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Education WEEk A Special Report on K-12 Educational Technology www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations

E-LEARNING for Special Populations

A Supplement to the August 24, 2011, IssueVol. 31 • No. 1

Students With Disabilities, ELLs, the Gifted, and the At-Risk Get Virtual Help

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4 E-Learning Access For Special Needs 7 Assistive Technology Broadens Its Range 8 New Funding Tactics Seen as Necessary10 Virtual Ed. Targets Rise of Autism14 New Vistas Online For Gifted Students16 Opportunity Ripe For Online ELL Ed.18 At-Risk Students’ Virtual Challenges20 Online Options Require Right Fit22 Training for Virtual Interaction

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LivE WEbinar: Reaching Special Education Students Through Online Learning Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2 p.m. Eastern Time

Register for this webinar to learn more about new e-learning stategies for students with autism, the latest assistive technologies, and how online education can provide special populations of students with the personalized learning they’re looking for.

Featured Guests: Katharina I. Boser, a cognitive-development psychologist and co-chair of the Innovative Technology for Autism advisory board for the New York City-based advocacy group Autism Speaks; Patti Ralabate, a “universal design for learning” fellow at the Center for Applied Special Technology, in Wakefield, Mass.; and Mathew J. Wicks, the vice president of strategy and organizational development at the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL, based in Vienna, Va. www.edweek.org/go/webinar/onlinelearning

OnLinE viDEO: The Student ExperienceRising 8th grader Tessa Falcetta, of Grove City, Pa., takes classes through the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School. In this video, Tessa, who has dysgraphia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and her mother, Esther Falcetta, talk about the benefits and challenges of online learning. www.edweek.org/go/tessa

StuDy bOunCEAnaihs Espinoza, 18, in her backyard with her brother Alin, 5, will be a senior at Brady Exploration High School, in Lakewood, Colo., which focuses on students at risk of dropping out. She sees the school’s blend of online and face-to-face instruction as an advantage, allowing her to work independently and keeping her engaged. PAGE 16

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PrESiDEnt & EDitOr-in-ChiEfvirginia b. Edwards

ExECutivE EDitOrGregory Chronister

ExECutivE PrOjECt EDitOrKevin C. bushweller

SEniOr WritEr Michelle r. Davis covers technology for Education Week and Digital Directions.

COntributinG WritErS Katie ash covers technology for Education Week and Digital Directions.ian Quillen covers technology for Education Week and Digital Directions. Mary Catherine O’Connor is a freelance writer based in San francisco.

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EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 | S5 |

format. It isn’t any more accessible in that format than it was when it was in a textbook.”

While features such as videos and graphics might seem to au-tomatically bridge that gap, those enhancements may be useless to a student who has visual problems or other needs.

“You have to do a lot of proactive thinking,” Ms. Ralabate said.On the flip side, warns one advocate, is the use of online

classes as a substitute for teaching students with disabilities in other ways.

“We do not want to see technology used in place of best practice ... or to see technology compensate for shortages or to save on bud-gets—motivations that are less than addressing the best interests of students,” said Kim Hymes, the director of policy and advocacy for the Council for Exceptional Children in Arlington, Va.

LoW pARticipAtionOnline classes have grown rapidly into an entire industry, with

for-profit companies and nonprofits offering courses for entire schools and individual families. In addition, school districts and states have their own virtual schools.

Despite the proliferation, students with disabilities often don’t take the courses, because in many cases, the classes themselves or the types of classes offered weren’t designed with those stu-dents in mind.

For example, in Alabama, which has one of the largest state-run virtual schools in the country, just 217 students with dis-abilities took at least one online course last school year, although Alabama, through the Montgomery-based, state-run Alabama Connecting Classrooms, Educators, & Students Statewide, or accEss, delivered 34,000 online courses to students. The school was created to offer foreign language and Advanced Placement courses to students in rural parts of the state.

If little or no access is a problem in some places, too much ac-cess, with little teaching, is a problem elsewhere, said Marcie Lipsitt, a parent advocate in Michigan for the National Center

for Learning Disabilities, which is based in New York City.

“While I absolutely believe that high-quality and rigorous online learning can offer children new opportunities, I have pretty seri-ous concerns about online educa-tion being used to supplant direct teacher instruction,” she said, espe-cially in self-contained classrooms for some children with disabilities.

“If done right, online learning can afford students with learning disabilities new opportunities,” Ms. Lipsitt continued. “But with all things in education and children who have learning disabilities and [individualized education programs], there are schools that will look to shortchange students with disabilities.”

Getting a solid grasp of how many students take online courses is its own challenge. While Alabama tracks how many students with disabilities take online courses, some states and virtual schools don’t, even though the programs are years old. When Project Forum asked states how many students with disabilities enrolled in online courses two years ago, one state chose not to respond because the topic was “too controversial.”

And in Kentucky, the state-run virtual school that opened in 2000 will, for the first time, collect information about a child’s disability status starting with the 2011-12 school year.

Other schools gather data on students with disabilities but know it is incomplete. Florida’s state-run online school, the larg-est state-sponsored virtual school in the country, collects informa-tion about whether students have disabilities—but only if the students volunteer it.

Because it is a school of choice, students decide whether to dis-

On bOarD With OnLinE Tessa Falcetta, a rising 8th grader who lives in Grove City, Pa., has taken online classes in the past and will be taking them again when she starts school in the fall. Tessa has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, dysgraphia, and general anxiety disorder.

“ If done right, online learning can afford students with learning disabilities new

opportunities. But ... there are schools that will look to shortchange students.”

—Marcie Lipsitt National center for Learning Disabilities

| S4 | EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011

E-Learning Access For Special Needs

By niRVi SHAH

When Seph Koutsioukis was in a classroom at an elemen-tary school in Simpsonville, S.C., he floundered.

For Seph, who has autism, on-the-spot questions from teachers were a source of embarrassment. He was eas-ily distracted by the sights and sounds in the colorful,

occasionally loud room.But for two years, 10-year-old Seph has taken online classes

through the South Carolina Connections Academy, a charter school based in Columbia, S.C. He watches lessons on his home computer and talks with his teachers by phone and email.

