Bricks and clicks: a new hybrid school
There are more than 10,000 traditional public and 800-plus charter schools in California, and there are a handful of virtual or online charter schools, serving primarily home-schooled students.
Soon, there will be a blend of the two: a hybrid school where students will go every day for seminars and labs led by teacher coaches, but will do most of their learning online, at their own pace.
Flex Public Schools, a California nonprofit corporation with ties to K12 Inc., a growing for-profit provider of online education, will open two “bricks and clicks” schools in the Bay Area within the next 15 months.
Last Friday, the State Board of Education, acting on an appeal, unanimously approved Flex Academy San Francisco initially a 275-student high school that will open this fall in downtown San Francisco, with the goal of becoming 850 students in grades 6 to 12. (San Francisco Unified trustees, ignoring recommendations of district staff, had rejected the proposed charter without offering any reason earlier this year.) Last month, the Santa Clara Office of Education granted a county charter for Flex Academy Silicon Valley, which will open a similar school in the fall of 2011.
While online K-12 schools are no longer novel – the state-run Florida Virtual School alone serves 71,000 students – Flex Public Schools’ blended version will be paving new virtual ground. There are only a handful attempting something like it nationwide, including the School of One started by New York City Chancellor Joel Klein last summer and Carpe Diem, a charter in Yuma, Ariz.
Michael Horn, co-author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,” believes that the Flex Public Schools’ hybrid learning environment will be the wave of the future, because most kids need a communal place to learn, and online learning offers both efficiency and individualized learning. What’s unclear is whether the growth will be in the form of charter schools or traditional schools moving incrementally to online education.
But first, Flex Academies Silicon Valley and San Francisco must prove they’ll work. Mark Kushner, the force behind the schools, is confident they will. He says they’ll provide the best attributes of a traditional school – a sense of community, academic supports, clubs and activities – and the best attributes of online schools, with their differentiated learning, broad course offerings and continuous feedback through assessments built into the curriculum.
Kushner is vice president of K12 Inc., a Virginia-based publicly traded e-learning company that has created California Virtual Academies, online schools based in several counties, and is bankrolling the development of the hybrid model. Kushner founded Leadership High School in San Francisco in 1995 and successfully led it before creating Leadership Public Schools, a chain of Bay Area charters with mixed results. He joined K12 two years ago.
While Flex Academy concept may appear radical, the K12 curriculum is traditional, says Stanford Emeritus Professor of Education Michael Kirst, who’s been an advisor to the company since its inception a decade go. With nearly 200 online courses, K12 is aligned with E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge orientation of providing all students with a literature- and vocabulary-rich, sequence of learning. “I’ve heard no criticism of the curriculum or the execution of it,” says Kirst.
But how will the school work? Check back tomorrow for an explanation of the model.
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SVEF is the education foundation advocating for the needs of school districts across Silicon Valley. SVEF seeks to improve public education through establishing partnerships with the private sector and the education community ..
Yes!!!!…….I can’t wait to hear the specifics tomorrow
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I’ll ask for you why the SFUSD board rejected this charter school. But do you honestly not believe that William “Bookie of Virtues” Bennett’s K-12 isn’t a total scam? I personally elect my BOE commissioners in the hope that they will reject scams proposed for my district.
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Sorry, double negative; you know what I mean. I believe it’s a scam; do you truly believe otherwise?
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The State Board of Education staff report on Flex Academy San Francisco said the following regarding San Francisco Unified’s review of the charter: “The Flex Academy petition was denied by the San Francisco Unified School District (San Francisco USD) governing board on January 26, 2010. San Francisco USD also serves as the San Francisco County Office of Education, so there was no further petition to a county office.
“The San Francisco USD presented no written findings upon denial at their January 26, 2010, board meeting, and Flex Academy has received no written findings since then. The San Francisco USD staff review (included on page 250 of Attachment 3 of this item) found no negative findings, and recommended approval of the Flex Academy charter.”
If the trustees had legitimate reasons for denying the charter, they didn’t say so. Looks to me they just didn’t want an innovative charter and so ignored the criteria for approval under the law.
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He wrote “Soon, there will be a blend of the two.” No, it’s already happening. Here at e-techacademy.org we offer live, online, interactive learning. A credentialed teacher instructs students at their computers in a two way converstion of instruction. We offer vocational education and core subjects.
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As a director of 2 K-6 Core Knowledge schools and a middle/high school (7-12), we already make limited use of on-line courses. I think Flex Academy is a very interesting concept and will be watching it very closely. I think Flex Academy will be a real life test of some of the predictions made in the book “Disrupting Class”. We believe very strongly in the value and power of small school environments and personal connections. However it is foolish not to fully explore how technology can help students learn.
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I agree about exploring how technology helps students learn! But not in THIS package. K-12 was always such a transparent attempt to funnel public funds into the pockets of private investors, and then it got even more cartoonish after Bill Bennett’s fall from grace. I didn’t think anyone took it seriously — and now here it is outside my door, hissing, “I vant to suck your school funding” — like something from a bad ’50s movie that you get rid of by driving a stake through its heart. Also, how can the charter people claim they believe that charters should be accountable when they’re busily engaged in refusing to allow local elected school boards to decide whether a charter should even come to town?
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Frontline just released a story about what’s happening at the college level. Turns out that the online education market is a huge part of the growth of for-profit colleges.
