvement (SACS CASI).The ND Center for Distance Education is also accredited by the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction and is governed by and maintains the standards set forth by the North Dakota Educational Technology Council.
Core courses offered by the ND Center for Distance Education are approved by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for establishing initial eligibility certification of student athletes.
2. Where does funding for your school come from?
The State. He goes directly to the state legislature for funding. The center is classed as a school district for North Dakota, but they do not receive tax funds for tuition. Their budget goes through the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Funds are separated into general funds and special funds. General funds are those they are appointed. Special funds comes from funds they raise through tuition and the like. They must get approval from the legislature every year to spend this money. In North Dakota charter schools are illegal. They make maximum use of public funds to determine the lowest price they can charge.
They are on the property of North Dakota State University, but the university does not have oversight. They used to be part of NDSU, but now the State has exclusive control. They are part of the State's Information Technology Department for budget.
3. What is the tuition for your school?
The cost of enrolling in a course at ND CDE depends upon whether the student is a resident of ND. For example ...
The cost for North Dakota students to enroll in an online or print course is $100, which includes all materials.
The cost for out-of-state students to enroll in an online or print course is $250, which includes all materials.
Complete pricing details can be found here ...
It's set up like a university—costs are aligned with expenses; tuition covers expenses.
The cost for all 1/2 credit courses is $250. In state residents pay only $100 because they can use State funds to pay for the balance.
4. Is there an application fee?
They keep the fees as simple as possible. Because most of their students are supplemental and not full time, there is no application fee. However, students who do want to be part of the diploma program are charged a $45 fee to review their transcript.
5. Do you offer financial aid?
Discounts are available for NDSOS member schools and when students complete on time and with a C or above.
6. What grade levels do you offer?
6–12
7. Are there age restrictions?
They are accredited by the state for grades 6–12, but most of their students are in grades 7–12. In terms of older kids, they do serve students over 19. The oldest they've had was 83 years old. A lot of really bright professors come to the university with exceptional children. They sometimes want to enroll their young children in our courses but they have to go by rules of the state. For example, a student can't take an 8th and 7th course at the same time. They can take high school courses, but only if they qualify as a high school student. Some of the more traditional aspects of the instruction have been inherited from the correspondence/general education policies. Many of these policies are being reviewed to better suit the needs of modern students.
8. What is the current enrollment of the school? How many are seniors?
As they are beginning this school semester (Aug/2013), they have over 2000. By the end of this school year, their individual enrollments will be around 4,000. Because of new efforts they've made with the school, they are getting more recognition from the state. As a result, enrollments have grown and they expect it to hit 6,000 in the near future.
They have around 200 students with some type of affiliation to the diploma program. They graduate about 50/year. The majority of students take 1–2 classes/year. They serve a lot of rural schools. The push has been going back to their roots (correspondence school) to offer opportunities for rural kids. There are about 100,00 students in the North Dakota school systems, k–12. About 40,000 of those in communities with populations of 300 or less. In larger communities like Fargo, students have about 185 courses to choose from. In these rural areas, they have closer to
60 choices. So NDCDE's mission is to bring their offerings of around 185 courses to all students, no matter where they live. In many cases these smaller schools cannot provide options because they cannot get qualified teachers. With the online model, there is no reason whatsoever that all kids can't have access to high-quality courses.
In larger schools in ND, ACT scores show about 30% of their graduating classes are prepared in all four sections. In rural areas, that number drops to 16%. The students in their courses are way above even the 30% average. See more about this below. The reason they can be more successful is because they can offer differentiation/individuation—courses with teachers who really know and understand their students specific strengths and weaknesses.
NDCDE is also working to establish partnerships with small schools with decent access to the Internet. There is no reason they can't work together to offer students productive interactive educational opportunities, esp. with modern innovations. He's interested in studying the big data—putting kids together in social situations, getting kids with similar thinking together, encouraging connections between kids in a far broader than the geographical one they occupy.
Dr. Peterson is running the organization as a business, so he is thinking about different schemes and working to determine the proper capacity for the school. There is a maximum. They've been setting records for enrollments. In the past 8 days (just before the official school semester began in brick and mortar schools, they've enrolled over 1,000 students. They have working hard on the infrastructure to be able to support this kind of demand, and are proud that it is working effectively.
I asked, "What is your secret?" and Dr. Peterson responded, "process-based management." In setting up the infrastructure, they look at the input and output processes and determine how best to measure these. They set reasonable expectations at the beginning, and manage to the desired results. Their theory is that if you do that, you get an alignment that allows you to absorb change. What you are creating is a robust system that cannot be torn apart if something unexpected—like 1,000 enrollments in 8 days—occurs. Their mission is to make possible the most amount of learning for students in the shortest time possible. Their systems are designed to support this, and every aspect of their mission statement.