His mother, Kelly Koutsioukis, says Seph’s self-esteem and demeanor are so improved because of his new school arrange-ment that people ask if he still has autism. Seph can focus on his schoolwork because he isn’t scoping out the rest of his class when he should be concentrating, she says. He isn’t anxious about being called on by the teacher and looking dumb in class. Now when he answers a question during a live virtual class, only the teacher sees what he says.

“This was the first time somebody has ever said, ‘What can we do for your child?’ instead of ‘This is what we’re going to offer,’ ” Ms. Koutsioukis said of the accommodations the public online school has made.

Virtual classes have been a blessing for Seph, and students such as Jasmin Floyd. Ms. Floyd, 18, just graduated from Woodstock Academy in Woodstock, Conn., but took several classes through the Maynard, Mass-based Virtual High School Global Conso-rium. That allowed her to stay at home without exacerbating her fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, a painful condition that causes extra bone to form in her muscles and other connective tissues.

Yet not all online classes are welcoming to students with dis-abilities. The courses may not be accessible to them, or the stu-dents may never be offered the courses in the first place.

A report last year by Project Forum at the National Association of State Directors of Special Education concluded as much.

“One of the findings from the group at the Forum was that stu-dents with disabilities have been systematically denied admission in places,” said Paula Burdette, Project Forum’s director, although she doesn’t believe that’s because of outright ill will.

“I don’t think it is a conspiracy,” she said. “I think people with sometimes the best intentions don’t know what to do.”

However, a 2003 letter from the U.S. Department of Education is explicit on the issue of virtual classes for students with dis-abilities. Although there isn’t any specific federal guidance about online or virtual schools, wrote the then-director of special educa-tion programs, there also isn’t any need for special rules because online or virtual schools must abide by all the same requirements set for other schools in the Individuals with Disabilities Educa-tion Act.

Years since that letter, obstacles between students with disabili-ties and online education persist, enough so that the Education Department has recognized the need for guidance and research about online courses for such students.

The department is in the process of selecting a creator for a Center on Online Learning and Students With Disabilities and is putting about $1.5 million behind the center.

“The expanded use of online learning offers potential benefits to children with disabilities but also poses significant challenges,” the May 5 Federal Register notice about the project reads. The center’s goal is to research how students with disabilities par-ticipate, or don’t, in online courses in kindergarten through 12th grade, what the positive and negative outcomes for online learn-ing are for those students, and effective ways of teaching children with disabilities online.

“Just because it goes into digital format does not make it ac-cessible,” said Yvonne Domings, an instructional designer and research associate for the Center for Applied Special Technology, or cast, in Wakefield, Mass. She worked on a panel that was re-viewing standards for online courses.

“Giving somebody access to something does not mean they’re going to learn from it,” she added.

Indeed, said Patti Ralabate, a universal design for learning fel-low at cast, “too often what’s happened is online courses end up just being what used to be in printed text, now hosted in an online

The expanded use of virtual education offers potential benefits for children with disabilities, once obstacles to greater participation are lifted and questions about what works best for such students are answered.

Disabilities

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17% Conservatively, the proportion of florida virtual School students with disabilities

3,363Students with disabilities in Pennsylvania cyber charter schools (13.7 percent of total enrollment)

2,400Students with intellectual disabilities who took new blended courses last year at the north Carolina virtual Public School (9.6 percent of total enrollment)

ZERoKnown students with disabilities to have taken online classes with the Kentucky virtual School

E-Learning Expands for Special-Needs Students

But obstacles to greater participation remain, and questions persist about what works best for students with disabilities.

01edtech-disabilities.h31

EW STORY

DESIGNERS: WIDTh OF ThIS bOx IS KEY. DO NOT ChANGE WIDTh. (zTMP NOTE)


By MARy cAtHERinE o’connoR

if you’ve ever felt the vibration of a cellphone, or used Google’s voice-based search function to look up a recipe instead of touching your key-board with wet fingers, you’ve enjoyed the benefits of assistive technology.

Assistive technologies have become commonplace in consumer electron-ics—in fact, they make up a $30.5 bil-lion industry that’s expected to grow

fast, as baby boomers’ vision and hearing begin to fail. But those bells and whistles are byproducts of the efforts made by edu-cational technology developers to design and refine assistive technology tools that remove barriers to learning for children suffering from a range of disabilities.

Thanks to the spread of the principles of universal design for learning, in which the needs of all users—with all levels of access and ability—are considered when creating products, many assistive technol-ogy tools are suited to address both cogni-tive disabilities and physical limitations and are increasingly being employed to help students with disabilities use digital curricula and take virtual courses. That is why experts suggest looking for ways that a single software platform might accommo-date the learning differences of a number of students with disabilities—but without losing sight of each individual’s needs, and without assuming that two students with

the same diagnosis will benefit equally from a single technology or tool.

“It’s less about the label or dis-ability that each student car-

ries, and more about how his or her challenges manifest

themselves,” said Dan Lei-bowitz, a learning spe-cialist at the 400-student Town School for Boys, a private K-8 school in San Francisco. He is the owner of Innovative Learning Services, which works with individuals

and small groups of stu-dents and parents to con-

nect them with technologies and skills to improve the stu-

dents’ ability to learn.“With each [assistive technology]

tool, I ask: ‘Does it help students ac-cess information? And does it help students demonstrate their knowledge?’ ” he said.

While universal design is making assistive technologies useful to an ever-wider cross section of students with learning disabili-ties, individuals’ needs are paramount.

“The mainstreaming movement means regular teachers are learning more about assistive technologies and applying the same technologies for their whole class-rooms,” said Heidi Silver-Pacuilla, a former deputy director of the National Center for Technology Innovation, or ncti, in Wash-ington. Ms. Silver-Pacuilla is now the su-pervisory education specialist for the U.S. Office of Adult and Vocational Education.

“So the pressure is on educational tech developers to build in access avenues for [assistive technology] into their products, and the pressure is on at developers to make their products more applicable to mainstream students.”

But the disability community worries that trend could mean students with mul-tiple or severe disabilities won’t get the tools they really need.

For example, while a text-to-speech ap-plication can give a blind student access to a specific document on a computer, it won’t allow him or her to navigate outside that document and access other programs or applications, said Jennifer McDonald-Peltier, an assistive technology specialist for the Center for Accessible Technology, a Berkeley, Calif.-based nonprofit that aims to equip students with disabilities with the technology they need to be successful. For that, a screen reader program is essential, she pointed out.

