Online education offers a variety of opportunities to both students and schools systems. Students are given increased choice and flexibility; school systems can save a significant amount of money, while still meeting student needs.
Virginia’s Board of Education needs to take risks to improve public education.
Late last month, Governor Bob McDonnell pulled Virginia out of the federal “Race to the Top” funding competition.
It should not have been surprising.
The research shows that kids who have two, three, four strong teachers in a row will eventually excel, no matter what their background, while kids who have even two weak teachers in a row will never recover. – Kati Hancock, President, The Education Trust
How the current push for charter schools fits in with the history of racial segregation.
What’s at stake in the battle to improve Virginia’s charter school law is more than $350 million. It’s a question of whether we will do whatever we can to ensure that every child in the Commonwealth has an opportunity to achieve the best they can.
Virginia has only three operating charter schools, and the concept of virtual schools is still a new frontier. But around the country, both are expanding – often together – and they offer lessons for the Old Dominion.
Though Virginia may currently be a vast wasteland for quality charter innovation that could help kids, the Virginia School Boards Association is right on this: the quality of the charter applications that are received by local boards is often quite poor. Changes proposed by the NACPS, however, could change that.
Since 2006, State Senator Walter Stosch has introduced legislation that would create Tuition Assistance Grants for students with disabilities in Virginia. As the General Assembly struggles to reduce costs and burdens on local school divisions this year, they might follow the lead of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah and finally pass it.
A 17-point victory offers newly-elected Governor Bob McDonnell a mandate on those policies he made part of his platform. Developing quality public charter schools – particularly those that would serve as a turn-around mechanism – seems a good a place as any to start.