By designing systems with input/output in mind, you can account for little things turning into big things. We think toward incremental changes. If a system is correcting after the fact, trying to improve and make a stable system after learning about the need for change, failure will be the norm. The idea is to create the stable system using information about what fails and why in businesses. Most schools are built to manage classrooms—physical structures. This has nothing to do with learning. They focus on one child. The system, then, is reflective of the learning occurring for each child online.
9. Are courses organized in classes with fixed start/stop dates or are they independently paced?
Their courses are organized as 20 wk or 40 wk classes, which can start whenever the student wants. The student has the option at the beginning to choose the course as an either 20 or 40 week course. They can change until the 10th week, but not after. They must pay more money to choose the 40 week option because it requires more time from the instructor/students who cannot enroll because of enrollment caps/teacher.
They use pacing charts and there is a place in their LMS where students see how much time they have left and how much work remains. It requires them to make a decision. Most students take classes in sync with normal school semesters. Their classes are totally asynchronous.
10. What requirements do you have for teachers? State certification for high school? Virtual Teacher certification?
Our teachers are highly qualified in the area they teach and as a teacher. They have to meet state certification requirements as well as their own internal competency requirements. They have an NDCDE virtual teaching certification program. This program helps prepare them from the unique requirements of virtual education and trains them on the LMS. It includes "Best Practices for Teaching Online 1 and 2." and a 10 step process they have worked together to create. They can get credit from NDSU for this courses. They want their teachers to be successful. A number of them are teacher retirees who aren't entirely ready to let go of teaching. Their certification program helps them get a firm understanding of the online environment.
11. How are teachers paid? Are they paid only when students complete a course? Does that impact the rigor of the course or the strictness of grading?
There is a set salary rate set by the state and based on their teacher classification. They are paid monthly and get yearly evaluations like other State agencies. The legislature sets the pay rates and amount of salary increase allowed each year. It relates to how many sections of students a teacher has. For example, a full-time teacher has six sections of 20 students each. Non full-time teacher section load is based upon what the teacher feels he or she can handle. The teacher must want the work load. That is critical to our ability to have good teacher–student relationships.
12. What are your short-term goals for the school?
To survive! Seriously, our eye is always on fulfilling our mission. Everything we do we measure against six attributes. We are very serious about the quality of our curriculum and very diligent about stabilizing processes. We are constantly analyzing systems. For example, we currently have a 94% completion rate. That is very good for an online school, but our next two missions will involve putting systems in place that will increase that completion rate. The idea is personalizing and differentiating; having interventions with students when they are needed; and targeting instruction. We think in terms of a school of one student.
When Dr. Peterson arrived in 2009, there were 500 students. Three years later there are 2000. They are planning and then validating through practice. His staff are process leaders. There are five critical measures they monitor constantly. Staff models for teachers and teachers model for students. Their aim is always to find out what the key indicators are. If someone is off track, the staff member or teacher does something to solve the problem.
For example, students can take achievement tests to give us a sense of where they are and what they know and don't know, but the reality is that this process must occur on a nearly daily, real-time basis. So teachers become adept at oral testing; talking to a student when there is an issue. Relationships with students are critical. It is imperative to begin that first week. There is a lot of collaboration in the first 14 days. If a student hasn't started in the first two weeks, the teacher calls the student and calls the parents. Statistics show that if students don't get started within the first two weeks, there is a 50/50 chance they will complete the course, so regular interaction—especially at the beginning—is critical.
When analyzing the issues that cause a student to not be successful, there is never just one issue. If there are six issues, three will be behavioral and three will be academic. Our teachers must think about these things and address them. To help them, we offload as much clerical work as possible. There is no double entry activity. We want our systems to be as slick as possible so that teachers are spending their time helping students learn.
13. What is your long-term vision for the school?
I'd really like to work with the State to help as many rural communities as possible. I'd like train teachers so that they can stay in their rural community and provide high-quality instruction. We can train the teachers and pay a brick and mortar school for the teachers' time to teach students who live in other places. That way we can help give teachers full-time employment and keep talented teachers in smaller communities. Teachers often migrate to larger communities for better opportunities, but we need people in our rural areas and we have the same values for the education of our students in those areas as we do elsewhere.
14. Where does your curriculum come from? (Who builds it?)
We purchase our curriculum. We only want individual courses, not anyone's entire academy. We make them ready and put them in our LMS. We virtual from many resources, including the Florida Virtual School Global Academy, K–12 Aventa, Pearson, etc. We have a rigid process for evaluating. We use our rubrics to assess their course quality. The teachers have helped us identify 56 indicators of a good course. We have used these indicators to create the rubric we use to evaluate all courses.
15. How would you describe the philosophy behind your content development?
We use our detailed rubric to assess quality. We have a full-time person who manages the selection of curriculum and our teachers are involved. It is supply chain management. There are always issues with outsourced content. We do not purchase and abandon. We have regular conference calls with our providers. We pay attention and insist on improvements. We do believe that it's the teacher, not the curriculum, that really makes the course and ensures the learning, but the content has to be good. We stay on our providers for developer updates.