Acquiring assistive technology tools is a multistep process that involves testing, and further study and coordination with a district assistive technology specialist. Many technology providers offer trial tests of their products, and educators can test-drive the various assistive technologies on display at education conferences.

‘cHEAp AnD EASy tooLS’And no matter what a district’s budget

situation is or the number or types of dis-abilities students have, experts in assistive technology offer some universal advice.

To begin with, schools should not overlook the technologies already available.

“My first impulse when an educator says she wants to differentiate her curriculum, and differentiate her instruction for a vari-ety of students,” said Ms. McDonald-Peltier, “is to start by looking at [Microsoft] Word and PowerPoint. These cheap and easy tools might already meet your needs.”

In addition, school computers are likely to have some basic assistive technology tools built in at the platform level. Macintosh op-erating systems, for example, offer Universal Access, a set of accessibility-focused monitor and keyboard settings designed to help users who have visual and auditory limitations, or those with motor-skill problems.

At the other end o f the spectrum are the c ompre -hensive software platforms, such as Inspiration software, or the Wynn literacy soft-ware, which supports a long list of features and add-ons, such as support for optical-character-recognition devices, or talking dictionaries. Experts point out that such products can be very good learning tools—but they can become very expensive. They say educators might only need specific modules within a software suite, or perhaps another software product, with fewer fea-tures.

In any case, experts recommend looking for something that’s easy to install and learn—for teachers and students alike. “The training component is often overlooked in purchasing decisions,” said Ms. McDonald-Peltier.

Upgradable products are preferable, too, given the rapidity with which technology is evolving.

‘WE nEED pRoof’Finally, experts suggest relying on the re-

search that educational technology groups, such as the ncti and the Washington-based Center for Implementing Technology in Education, which helps schools implement assistive technology, have compiled. The Tech Matrix is an online tool that allows educators to search for assistive technology tools by specific content areas.

The ncti is also working with the Assis-tive Technology Industry Association to help assistive technology manufacturers and software developers conduct research on the efficacy of their tools for learning.

“You wouldn’t test the efficacy of eye-glasses, but other tools, such as digital-text software that includes educational prompts” need to be tested, said Ms. Silver-Pacuilla. “Does it really help students with learning issues? We need proof.”

Most students, through time and experi-mentation, will find the tools that work best for them, experts suggest.

Brandi Allan, a junior at Immaculate Conception Academy, a 280-student high school in San Francisco, was diagnosed with dyslexia in the 1st grade. She uses a combination of an AlphaSmart keyboard, an Intel optical-character-recognition de-vice for text-to-speech help with printed matter, and a LiveScribe note-taking pen.

“You have to find your own tweaks” to find the best way to use different tools ef-fectively, Ms. Allan said. “I’m still experi-menting with different technologies, and I have been since around third grade.”l

Assistive Technology Broadens Its Range

Technological tools that help

remove barriers for

students with learning

disabilities are increasingly

versatile.

Maximizing the platform

For an online list of assistive-technology

providers, go to www.edweek.org/

go/assistivetech.


close their disabilities, and last year, 17 percent of the Florida Virtual School’s more than 90,000 students did so, said Jeffrey Jacobson, who oversees special education for the school.

“We have a pretty good inkling that that number is more around 40 percent. That’s what we’re getting from kids that identify them-selves later and [from] talks with teachers,” he said.

What the numbers do tell the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School is that students with disabilities are struggling with their online classes. Of those students, only 30 percent successfully com-pleted their courses, Mr. Jacobson said.

This fall, the school will launch a pilot program in which six teachers certified in special education will work more closely with students who have identified themselves as having disabilities. Their teaching loads will be smaller than for other Florida Virtual School teachers, Mr. Jacobson said, to foster stronger relationships between the teachers and their students.

“They can now spend the time to do direct instruction. Let’s say [the students] need help every day. If you have 120 students you can’t do that,” he said, adding that the total for those teachers will probably be about 75 students.

“If the student’s not calling you,” he said, “you can call the stu-dent every week.”

BLEnDED AppRoAcHES GRoWIn other states, the era of virtual learning has spawned distinc-

tive courses and teaching methods for students with disabilities.During the 2010-11 school year, North Carolina launched a new

method of teaching life-skills courses for students with significant cognitive disabilities. The classes combine in-person teaching and online instruction.

For more than 2,000 students statewide, their special education teachers were paired with teachers from the 25,000-student North Carolina Virtual Public School, based in Raleigh. The virtual school teachers delivered much of the core content of a subject—this past year, it was Algebra 1, biology, and English—and classroom teach-ers helped ensure the lessons were as accessible as possible for the students, said Michelle Lourcey, the curriculum and instruction division director for the school.

The course content and design were a big shift away from the traditional lessons in those classes, she said. While students still learned how to count money, which chemicals may be poisonous, and how to grocery shop, they also did science experiments and studied “Romeo and Juliet” via online lessons created with the principles of universal design for learning, or udl. Those principles call for developing curriculum in a way that gives all students an equal opportunity to learn.

If there was a chunk of text for students to read, they could click on it and it would be read to them, for example, said Freda Lee, a state consultant for students with intellectual disabilities.

Although recorded or live lessons from the ncvps teachers were delivered online, there were many days students weren’t sitting at

computers, said Casey Peeler, who taught some blended courses at Shelby High School, about 40 miles west of Charlotte. Lessons might have been delivered on smartboards, for example.

When the class was studying osmosis, they soaked gummy bears in salt water and tap water, remembered Jamar Petty, 18, one of Ms. Peeler’s students.

“We were trying to see what was going to happen and what was the effect,” said Mr. Petty, who has learning disabilities. “One of them got bigger than the other.” He said he had never done experi-ments like that before.

The Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School, based in Norristown, Pa., has developed its own method for teaching life skills virtually, special education teacher Stacy McGowan said. Overall, about 15 percent of the students at the 3,500-student school have dis-abilities.

For several hours a day, Ms. McGowan teaches her students live from her home. They have webcams to see her, and she can see them—and everything they’re doing.

“When we’re working on counting money, I like them to use real money. Their mom or dad, or whomever, moves the webcam so I can see the money,” said Ms. McGowan, whose classes are typically no larger than 15 students. “One time we were working on tying shoes. We put our foot in front of the webcam.”

