Two Iowa school districts are urging legislators to allow the implementation of an Internet-based curriculum, ridding of the traditional classroom and face-to-face interactions.
CAM Community School District, serving the southwestern towns of Cumberland, Anita and Messina, and Clayton Ridge Community School District, including Garnavillo and Guttenberg in the northeast, plan to begin a curriculum in which students are taught primarily online starting this fall.
CAM and Clayton Ridge districts will team with Iowa Virtual Academy, an online education company owned and operated by K12 Inc., to develop a program that caters to individual students’ needs while still meeting state and national education standards. Because K12 Inc., is a publicly owned company traded in the New York Stock Exchange, however, questions of legality have started to arise.
Some Iowans fear their tax dollars will go directly into K12 Inc.’s pockets rather than online programs. A prospective bill on education reform, however, is working its way through the Senate and House in an effort to put limitations on Iowa Virtual Academy functions.
The Senate Education Committee passed an education reform bill package on Wednesday, which would allow Iowa to offer Internet-based schools, yet place restrictions on the cost per student and verification of student learning. A House version of the education reform bill passed Tuesday night. Both the Senate and House will debate the contents of the bill in coming weeks.
While virtual classrooms may seem like a good idea to some, all Iowans, legislators and parents especially, should understand the potential disadvantages of allowing such “classrooms” to be created.
K12 Inc. and Iowa Virtual Academy keep highlighting the idea of individualized instruction in a virtual classroom. An Internet-based class would permit students to work at their own pace, but the online teachers would be unfamiliar with the way a student learns best, thus hindering their ability to understand content effectively and efficiently.
For instance, a teacher in a traditional classroom setting can physically work with a student and grow to understand if he or she learns best one-on-one, in a group, with technology, with visuals, simply reading the information or with supplemental videos or experiments. An online teacher only knows whether the student answered the question correctly or not, and without explanation, has no idea how the student arrived at the correct answer.
Additionally, a traditional classroom provides students with a chance to interact with one another and build social skills. A virtual classroom would allow interaction with other students, but with no context and no physical contact.
And what about recess? Physical education? Music and art class? Students in a virtual classroom will surely be technologically savvy, but it is unclear whether students will have a well-rounded, culturally rich education.
The pros and cons of a traditional classroom versus an online classroom can be infinitely debated, but it will ultimately come down to the best option for the student. However, as a future teacher in a traditional setting, I question success a student can have in a limiting, online classroom. A traditional classroom with a physically present teacher can challenge students to reach academic achievements in an individually catered manner, a manner in which it will be extremely difficult for an online teacher to do if he or she has never met the student.
Some answers to this story were left unquestioned by the reporter. One, the reader is left questioning whether students from all over the state of Iowa are eligible to sign up for this virtual schooling. Second, it doesn't answer whether tax payer money is going to come into play, especially since the program is a for-profit one. Finally, parents both for and against this type of schooling were not interviewed, which doesn't have a huge effect on the story, but could sway readers one way or another as to whether they believe in such schooling for their children. If I had been the editor, I would have prompted the reporter to do a little more digging on the success of virtual classrooms in other states, and interviewed those parents and parents from Iowa. It would have made for a better story package that could have been a dominant story on the front page.
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