Education options in the UP: Online School

HANCOCK, Mich. (WLUC) - Like the internet that makes it possible, online learning has many applications. Types of courses vary, as well as the extent that students study online. Some do it full-time, but many use it as a supplement to traditional school. For example, high school senior Libby Rogan at Dollar Bay High School takes Spanish II online.

“I'm taking it because my school only offers one year of foreign language, and the colleges I'm applying to require at least two years,” she said.

Proponents, like Finlandia University officials, say online learning spreads resources across the country and world. The school runs several online classes designed for high school students who don't live near a university. They can dual-enroll in the courses for college credit.

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School choice saves taxpayers money

An important element of this conversation, however, is the fact that not only do school choice programs empower parents and change students’ lives for the better, but they also save taxpayers money.

In our new report, The Tax-Credit Scholarship Audit, we looked at 10 tax-credit scholarship programs in seven states between 1997 and 2014. These programs serve 93 percent of all students participating nationwide. Tax-credit scholarships allow individuals and sometimes businesses to reduce their state tax liability by making a private donation to a nonprofit organization that in turn provides scholarships for children to attend private schools of their choice.

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Virtual high school classes on the rise

Little over two years ago, a couple of San Diego teenagers earned high school diplomas after taking every class since kindergarten via computers through an online charter school.

Their stories were considered a novelty at the time. Since then, the concept of computers as classrooms has moved closer to the mainstream.

More and more students have turned to computers for a chance to quickly re-take failed courses needed to graduate high school, while others enroll in classes for the first time — including Advanced Placement courses not offered on their campuses.

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JEDI Program Provides Options for Lake Mills High School Students

While students at Lake Mills High School have a wide variety of “in-house” courses to choose from, there are several additional courses that can be taken virtually through the JEDI Program.

The Jefferson Eastern Dane Initiative (JEDI) has existed in some form at Lake Mills High School for more than a decade now.

The program, which is used by 10 districts across the Jefferson, Dane, Rock, Juneau, Green and Walworth Country areas, allows students the opportunity to take online classes not being offered through their school districts.

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A virtual school science whiz kid is heading to the world’s biggest high school science fair

A Riverside student who traveled to Washington, D.C., for a national science competition will now compete on a worldwide scale in May.

James Fagan, 10, a seventh-grader at Riverside's Educational Options Center, which includes a virtual school, created a wind tunnel to test the effectiveness of different wing designs.

His placement at a four-county science fair led him to a national competition known as BroadcomMASTERS (Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars).

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Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to introduce the modern concept of school choice

Wisconsin has several school-choice programs; figures released by the State Department of Education show that all of the programs saw ample growth in attendance. Matt Frendewey with the American Federation for Children spoke with OneNewsNow.

"The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program ... started in 1990 with just 337 students in the program," he notes. "And now, 26 years later, there are over 28,000 students in the program."

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which is considered the nation's first modern private school-choice program, offers private school vouchers to low-income students in the Milwaukee district.

Frendewey doesn't anticipate the demand from parents for more choice will dwindle.

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Michigan sees spike in K-12 online school enrollment

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — More and more parents in Michigan are choosing online schools versus the traditional brick and mortar education.

When the state began allowing online schooling in 2010, there were around 400 students enrolled.

This year, more than 1,700 kids are enrolled at Michigan Connections Academy (MICA), which is a K-12 virtual school.

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Rees: Elections Come and Go, but Movements — Like School Choice — Endure

My first experience in school choice politics came in 1993. That year, Prop 174 asked California voters to decide whether parents should be given vouchers that they could redeem for their children’s education at the school of their choice. The proposition failed badly. Looking back, it probably should have. It was too expansive and not well structured. Most state leaders opposed it. But its defeat didn’t mean the end of school choice.

At around the same time, charter public schools were being introduced onto the education landscape. California had passed its charter school law the year before. Nearly a quarter-century later, charter schools and school choice have taken hold in California. According to the latest report on charter school enrollment from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Los Angeles has 156,000 students in charter schools — more than any other school district in the nation. Two other California districts have more than 30 percent of their students in charter schools.

The lesson here is simple: Elections offer temporary victories or defeats, but movements endure. School choice is right for students and parents. It’s a movement that won’t be stopped, even amid occasional setbacks.

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What Is the Future for School Choice?

Republicans scored a historic electoral victory across the nation, but the public-school establishment held its own on key reform measures promoted by the GOP. Most notably, Massachusetts Ballot Question 2 (to raise the cap on charter schools) lost decisively, even after Governor Charlie Baker campaigned for it. Many believed that initiative was a proxy battle in the national charter war. In Georgia, Republicans supported a constitutional amendment to reform persistently failing schools in the style of New Orleans’s recent successes, but it failed too. The election of Donald Trump, however, places at the top of American politics a man who has been an outspoken proponent of school choice. The task now is for the federal government to promote school choice in local communities where the public-school establishment is solidly entrenched.

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6 big ways Trump presidency could change schools

Donald Trump has provided only scant details on his education agenda but the ideas he has pitched make one thing certain: the president-elect’s vision for American schools is very different from that of his predecessor. 

Trump has said he would shrink the Department of Education — or demolish it altogether — and vowed to be “the nation’s biggest cheerleader for school choice.” On the campaign trail he also called for an end to gun-free school zones, and for changes in the student loan system. His transition website, which devotes just two paragraphs to the subject, identifies a few other priorities including early childhood education and magnet and theme-based programs.

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