The idea to teach classes this way was Ms. McGowan’s, said the virtual school’s chief executive officer, Joanne Jones Barnett.

“She developed that model by asking the question, ‘How do I do life skills in a virtual environment?’ ” Ms. Jones Barnett said.

MEEtinG SpEciAL nEEDSWhile online classes could be larger, even when they are for

students with disabilities, Ms. Jones Barnett said that isn’t her school’s approach.

Because virtual schools are still in their relative infancy, she said, the teaching requires innovation, “and not being afraid to meet the needs of your students.”

The Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School seems ideal for Tessa Falcetta, 13, whose disabilities are very different from those of the students Ms. McGowan teaches.

Tessa has a limited short-term memory, attention deficit hyper-activity disorder, and dysgraphia, which affects her ability to write, form letters, and spell, said her mother, Esther Falcetta.

In rural Grove City, Pa., Ms. Falcetta said, traditional brick-and-mortar schools haven’t been able to address all of Tessa’s needs. After two years of that situation, Tessa, for 8th grade, will go back to online schooling, which she did as an elementary school student.

While Tessa has the option of attending live classes, that can be a challenge because it’s often difficult for her to stay on task, Ms. Falcetta said.

With the virtual school, which helped accommodate Tessa’s dif-ficulty with writing, “she’ll read her book, and do her work,” her mother said, “and if she has a question, she’ll call the teacher.” l

ViDEoThe Student Experiencehear from rising 8th grader Tessa Falcetta, who lives in Grove City, Pa., and who takes classes through the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School. Tessa, who has dysgraphia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and her mother, Esther Falcetta, talk about why online learning is the best fit for Tessa, its challenges, and how the lessons are tailored to her needs.

www.edweek.org/go/tessa

LEarninG LanDSCaPE Brandi Allan, 17, is a high school junior in Daly City, Calif. She has dyslexia and uses specialized e-learning technology as part of her educational program.

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About this report

this special report, the first installment of a new three-part series on virtual education that builds on Education Week’s 2010-11 special coverage, examines the growing e-learning oppo r tun i t i e s f o r students with disabilities,

English-language learners, gifted and talented students, and those at risk of failing in school. it shows the barriers that exist for greater participation among special populations, especially students with disabilities, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of online education for these groups of students. it also takes a look at the new funding tactics schools are using to build virtual education programs for special populations and the evolving professional-development needs for these types of efforts.

http://e-news.edweek.org/ct/12606902:15165331888:m:1:480873120:EE6DC9A7633CA2D84177CB234C0DF3F1http://e-news.edweek.org/ct/12596966:15156245013:m:1:480873120:3293D68E8FEAD0DB2D7AC34ACA6C288F

EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 | S9 || S8 | EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011

By MicHELLE R. DAViS

over the past few years, the 10,500-student Bonneville Joint School District 93 has grown by about 400 stu-dents a year, and Superin-tendent Charles J. Shackett invested heavily in technol-ogy to attract new students. The district, based in Idaho Falls, Idaho, built an eCen-

ter, decked out with computers, that allows high school students to take online courses from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. as it fits their schedules. And it created a virtual acad-emy of online courses, in hopes of luring back students who had left the district to be home-schooled.

Both were expensive projects, and Mr. Shackett used money from various sources to make it happen, including a voter-approved bond issue. But he also tapped into the district’s funds from Title I, the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act program that supports interventions for disadvantaged stu-dents. The federal aid went particularly to purchase software for the eCenter and for the online curriculum used by the virtual academy.

“We want to be the lead on technology,” Mr. Shackett said, and looking at all the ways to pay for it, includ-ing such federal funding streams, is important.

Districts across the country are in the same bind: They want to invest in technology and especially in virtual education programs, but a sour economy means tighter budgets. In addition, federal lawmak-ers have defunded the Enhancing Education Through Technology, or EEtt, program, which once provided $700 million a year in grants to districts for educa-tional technology, but had been whittled to $100 mil-lion in annual funding before being scrapped.

In response to those financial challenges, district leaders are looking at more creative financial use of federal programs like Title I, which experts describe as particularly flexible. Other potential federal sources are the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides support for special education services, and the EsEa’s Title III, which provides grants to states and districts to help English-language learn-ers gain proficiency in the language and to assist im-migrant students’ transition to American schools.

But Douglas A. Levin, the executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association, or sEtda, based in Glen Burnie, Md., said tapping into such funds can be “both an opportunity and a chal-lenge” for districts. Strict federal rules exist about how the money can be used, and not all districts or schools will qualify.

Some of the restrictions make it “really difficult to scale innovation across a district,” Mr. Levin said.

Streams of federal dollars like Title I are often the first place to look for funding when dollars are cut elsewhere, said Richard M. Long, the executive direc-tor for governmental relations for the Washington-based National Title I Association. But schools and districts must take great care to follow the rules as-sociated with that money, he said.

For example, schools and districts may use Title I money for most educational endeavors designed to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. How-ever, that money must be targeted specifically at dis-advantaged students—and not shared with the gen-eral student population—unless 40 percent or more of students at a school qualify as low-income. Title I money can be used schoolwide if a school meets that 40 percent threshold, Mr. Long said. Any program paid for with Title I money that is used to improve instruction must be part of a school plan reviewed by the state, he said.

REStRictionS on funDinGFunding under the idEa has similar restrictions

permitting purchases to be used only for special edu-cation students. However, when those students are in mainstream classrooms, that technology can be shared with all the students.

For instance, at the Idaho Virtual Academy, a K-12 charter school with 3,000 students, the head of school, Desiree Laughlin, has used idEa money to pay for as-sistive technologies for her special education students, who number about 300.

In particular, she has purchased a speech-to-text software program that allows students with disabili-ties to access online textbooks and any other school-related content, by having the computer “read” text aloud. The software also works the other way, allow-ing students to dictate papers and responses to be entered as text.

Ms. Laughlin said she has not used that software with other students in the school, though she be-lieves it could aid many students. But her awareness of the software has led to her find low-cost or free programs for some struggling learners not classified as special education students.

“We have a lot of students that just like the auditory support, and it fits their learning style,” she said.

In the 6,800-student K-8 Creighton Elementary School District in Phoenix, district officials have tapped Title I and idEa funds for technology projects. With 94 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches, educational technology proj-ects paid for with Title I money can reach all stu-dents, said Robyn Griffith, a technology trainer in the district.