Here’s a link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid
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I hadn’t followed that case, but I’m told that SFUSD staff didn’t make a recommendation on the proposal, and that the SFUSD board questioned why the school should be located in SF at all, as it is proposed as a “Bay Area” charter school. … By the way, the SFUSD board is not solidly anti-charter. Interestingly, the board’s left/progressive faction tends to be pro-charter, while the relatively moderate members, who are also the consistent budget hawks, are the skeptics. But in this case the vote was 7-0. … I want to question you a little more about the issue of accountability for charter schools, John. You claim to believe that charter schools should be held accountable, yet you also are clearly endorsing forcing schools into school districts against their elected boards’ will. Also, I believe that you were part of the Mercury News editorial board when it was sharply criticizing the SFUSD Board of Ed for attempting to hold Edison Charter Academy accountable for its commitments to SFUSD back in 2001. In that situation, press around the country and even outside (the Britain-based Economist) were criticizing the SFUSD Board of Ed. … Isn’t it a direct contradiction to claim that charter schools should be held accountable while simultaneously asserting that local Boards of Ed have no right to decide what charter schools should exist in their districts, not to mention having a history of attacking a Board of Ed for attempting to hold a charter school accountable? … (By the way, none of those far-flung SFUSD critics in the press back in ‘01 seemed to have done enough legwork to learn that many of Edison Schools Inc.’s other client districts had the same issues and problems with Edison that SFUSD did, and many other client districts eventually severed their ties with Edison due to those issues and problems. But that’s another story.) … Anyway, can you clarify those two conflicting views on charter school accountability?
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Caroline: Charters should be held accountable under state law, and oversight should be strengthened. School boards should follow state law in reviewing charter applications. The criteria are clear. Board members’ personal views of charters should not color their decisions. Pretty straightforward. Many boards ignore the law and hire law firms with the implicit understanding that they want excuses to deny the charter; that’s why there is an appeals process.
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Amazing. Exactly how much effort have the naysayers put into investigating this innovative, out of the box educational option instead offering the traditional knee jerk reaction to something outside the usual and customary failing site/seat based public school model?
Set your personal bias aside and investigate the curriculum and embedded technology of the K12 product. The product is superior. The hybrid educational option is the future of education and offers more promise for students than the traditional public school model.
Applause for any school district that is into innovative thinking and putting the educational needs of students above special interests and that allows educational choice to flourish.
I have nineteen years of home education experience as well as several years as a public school educator. The face of education is changing and I, for one, am excited to see the innovation and choice being introduced. I sincerely wish the Flex Academy was available in my area; it would be worth considering for my own children.
Be a self-learner – do some thorough research. (Emphasis on thorough)
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I’ve been following K-12 since Bill “Bookie of Virtues” started it, Barbara Lynch, and have also been familiar with Mark Kushner’s past record with struggling Leadership Charter High School in SFUSD. (I know John said it was successful, but I’m familiar with it and he’s not.) So I think my research has been pretty complete. But thanks for the suggestions. Why not locate this experiment in your district instead of mine, since you’re enthusiastic and we here in SF obviously are not?
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I maintain that school boards should have the right to decide whether they want a charter in their district. Why should they be denied the right to make that decision? … However, the fact is that the SFUSD BOE denied the Kushner-Bookie of Virtues charter because of concerns about its intent to serve students Bay Area-wide. … I would have also thought it valid to raise concerns about the fact that the hybrid was an untested model proposed by an operator that has never run anything like it, as our district faces far too many stresses to serve as someone’s guinea pig. … Another key point is that the BOE members who are normally the most pro-charter (our far-far-left-progressive faction, Kim-Shree Maufas, Jane Kim and Sandra Fewer) also voted against it. So the view that their vote was colored by their personal opinions about charters is unfounded — even if it were valid to deny BOE members the right to base their votes on their judgment. … Other posters here are praising this charter model, so why not put it in a district that wants it rather than forcing it into our district, which doesn’t want it? Is that really a productive way to found a new school?
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I thought this article was very interesting and quite telling of what might be possible in the future. Both good and bad.
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i went to an SFFlex info meeting and feel that it is actually a good option for my daughter. I was skeptical, but after hearing more i think it is what my daughter needs. Politics aside, my daughter needs the attention she will get here and the chance to move faster in math. I do understand the politics,but i also think its great because i can get this quality of education for sarah without paying.
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I think that this is where education is heading. As budgets get cut more and more teaching is going to migrate to the web. I feel like <href=”http://www.parkcityindependent.com/“>online high school education</a> programs are a great way to pick up the slack. It will take some serious relearning how to concentrate for students but I think it could teach our kids how to focus and stick to goals.
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Can you tell me where you are located? The district where I teach has started to offer online courses along with regular curric.
THX!
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Wanted to contact Frank S. if OK with him re: location and how using cyber ed.
I also agree with Caroline SF that this is another way to take funds from the public system. The public system is not perfect, but can be improved upon from within. My stance comes from 28 years experience in the public school system teaching Tech classes and innovating curriculum with grant funds.
I helped to write and taught the Computer Course required for a Clear Credential. Does the public interested in cyber ed realize the expense of running online systems for students? Will students be required to provide their own computers and an online connection from home? Is this why Flex and like schools are private or charter?
Thousands of families cannot afford to buy a computer and pay online fees for their children. Will a “cyber” school pay for this? If so, how will these machines be protected (internet screened for inappropriate material) and maintained?
This is very expensive to do. Many people do not realize the real expense of running a comuter lab/network system for kids.
Education is cyclic. There was a “mainframe” system in the school where I started teaching Computer classes in 1984. It was called CCC. Kids came to the lab and worked on curriculum delivered by the mainframe. If they missed questions, the system automatically “reviewed ” the material. Similar to a cyber system or online delivery system today, hmmm.
The studies were run, and results were no different than when a teacher was the source of info and learning activities in the classroom.
Unfortunately allof the “invisible” education was not part of the program. The social skills, creative courses and other types of courses that an online program cannot provide.
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