Geography shouldn’t be destiny and won’t with Student Bill of Rights
In his biography of Steve Jobs, author Walter Isaacson recounts an interesting story about Steve’s first days at a low-income middle school in Mountain View. Early on, confronted with violence, overcrowding, and poor instruction, he threatened to drop out. His parents scraped together enough money to buy a house just three miles away on the other side of the district boundary, which meant that Jobs could attend a school in a more affluent neighborhood with better educational opportunities. Other kids have not been so lucky.
It may surprise you to learn that nearly one million high school students in California attend schools that do not offer sufficient numbers of “A-G” courses (those required for admission to state colleges and universities. This inequity, highest in low-income and minority areas of the state, is quickly becoming a 21st-Century civil rights issue. State data indicates that Latino and African American students graduate high school, complete A-G courses, and go to college at rates significantly below the statewide average. California’s existing public education system includes barriers that prevent students from attending schools or taking courses outside of their district of residence, resulting in a geographic factor essentially determining their educational opportunity. These families simply do not have the opportunity afforded to the Jobs family, who could afford the cost of a move.
The California Student Bill of Rights Initiative, a project of Education Forward, seeks to remedy this inequity in access through an initiative slated for the November 2012 ballot. The proposition addresses this problem directly by utilizing information and communications technologies to break down the barriers between students and educational opportunities. Under this proposed law, students will be provided unrestricted access to all of the courses required for college entrance, including those offered within their own school district, at a community college, or through approved and accredited online schools.
Forty-five years after the Jobs family moved to pursue a better education for their son, the world has been transformed by technology that Steve envisioned. Innovators like Jobs have fundamentally changed the way the world does business – how we communicate, shop, and learn. It is time for the California public education system to step up and engage new learners in ways that are meaningful and relevant to them.
Several years ago, the emergence of new information and communication technologies prompted me to engage teachers, students, and parents in an ongoing conversation to think differently about where and how learning takes place. Over time, our concepts of school, classroom, teaching, and learning have been challenged and our thinking reshaped. We have begun to introduce new learning models into the system. Many of those ideas can be seen at work in the Riverside Virtual School, which has emerged as a model blended learning program in California. Students at RVS come onto campus to participate in meaningful learning activities as they are called for in the curriculum or recommended by the instructors. Student learning needs drive the design of each individual student’s educational program. Consequently, no two student schedules are the same. These new personalized school models have resulted in significant expansion of blended learning on comprehensive school campuses in Riverside and elsewhere via the California Open Campus.
This consortium of school district leaders acknowledges the changing environment and has begun the process of transformation that will reach across organizations and into the homes of our families. We acknowledge that the economy is struggling and that we simply cannot do what we have always done. We must find ways to become more efficient while at the same time increasing our effectiveness in raising student achievement. We accept the understanding that we live in a different world than the one we grew up in – one in which digital natives rely on digital immigrants to understand their new learning styles and academic needs. We feel an obligation to become adept at change and do things differently until we are able to achieve the outcomes expected of us. Consider joining us in this endeavor and move Education Forward.
With the passage of the California Student Bill of Rights, California will be one step closer to ensuring educational equality across demographic, economic, and geographic boundaries. We will be one step closer to giving our kids the chance they deserve to succeed in the highly competitive 21st century global economy. Who knows how many “Steve Jobses” are out there waiting for us to help, and what they will bring given the opportunity to succeed.
Dr. David Haglund is the Director of Educational Options in Riverside Unified School District and oversees several non-traditional schools including one of California’s premier online school programs, the Riverside Virtual School. In addition to his state and national advocacy roles promoting blended and online learning, Haglund serves as the chair of Education Forward (www.educationforward.org) the leading proponent of the California Student Bill of Rights. Follow him on Twitter @hagdogusc.
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If I read this proposal correctly, this is a really bad idea for four reasons: (1) it throws out the high school exit exam, which means we will return (with a vengeance) to an era of even lower quality certification than we already have; (2) it will require cash-strapped school districts, due to new “civil rights” sensitivities, to buy all kinds of instructional technology that some student might demand in order for the student to take some online course that some provider somewhere in California (or perhaps even outside of California?) might be offering; (3) it will provide a legal basis for civil rights-related access litigation against the University of California and California State University, which were only designed for the top one-eighth and one-third (respectively) of the student cohort and are already suffering capacity problems, and the taxpayers of California to provide seats for all the newly and weakly certified graduates of the envisioned online charter schools; and (4) its envisioned access to online Advanced Placement courses runs counter to current moves by the College Board, at least with regard to science classes, to deny certification to such courses because of the inadequacies of virtual laboratories and the failure of such courses to prepare students for real scientific work in real university laboratories.
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Editors: Please provide citation for this assertion: “nearly one million high school students in California attend schools that do not offer sufficient numbers of “a-g” courses”
There are plenty of benefits to blended, customized, flexible learning. No question there. But what is actually happening is a wild west land grab of competing interests seeking to claim student dollars. Lobbyists are funding candidates who will drive legislation into for-profit coffers like K12 Inc. County Offices of Education are lining up to compete with the very districts they’re supposed to serve by siphoning off revenue limit dollars to fund virtual schools that draw students away from brick and mortar neighborhood schools.
The initiative process is absolutely the 100% wrong way to address the merging development of technology and the need for more flexibility to address student learning.
Do yourselves a favor and set up a Google news search for “virtual learning” “online education” and “K12 Inc.” Start here and here and here.
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Virtual schooling and online learning may be valuable for many purposes and many students, but it is not a cost saving measure. And I’m not convinced that schools that are not offering enough a-g classes for their low achieving kids solve the problem by having virtual access to them, unless the kids are prepared for the a-g work, have broadband, and multiple hours of access to relatively modern computers every day.
As of today, the internet connection to our local school does not count as broadband for a household by the FCC definition. Any push for online learning needs to also address the infrastructure side of the problem, which includes not only the relatively obvious issues of broadband and computers, but the less obvious problem of outlets and amps.
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The two studies referenced in the post can be accessed at the links below. http://www.csea.com/content/FieldOffices/90/uploads/CAEdOpp.pdfhttp://www.hewlett.org/uploads/files/UCLAIDEA_UCACCORD_CaliforniaEducationalOpportunity.pdf
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@KSC, I’ve had this discussion before. What this info is based on is the fact that it’s hard for students to arrange schedules — not that the courses aren’t offered. (Spanish 5 conflicts with bio unless you drop band — a universal challenge in scheduling high school classes; ’twas ever thus. It may be impossible to make it easy to schedule a full course load unless a school can afford to schedule so many classes that they don’t fill up.)
Is there intent to mislead by trying to trick the reader into thinking that schools are maliciously refusing to offer A-G classes?
Discuss among yourselves.
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Let’s suppose we have a school with students interested in taking an a-g course online. Let’s further suppose that the school would be able to support this logistically, that the students are prepared and self-motivated, that a local teacher mentor is available, and that ample bandwidth and hardware are available.
What are the obstacles to this happening now? Are there quality courses available? What is the cost? Are there issues with assigning credit? What kinds of statistics are there on the success of existing courses?
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In the context of this discussion, the success of the course (academically speaking) is irrelevant — it’s just about allowing the student to list the course as completed on the UC and CSU applications, while enriching some private entrepreneur.
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