The district has purchased reading-intervention software for special education students that can be shared with the large Ell population the district serves, since many special education students attend mainstream classes.

“When these students are mainstreamed, the idea that they have a tool and only one or two students in the class can use it is patently ridiculous,” Ms. Grif-fith said, “particularly with technology.”

She said her district’s Ell funds mostly go to pay for literacy specialists and have not been used much for technology. Instead, the district is seeking out Title I dollars for such projects, since “there’s more of that to go around, and the technology stuff has a tendency to cross student groups, so it’s very univer-sal,” she said.

The state of Arizona has been actively encouraging schools to do just that, said Cathy J. Poplin, the dep-uty associate superintendent for educational technol-ogy for the Arizona Department of Education.

“We’ve really encouraged the blending of money,” as state funding and EEtt funding have dwindled, she said. “There’s great opportunity there.”

At the 8,500-student Georgia Cyber Academy, where 60 percent of students qualify for free or re-duced-price lunches, Title I aid is being used a bit differently. The head of school, Matt Arkin, said he most often invests in human capital.

Mr. Arkin has used Title I money to pay for addi-tional staff members to support family engagement—an important investment, in his view, for low-income students whose families may not be familiar with online education and how to support it. l

New Funding Tactics Seen as Necessary Districts across the country are now tapping into a variety of financial sources, such as federal Title I and Title III money, to build and sustain their virtual education programs.

funding

$ poSSiBLE fEDERAL funDinG SouRcES

titLE i Of thE ELEMEntary anD SECOnDary EDuCatiOn aCt:

$14.5 billionProgram supports interventions for disadvantaged students

titLE iii Of thE ELEMEntary anD SECOnDary EDuCatiOn aCt:

$750 millionProgram provides grants to states and districts to help English-language learners gain proficiency in the language and to assist immmigrant students’ transition to american schools

inDiviDuaLS With DiSabiLitiES EDuCatiOn aCt:

$11.5 billionProgram provides financial support for special education services

SOuRCE: Education Week

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autism may also be involved in teacher-moderated social-skills groups using Web-based conferencing, Ms. Kendall said. If additional face-to-face social intervention is needed, the school may contract with a local agency to provide it, she said.

But Katharina I. Boser, a cognitive-development psychol-ogist who is the co-chair, along with Mr. Goodwin, of the Innovative Technology for Autism Advisory Board for Au-tism Speaks, said the success of online education with such students depends on how severely a student is affected. In addition, many of the socialization issues that take place in a regular school environment may still be a problem online, she said.

For example, a student who is focused on a particular subject and doesn’t know how to discuss that topic without going on at length in a socially unacceptable way may do the same thing online. “Through written text, they’ll go on and on, but they won’t be able to culminate their ideas or provide proper responses,” Ms. Boser said.

But because communication can be more closely moni-tored online, a teacher may be able to guide the student more easily, Ms. Boser said.

AttEntion on AppSFor those who don’t have the skills

needed to operate in a full-blown online classroom, the use of online applications, or apps, is becoming more popular. Those apps can, among many other uses, help students learn their addresses, phone numbers, and other basic information, use games to improve balance and coordination, aid communi-cation, and even prepare for a trip to the dentist.

Judith Ursitti’s 7-year-old son Jack didn’t speak at all until about a year ago, after he got an iPad. Now, he’s using programs on his iPad to enhance his growing vocabulary, help him com-municate, and play.

“It’s a constant tool,” said Ms. Ursitti. “When we put an iPad in his hand, he immediately got it.”

His progress wasn’t magical, though, and it came with support from Ms. Ursitti, teachers, and therapists.

Before receiving his iPad, Jack communicated using a flip-book he wore around his neck, which contained pictures he could point to showing what he wanted or needed.

Chart Headline Here


By MicHELLE R. DAViS

When bullying in her teenage daughter’s Maryland public school became too intense, Ruth Zanoni decided to try home-schooling, using on-line education as a supple-ment.

Ms. Zanoni’s daughter, now 14, has Asperger syn-drome, often described as

a high-functioning form of autism. She was academically advanced in some subjects, such as writing and literature, but was sometimes overwhelmed by sensory stimulus. And her lack of social skills made her a target for bullying.

At home in Howard County, Ms. Zanoni’s daughter did well pursuing math through videos from Khan Academy, a not-for-profit provider of online educational videos and activities, and working on her social skills using an online role-playing game, but she faltered taking French and then Italian online. Ms. Zanoni said she had to work hard to keep her daughter on task online and felt she needed ad-ditional face-to-face support. Ms. Zanoni eventually found a private school that specialized in working with students like her daughter.

“There’s a huge value to online education [for students with autism], but it depends on how it’s introduced and the nature of the person,” Ms. Zanoni said.

For some students with autism, online education can be the right fit, taking away the sensory overload and social stigma that can occur in a brick-and-mortar school and al-lowing them to pursue subjects they’re passionate about, above and beyond what they’d get in the classroom.

For students who aren’t as high-functioning, lacking language and motor skills, more-traditional online classes often aren’t an option. But many students are now using a growing number of apps on computers and particularly iPads to help improve such functions as social skills and communication. In addition, new technologies for early de-

tection, speech therapy, and research into autism, a complex developmental brain disorder, are being developed.

Schools and those who provide intervention for such students are seeking out that technology and the tools it can offer as they’re seeing the number of students with autism rise. According to the U.S. Department of Educa-tion, there was a 1,700 percent increase in the number of students with autism in schools from the 1991-92 school year through the 2001-02 school year, compared with a 30 percent increase among all other disabilities. Currently, one in 110 U.S. children are diagnosed with autism by the time they are 8 years old, according to the New York City advocacy group Autism Speaks.

“A lot of this [new technology] is preliminary and promis-ing, but it’s not a silver bullet,” said Matthew S. Goodwin, the director of clinical research at the Massachusetts In-stitute of Technology Media Lab, in Cambridge, Mass. “It’s not going to cure autism, but we’re on the precipice of a revolution.”

‘SEnSoRy iSSuES’At Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc., which operates 47 online

charter schools across the country, about 12 percent of the special education students it serves have an autism diagno-sis, said Jenny Kendall, K12’s director of special programs. The majority of them are high-functioning, and for many of them, online education is a “perfect fit,” she said.