16. Who maintains your curriculum? How involved are your teachers in the course curriculum?
Our teachers don't do much with the curriculum. We don't want them to miss what we have them there for—we don't want our teachers serving as course designers. We want them interacting with students. It's also important to us that all students complete the same content. Altering content to address specific needs is like lying to students. All our students complete all the content requirements. Our personalization comes in helping them understand that content not in changing it to help them pass. So we have a committee to oversee new content selection and a full-time person to manage that process and ensure it meets common core standards.
17. What LMS do you use?
We use Brain Honey.
18. How involved are your teachers in student interaction? How do they communicate with students (email, chat, phone, face-to-face) and how often?
This is our focus.
19. How much professional development do your teachers receive?
Each teacher has $1000 to get whatever professional development they want. We have also paid for a Linda.com membership for each them. In addition, we give them access to three courses from the School Improvement Network. We also have a relationship with the University of North Dakota that allows teachers to self design courses for up to 6 credits. We own the curriculum UND uses. It consists largely of videos teachers can use to renew certification.
20. Describe the application process for students.
Students who come through a school, just purchase the courses. If they come for our diploma program, they submit a transcript that we evaluate and work with the student to put together a degree plan.
21. What are the most common challenges your students face?
Time management
22. What are the biggest challenges your school faces?
Getting money from state; meeting the many needs of students; helping students in reservations; there is no quick fix for old problems, but we are really trying. Our focus is on improving education in rural areas and on reservations.
23. How do your students compare to those in brick-and-mortar schools? (statistics on graduation rate, college acceptance, SAT/ACT/AP Scores, etc.)
Many of our students are taking our courses as supplements, so it's difficult for us to know. However, the ones who
are in our diploma program are way above average in the four designated areas.
We offer an SAT Prep course via Pearson My Foundations lab. This helps students raise their scores by three points or so. It shows what areas students need to focus on and offers learning paths. It's really good for math. It's mastery based.
24. How would you describe the students who attend your school? Honestly speaking, what would you say brings most of your students to your school? Is it their option of last resort?
There is not a standard profile—there are lots of reasons. We have a student advisor who keeps track of the students and their particular circumstances.
About 50% of their students are from North Dakota. They have a lot in Alaska, other states, some abroad (12 countries or so). They have some in Saudi Arabia, Japan, for example. They are affiliated with American Medicorps. A number of their students have missionary parents, so they travel throughout their high school years. They could be any place. They had two students three years ago who appeared on Good Morning America to talk about their journey of traveling with their parents on a sailboat to circumnavigate the globe. The whole family went; their daughter graduated with us. She used some of our print correspondence and did some online work when she could get access to a computer.
We also have many athletes—snow boarders, we have an olympic skater graduate from here. They have a nationally ranked tennis student who lives in Florida and takes courses. Other students are homebound. Many reasons!
25. Does your school provide virtual clubs or opportunities for students to meet physically?
No; they do participate in synchronous Collaborate sessions where they can meet together in a virtual classroom, but because most of our students are supplementing their brick-and-mortar classes, we have not found a need for social interactions.
26. How would you describe the teachers attracted to online teaching?
Goofy! Seriously, they are dedicated, hard-working, really sincere people. They do not necessarily have any affinity for technology—they just want to help kids and appreciate the way the online framework allows them to do that.
27. How would you say your teachers compare the online teaching experience to the F2F teaching experience?
It's much different! Being good in one doesn't mean they will be good in the other. Most would not give up virtual instruction because it can become very personal. This is the way it is headed. Future schools will look more like us. Classrooms will have computers that deliver individualized instruction. The focus will be on learning. Our current educational system is not working well. The future will bring more flex academies, more innovation. It's interesting that in our nation, home school kids are doing quite well with amateurs teaching them and online programs as supplements. What kids really need is often not coming from the brick and mortar environment.
28. Examples of universities that have accepted your students?
All over the country; we have students studying astrophysics, some are practicing doctors and other professionals. They are going any place and every place. Basically, they are going where they want to go.
29. Could you recommend a couple of students I could interview about their experiences?
If you send me an email, I will forward to Principal and we will find students who are willing to do that.
[Two students were interviewed: A. Mohr and M. Mears.]
30. What other online high schools would you recommend I interview?
They are not necessarily virtual high schools exclusively, but I'm intrigued by innovations at a high school program developed at the Salt Lake City Community College.
[When I remarked on the number of schools currently operating in Utah, Dr. Peterson explained that Utah has an educational and software dev network similar to the Silicon Valley of education. There is a lot of educational innovation going on in Utah.]
New Orleans Virtual Initiative within the school district
Falcon Acedamy in Colorado has an interesting flex academy with interesting application of the blended model.
Banner image taken as screen shot from http://www.ndcde.org/Home.aspx 8/28/13.