With about 5,000 students scattered around the state, the Colorado Virtual Academy is the largest online school in Colorado. When Colorado Virtual Academy students take the CSAP tests, they travel to one of about 30 locations up to 100 miles away and this may have lead to students from different grades being tested together.

“We tested more than one grade level in a single classroom, so that was the reason for the mis-administration,” said Heidi Heineke-Magri of the Colorado Virtual Academy.

For the rest of the article, go to CSAP test error could have big impact on Adams County schools

Heleno said many parents who were planning on sending their kids to MMS in 2010 will be home-schooling this year and pooling efforts with the newly formed Education Consortium. “A group of parents is home-schooling this year, which can be scary for parents who never set out to home school,” she said. The “stop-gap” measure will help pay for tutors two days a week at a location yet to be announced. “A lot of home-schoolers run into problems in middle school with subjects like math and sciences or whatever parents aren’t experts in,” said Heleno.

For the other days of the week, home-school parents will have the option of using 9-Rs shared schooling or the free, public online charter school, Colorado Virtual Academy. Beginning next year, MMS plans to have its own two-day-a-week home-schooling option – the Education Alliance.

In the same spirit of alliance, the MMS Board of Directors also launched the “One Community, One Goal” program this year. The idea behind it is to share efforts and open communication lines among local schools and educators, particularly School District 9-R and charter schools. “We decided at the beginning of the year to put the tense dealings behind us. We’re too small a community to not do the right thing for every child, whether from a public, private, home or charter school,” said Heleno.

For the rest of the article, go to Charting new territory

PUEBLO, COLO. — Academy Online High School students in Academy District 20 can now earn credit with Colorado Technical University thanks to a partnership between the two institutions.

For the rest of the article, go to Academy District 20, CTU form partnership

Have you ever sat in class, bored to tears because the pace of the lessons is too slow?

Have you ever had to choose between going to class and going to work to earn money to support your family?

Have you ever had to miss class to pursue your passions, whether it be competitive sports, theater and the arts, or volunteer work?

If you said “yes” to any of the questions above, online high school may be the right choice as you consider your options for getting your diploma.

Earning a high school diploma online has emerged as a valuable education choice for many Colorado students and their families seeking an alternative to the traditional high school setting, whether because a need for more challenging classes, family circumstances or the need for flexibility. For many students, virtual high schools have meant the difference between giving up on school altogether and earning a high school diploma.

For the rest of the article, go to Is Online High School Right for You?

Don’t underestimate yourself. It’s advice that every educator has provided to students at one time or another. Yet this time it came from Jillian Conrad, an incoming senior at Jeffco’s 21st Century Virtual Academy in Golden, CO, outside Denver, who was speaking as a panelist at a session at the recent International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. The panel also included another student, Britnee Osteen, as well as Judy Bauernschmidt, director of student online learning at the academy.

Conrad’s comment was in response to a question from Julie Evans, CEO of the nonprofit education group Project Tomorrow, which co-hosted the session along with e-learning solutions provider Blackboard. Evans asked the panelists what advice they would give to the educators in the audience. Conrad opened with, “Don’t be afraid to engage with the younger generation because of the gap in knowledge about technology. Don’t underestimate yourself.”

For the rest of the article, go to In the Company of Sages

As valedictorian of his senior high school class, Jed Michal was naturally expected to give the commencement speech during the graduation ceremonies of his East Colorado high school. Though stuck in a Texas hospital a week out from a bone marrow transplant for leukemia–a disease that had robbed him of his entire junior year at Flagler High School in Flagler, CO–he was able to deliver that once-in-a-lifetime address thanks to videoconferencing technology implemented by his district’s regional co-op.

Michal’s alma mater is in one of the most sparsely populated areas of the United States. The East Central Board of Cooperative Educational Services (EC BOCES) governs 15,000 square miles with 21 K-12 school districts, most with only a few hundred students total. Vast geography and declining populations were perilous to many smaller schools and presented challenges for the responsible co-op.

Keeping Schools Alive and Meeting College Requirements
“These are very small districts, and only a couple of them actually have more than one building,” said Emma Richardson, distance learning coordinator for EC BOCES. Leaders there eventually determined that videoconferencing was the only way to keep delivering a variety of quality classes to all the schools in need. The resulting initiative, the Video Networking Educational Technology System (VNETS), connected 17 participating districts with each other and with world at large via videoconferencing technologies.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual Learning to the Rescue

Provost Academy, Colorado’s new online public high school will provide an opportunity for students and parents to meet with teachers and advisors prior to the start of the new school year on Tuesday, July 20. The event, to be held at the Provost Academy office – 7730 E. Belleview Ave., Suite AG-9, Greenwood Village – will provide interested students and parents a full demonstration of the school’s unique learning experience, which combines a rigorous curriculum with a high-touch approach.

Where & When:

Provost Academy Student and Parent Night
Tuesday, July 20 – 6 to 8 p.m.
7730 E. Belleview Ave., Suite AG-9
Greenwood Village, Colorado

“We are excited to share with students and parents a total hands-on opportunity to see and experience for themselves what Provost Academy can offer in the way of an education option,” said Audie Rubin, Provost Academy Executive Director. “They will find that at Provost Academy, the students will be challenged on a level developed for them.”

For the rest of the article, go to Provost Academy Colorado Student and Parent Night Will Open Doors to Online Learning

The for-profit e-learning company K12 Inc. grew 40 percent last year, generating $385 million in revenue by providing virtual courses to 70,000 students across the country. Connections Academy, another such provider, generated about $120 million in revenue serving up online courses to some 20,000 students. And last month, the education technology company PLATO Learning announced that it is now offering online Advanced Placement courses, marking the first time the company will do so as part of its courseware for school districts.

Experts say for-profit providers of online courses—long seen as an option for home-schoolers and a potential rival to public schools—are breaking into the public education mainstream as more schools mix face-to-face classes and online courses to expand their curricular offerings. With demand for that “blended” approach expected to grow, other players in the online-coursetaking marketplace, such as Apex Learning, Aventa Learning, Compass Learning, and Kaplan Virtual Education, are also seeking business in public schools.

For the rest of the article, go to E-Education Inc. Seeks the Mainstream

Colorado Connections Academy