“They have sensory issues and [in a brick-and-mortar school] you’re going to add bells and crowds and hallway changes and the noise, which is so traumatic for a child who needs a calm, consistent routine,” Ms. Kendall said.

Online education allows such students to control their en-vironment. Those students are also often “hyper-focused” in certain areas, Ms. Kendall noted, and may want to go above and beyond in that academic area, which online instruction allows them to do.

K12 does provide online methods of socialization, such as an internal social-networking site, that is monitored by adults to promote positive interaction. Students with

Virtual Ed. Targets Rise of Autism E-learning programs and learning apps evolve to meet the needs of a fast-growing population of children with autism, but experts caution that online education can have drawbacks for these students.

Autism

aPPLyinG a nEW tOOLJack Ursitti, 7, of Dover, Mass., has been diagnosed with autism and uses an iPad for leisure and for educational activities. “It’s a constant tool,” says his mother, Judith Ursitti. “When we put an iPad in his hand, he immediately got it,” she says. “A lot of this [new technology] is preliminary and

promising. ... It’s not going to cure autism, but we’re on the precipice

of a revolution.”—Matthew s. GooDwiN

Massachusetts institute of technology Media Lab

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| S12 | EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 | S13 |

autiSM SPECtruM DiSOrDErSthese can include autism, asperger syndrome, and persuasive developmental disorder; they can cause significant social, communication, and behavioral challenges.

1 in 110Prevalence of autism spectrum disorders among children in the united States

4 to 5 tiMEShow much more likely boys are than girls to have autism spectrum disorders

1,700%increase in the number of students in schools who were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders from the 1991-92 school year to the 2001-02 school year

SOuRCES: u.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; u.S. Department of Education

“It was cumbersome and it was not the coolest thing in the

world,” said Ms. Ursitti, who is also the director of state-govern-

ment affairs for Autism Speaks.When Jack got an iPad, he found

he could easily scroll through pic-tures for the ones he wanted. At school,

Jack uses the iPad to communicate, and it keeps a schedule of his therapies and ac-

tivities. Though Jack’s fine-motor skills aren’t so-

phisticated enough for him to type, he uses a $1.99 app to drag and drop words and let-ters, often showing Ms. Ursitti that he knows how to spell and use language in ways she was unaware of. “It’s another avenue into his mind and abilities that we didn’t have before,” she said. Experts and parents say using apps and other

online tools helps maintain the attention of students with autism.

Kyle D. Epps, a speech-language pathologist for Progres-sus Therapy, a Baltimore-based company that provides therapies to school districts, who works with students in the 680,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District, said students with autism often seem more interested in thera-pies offered through technology than more traditional meth-ods. With the use of technology, Mr. Epps said, he sees “a huge increase in production and keeping their attention.”

He’s used, for example, an “eye contact” app that displays a person’s face. A student with autism looks into the person’s eyes to see a number and report it so the therapist knows the student is looking in the right spot, allowing him or her to get comfortable with eye contact.

While “the technology is only as good as the therapist,” Mr. Epps said, it appears to be a “motivating tool.” He said some

parents are now requesting iPads as part of their children’s individualized education programs, or iEps, the federally mandated plans for serving students with disabilities.

In addition, some states are starting to look at those tools as important therapies. New York state is considering leg-islation that would require insurance companies to cover expenses related to “augmentative communication devices” for children and adults who have disabilities that hinder lan-guage skills.

‘ActiVE coLLABoRAtoRS’More apps are in the making. In cooperation with Autism Speaks and the Doug Flutie

Jr. Foundation for Autism, based in Framingham, Mass., the technology company Hewlett-Packard has launched a Hack-ing Autism initiative to develop new, free apps. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is seeking idea submissions, and ex-perts will select some for a “hackathon” that brings together scientists and the community that supports children with autism to jump-start development.

Many new technological tools are already in development. Mr. Goodwin, the director of clinical research at the mit Media Lab, is working on four different projects that could provide, for example, social cues to students with autism, track a student’s stress level, and help provide early diagno-sis for children with autism.

A whole range of new technology is on the horizon to aid students with autism, Mr. Goodwin said, and those innova-tions are not being developed in a vacuum. Students with autism, their families, and those who work to improve the skills of such children are providing feedback to enhance those technological tools.

“They are active collaborators,” Mr. Goodwin said. “We’re augmenting already-available technologies and taking ad-vantage of the interest that people have in them.” l

“There’s a huge value to online education [for students with autism], but it depends on

how it’s introduced and the nature of the person.”

—ruth ZaNoNi parent of a child with asperger syndrome

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reduce the social pressure that may come with accelerating elementary or middle school students into high-school-level courses, said Elizabeth R. Pape, the president and chief ex-ecutive officer of the Virtual High School Global Consortium, a nonprofit organization based in Maynard, Mass., that pro-vides online high school courses to more than 15,000 students around the globe.

The organization’s enrollment has more than doubled since the 2005-06 school year.

“You may not want your middle schoolers [in a classroom] with high schoolers for a variety of reasons,” she said, such as being in an environment with more socially and physically advanced peers, as well as the logistical challenges of trav-eling between two schools. “The great benefit of the [Virtual High School] model ... is it allows students to take [the course] within the comfort of their middle school environment.”

And whenever a younger student enrolls in a course in-tended for older age groups, the school and the teacher review the content to make sure it is age-appropriate, said Amy Mi-chalowski, the director of curriculum and instruction for vhs.

cREAtinG connEctionSThe sense of connection that gifted students feel in an

online classroom is one of the greatest benefits of virtual learning for them, said Raymond Ravaglia, the executive director of the Education Program for Gifted Youth at Stan-ford University.

“One of the canonical experiences for a gifted child is that they’re always the smartest kid in the class,” he said. The re-sulting sense of isolation can be assuaged at summer camps

and special events designed for high-achieving students, but with virtual learning, those students can feel that sense of connection in their every day classroom, he said.

“What these kids really want is meaningful, substantive communication with each other,” said Mr. Ravaglia.

“There’s a real opportunity to take the students to new places. You want to get in there and individualize,” he said. “It’s not just about ... getting them through the con-tent. It’s about getting them to really apply themselves and invest the kind of effort that is going to lead them to develop their talent.”

