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“I felt stifled in the traditional public school system,” Tracy McDaniel, a national board member of the acclaimed KIPP program, writes. “Regulations prevented me from extending the school day, week and year, and, often, from hiring the most talented teachers.”[1] Reform, as Kansas envisions it, necessitates such flexibility.
3.1 The school determines the pay for all staff and the allocation of revenues into other resources. Schools will have significant flexibility in determining such allocation, however, all schools will be required to allocate a set portion of their funds
into a reserve.
3.2 The school will also determine if it would institute fees for sports, arts, and other programs.
Operations
3.3 Many schools will integrate complete prekindergarten to twelfth grade programs under the form of three partnered schools in proximity with one leader.
3.4 The principal will be responsible for determining the hours for the school and other functions of the school including remediation programs and activities.
3.5 Recruiting efforts will also be of the individual school’s discretion.
Policy
3.6 Schools will have significant flexibility in establishing policies independent of the district and other schools. A common factor would be admissions processes for schools that are oversubscribed. Such processes would likely include testing of ability, interviews, and compatibility of parent, student, and teacher philosophies. aws must be established prohibiting unnecessary filtering.
3.7 Secondary factors would include how intensively homework is assigned, as well as disciplinary procedures. Disciplinary procedures may take the form of traditional, referral based systems, or a system unique to the individual schools. Schools will also be able to determine standards for hiring teachers, consistent or higher than those determined by the government.
Define learning
3.8 Some schools, empowered with the proper technology and structure, will offer
students non-traditional opportunities to learn largely from home, returning to
a vastly smaller school building on a regular basis to take part in labs and
update new assignments. This may be one means to combat boredom and dropouts
with a more engaging learn-on-your-own-terms style.
As a September 2005 profile of Rapid City Academy of South Dakota in the Technological Horizons in Education Journal makes clear, “not all participants [in virtual high schools] fit the archetype of the typical high school-aged learner.” Many students who were already taking on full schedules enrolled to take on additional work. Indeed, one “non-traditional” student is returning after fifty-years to earn a high school diploma.[2] The advent of online summer school programs nationwide demonstrates the personal and institutional benefits of flexibility and efficiency; its scale, encompassing more than one-third of nationwide school districts that accept online courses demonstrates the program’s potential.[3],[i]
Additional expectations
In addition to national standards of competencies, several more requirements will be placed upon all or relevant schools to promote consistency and equality in aims.
3.9 One such measure will be the inclusion by all schools of a seminar period of
length determined by principal. In traditional schools, this may offer the
opportunity to pursue large-scale projects, seek remediation, and participate in
microcredit activities. In more freeform schools, a seminar period will ensure
that time is allotted to introduce topics to be assessed.
Training
3.10 Schools will also be responsible for training their group of teachers and procuring a steady stream of younger workers to fill in the ranks of retiring teachers.
3.11 Some systems may promote understudy periods and gradual increase of work. Others may promote teaming teachers by their varying abilities to create a successful diffusion of knowledge, experience, and matters of practicality.
“Through hard work, we are proving that demography is not destiny for
underserved students. … We are proving that when principals are given the
freedom to innovate and the necessary resources, we can meet the high
expectations set by NCLB.”
[1] Leaving No Child Behind. A symposium. Tracy McDaniel, et al. The Washington Post. 10 September 2007.
[2] Building A Virtual High School … Click by Click. Sue Podoll, Darcy Randle. Technological Horizons in Education Journal. September 2005.
[3] Summer School Goes Online. The Associated Press. Teacher Magazine. 23 July 2007.
[i] “According to the Illinois Online Network … the flexibility of asynchronous learning is one of the most frequently mentioned advantages of online learning. … Flexibility and convenience ranked as the most important advantages to online teaching; students also rated flexibility and convenience highly. Students in particular responded that they appreciated the freedom of choosing when to work on classes rather than having to work on them at a specific time. … Asynchronous discussions in an online course allowed the learner time to think and reflect on presented content material. Rather than trying to formulate an answer on the spot, the learner gives more consideration to the response, which seems to result in more engaged learning. … Student and instructor responses to the written questionnaires most frequently cited computer system requirements as a major disadvantage to online learning.” Limited access (affecting low-income students), computer failures, time management, and the lack of interaction were also discussed as disadvantages. Building A Virtual High School … Click By Click. Sue Podoll, Darcy Randle. Technological Horizons in Education Journal. September 2005.
