After declining to release the state’s Race to the Top application, last Friday [New York] posted the entire application online. Predictably, the application mostly includes language like “bold” and “transform.” The state had publicized many of its most radical changes, such as changing teacher certification and tracking student achievement to individual teachers.
But tucked into the application were a couple of ideas we had heard little about. There’s the “New York State Virtual High School,” an online learning program that the state said would provide students with “options for alternative pathways to meet state and national learning standards.” According to the application, Virtual High School will give students who are behind on credits for graduating a chance to catch up and also give students in rural areas a way to participate in classes they don’t have at their own school.
The application states that they school will be for anyone who wants to participate in school “anytime, anywhere,” but gives few details, except to say that the school will be available free of cost to 20,000 students in the state by 2014.
+++++
From New York Times.