The Epgy Online High School, which has grown from 30 to 360 students in the past six years, employs a synchro-nous learning model, so all the students have the oppor-tunity to communicate with their peers, as well as their teacher, in real time.

In addition, the curriculum for online gifted students needs to be “highly adaptive, so it’s constantly assessing and evaluating the student’s understanding,” Mr. Ravaglia said. “These kids have a lot of talent, a lot of ability, and they should be successful. When they’re not, you need to ask yourself what you are doing.”

inDEpEnDEnt LEARnERSChris Thomas is the coordinator of the 170-student

North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics On-line program. The tuition-free program builds off ncssm’s residential program for gifted North Carolina juniors and seniors with a high aptitude in science and math. Students in the online program complete several classes through

ncssm Online in addition to their full courseloads at their home schools. The ncssm classes allow students to explore more advanced math and science topics, such as computa-tional chemistry and genetics.

“A local school only has so many resources available for gifted students,” said Mr. Thomas. “This is more like a col-lege course, where [instructors] expect the students to be more independent.”

In fact, it is that independence that can be the biggest challenge for students taking online courses from ncssm Online, he said.

“Some students find out that they really needed a face-to-face environment with someone always reminding them [about assignments,]” he said. “The students [in this pro-gram] really have to be able to work on their own.”

But that doesn’t mean that students don’t receive help and guidance from online instructors, said Megan DeLau-nay, a recent graduate of the program.

“I actually felt like I was getting more attention in the online classes,” she said. “It was like being in a real school.”

All students are required to attend a Web-based video-conference each week with their classmates and teacher to help keep them on track and build community among the students. Online students also attend one or two weekends per semester at the ncssm campus for community-building and face-to-face lab activities.

“The friends I made in the online program are some of my best friends,” said Ms. DeLaunay, 17, who was doing research at the University of Richmond, in Virginia, before beginning her college career there this fall. “We’re just one big community of students.” l

Chart Headline Here


By KAtiE ASH

online learning can open the door to a vast array of expanded course selec-tions, individualized attention for stu-dents, and the flexibility for students to move at their own pace—all factors that make virtual learning environ-ments an attractive option for gifted students.

And as budget cuts threaten to drain funding from programs for the

gifted, more schools—and students—may be looking to online education as a way to fill the gap in offerings, according to ex-perts in gifted education.

“Parents are going to be searching for these opportunities more and more,” said Paula Olszewski-Kubilius, the director of the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill.

“Those parents want their kids to be able to take cool stuff that they’re not able to take in school, particularly in areas like math where there are opportunities for acceleration,” she said.

The Center for Talent Development operates an independent supplementary online program for gifted K-12 students called Gifted LearningLinks. For the 2010-11 school year, the school served about 1,500 students (this number does not include en-rollments for August courses), up from 900 students five years ago.

Ms. Olszewski-Kubilius has found that different age groups of students have different goals for their experiences. The younger students tend to enroll in enrichment courses and focus on con-necting with other gifted students throughout the country, for example.

“That’s not true for the high-school-age kid,” Ms. Olszewski-Kubilius said. “They’re busy and involved with a lot of things. They want a way to be able to do something independently with-out being part of a cohort.”

Striking a balance between connecting students and en-couraging them to work collaboratively, on the one hand, and allowing them to move individually through courses at their

own pace, on the other, is particularly important for gifted students, she argues.

But not all online programs, she emphasizes, are created equal. “What [students] don’t like is online programs where they sit

and read screen after screen on a computer,” she said. “That’s just as bad as a slow-paced face-to-face classroom situation.”

Instead, students need highly interactive and engaging curricula with consistent feedback from teachers about their performance, she explained.

“It works beautifully when it’s done well, but people are still try-ing to figure out what that means and what success looks like,” Ms. Olszewski-Kubilius said.

coMpEtEncy-BASED MoDELSteve Kossakoski is the chief executive officer of the Virtual

Learning Academy Charter School in Exeter, N.H.—that state’s first statewide online public high school that launched in Janu-ary 2008, and has since grown to 11,500 course enrollments. Many of the students served by the school are high-achieving learners, he said.

About two-thirds of the student population attends vlacs for supplemental courses while also attending a public school.

Students at vlacs work on a competency-based model, as opposed to a time-based one. That means students progress through courses based on mastery of the material and are not bound by seat-time requirements.

That model is especially helpful for gifted students, who may be able to progress through a 16-week course in eight weeks, said Mr. Kossakoski.

“Time can be a real barrier in the traditional schools,” he said. “We can do things at any time, and it really helps when you can remove time as a barrier.”

The school also uses rolling enrollment, so students can join anytime during the school year, he said.

Having vlacs available to students in New Hampshire serves to “democratize” the curriculum, by helping provide the same opportunities for all students in the state regardless of funding differences between districts, Mr. Kossakoski said.

Teaching gifted students in an online environment can also

New Vistas Online For Gifted Students Individualized attention and expanded course selection are among the advantages for these students; serving them online may be increasingly attractive to schools and districts struggling with tight budgets.

Gifted

taCKLinG thE nExt EQuatiOnMegan DeLaunay, 17, works on her computer at home in Pinehurst, N.C., with her dog, Biscuit, nearby. Ms. DeLaunay is a recent graduate of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics Online Program, and will be attending the University of Richmond this year after graduating from high school a year early.

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| S16 | EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 | S17 |

Lori Langer de Ramirez, who chairs the Esl department at New York’s 4,000-student Herricks Union Free School District, on Long Island, and is author of the book Empower English Language Learners With Tools From the Web, says that, while some Ells need more hands-on attention than online courses provide, many other Ells who should be ex-posed to online learning options aren’t.

She suggested one mistake educators make is to assume that all Ell students have had limited exposure to technology that would be used in an online class in their home lives, either stateside or in the countries they emigrated from. Another is withholding all online-course options from Ells, even in those subjects where reading comprehension isn’t as important.

“The particular group of English-language learners in my dis-trict … could go online and do math without a second thought,” said Ms. Langer de Ramirez, who said many of those students are of East Asian descent. “The areas that are most challenging for English-language learners are obviously English, but also social studies. I wouldn’t want them to do social studies apart from a physical class, but I could see them doing support work online.”

The Florida Virtual School even offers some of its courses in other languages. English-learners often enroll in native-lan-guage courses in subjects such as driver education and physical education, Ms. Durrance said.

on-cAMpuS optionSMeanwhile, there are other options specifically for Ells that

involve learning online without leaving the campus.The Imagine Learning English software program targets

Ells—among other populations—and presents Esl material in an adaptive and interactive manner that allows students to work through and master concepts individually.

Similarly, the hElp Math program for Ell and special education students is a Web-based adaptive-learning program that includes interactive features that communicate concepts both in the stu-dent’s native language and in English while also aiding language acquisition. The program has found a home in 150 schools and serves upwards of 20,000 students in grades 3-8, said Barbara Freeman, the program’s creator and chief operating officer of its Carbondale, Colo.-based parent company, Digital Directions Inter-national. The program’s research and development was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and the program offers schoolwide subscriptions and individual student licenses.

Ms. Freeman estimates that 90 percent of schools using hElp when it was first developed delivered it in computer labs rather than an everyday classroom. That number has dropped, but only to 50 percent to 60 percent, she says.

And while she believes her program has great benefits for Ell students who may need more personalization than an instructor alone can provide, she cautions against the use of any software intervention program that distances students from the school culture they’re trying to join.

“I have a real fear of a dialysis model of instruction, where, if you’re failing with instruction, you go sit on the computer,” Ms. Freeman said. “It’s the process of monitoring the student’s growth that is very, very important to us.” l

ELL

By iAn QuiLLEn

Among special populations of students, English-language learners may repre-sent virtual learning’s last frontier.

With the dual challenges of grasping a new language and keeping up with other academic studies, Ells would seem poised to benefit greatly from the prospect of self-paced study, direct teacher correspondence without other students observing, and an adaptive

curriculum. Yet, such students appear to represent one of the smallest slices of virtual student enrollment, and they typically encounter online learning through pathways that differ from the experiences of most online learners.

For example, across virtual schools run by the Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc., only about 2 percent of enrolled students—or roughly 1,800—qualify for English-as-second-language, or Esl, instruction and support. Of those students, more than half have been adopted into native English-speaking families, esti-mates Jenny Kendall, K12’s director of special programs.

“I don’t think the Esl community has found the benefit of this home-environment learning for a student,” said Ms. Kendall, who acknowledges there are a variety of reasons.

Parents of Ells may have emigrated from a country where online learning is unfamiliar, for example, and they may not be proficient enough in English to act as learning coaches for younger students. And students who are receiving basic-level English instruction may not have enough grasp of the lan-guage to follow along in text-heavy courses.

“It’s a population that is not significant for us,” Ms. Kendall said of English-learners. “But the benefits of this would en-courage growth and enrollment.”

At the public, 120,000-student Florida Virtual School, which offers its services for free to in-state students, only 3.3 percent of the half-credit enrollments—or about 8,500 of more than 250,000 enrollments total—have been identified as Ells, in a state where the Ell population is about 15 percent of all stu-dents. Of those enrolled Ells, nearly 1,000 encountered Florida

Virtual through the school’s new virtual-learning-lab program, in which brick-and-mortar districts offer a synchronous version of one of the virtual school’s courses in a computer lab, often to reduce class size as a result of statewide class-size mandates.

Florida Virtual’s Ell enrollment represents about 10 percent of the 10,000 students served in the program’s first year, mostly in the 310,000-student Miami-Dade County district. The program is expected to expand to 17,000 students this school year, said Julie Durrance, the school’s blended-learning manager, who warned that it may not be the right fit for all Ell students.

“It’s very individual. Some kids get into it, and don’t speak the language, and they say, ‘I can’t do this,’ ” said Ms. Durrance. “Your level-one [most-basic Esl] students are probably not the best candidates. To put them into an independent situation like this was just setting them up for failure. The schools that did that [last year] did that without our knowledge.”

EnRoLLMEntS LAGGinGEven programs that have more explicitly targeted Ell stu-

dents have found difficulty enrolling them.In Philadelphia, the aspira Bilingual Charter School, run by

the Pennsylvania chapter of the Latino advocacy group of the same name, began operations last year as what appears to be among the first online bilingual charter schools in the country, but served only 31 students across grades 8-12. The chapter also runs a network of brick-and-mortar charter schools and other educational endeavors.

In its first year, the cyber charter had a substantial popula-tion of students who had dropped out of school, many of whom are also working parents.

And at some full-time virtual schools, students who should be receiving Esl services may not be. For example, at the Arizona Virtual Academy, a K12 Inc. school where about 4,500 students study full time, the middle school principal, Jeanna Pignatiello, said that only a handful of the 150 to 200 students annually thought to be eligible for Esl services actually accept them.

Ms. Pignatiello said that may be due to the culture created by state legislation that mandates Ell students be separated from other students during four hours of English instruction daily.

Opportunity Ripe For Online ELL Ed. English-language learners remain underenrolled in virtual-learning programs, despite the prospect of such benefits as self-paced study, direct correspondence with teachers, and an adaptive curriculum.

“It’s very individual. Some kids get into it and

don’t speak the language, and they say, ‘i can’t do this.’ ”

—juLie DurraNce Florida Virtual School

)))

SOuRCES: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition; Florida Virtual School; K12 Inc.

(All figures approximate)5.3 million nationwide ELL enrollment during 2008-09 school year

10.8%Percent of K-12 students nationwide

ELL enrollment at florida virtual School during 2010-11 school year:

8,500half-credit course enrollments

3.3% Of total half-credit enrollments

full-time ELL enrollment at K12 inc.-managed virtual schools during 2010-11 school year:

1,800 Students2.2%Of total enrollment

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http://e-news.edweek.org/ct/12606904:15165331888:m:1:480873120:EE6DC9A7633CA2D84177CB234C0DF3F1

EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011 | S19 || S18 | EDucAtion WEEK SpEciAL REpoRt > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-specialpopulations | AuGuSt 24, 2011

By KAtiE ASH

Stepping into a virtual learning environ-ment can help struggling students inter-act with curricula in a new way, begin learning with a clean slate, and provide more flexibility to accommodate work or family obligations, say educators and ex-perts working online with students who are at risk of academic failure.

But none of those factors will make such students successful unless they have

the support and resources they need to engage with the mate-rial and the motivation to work hard for their credits, experts stress.

“The way online learning is set up, it puts the control of the learning on the shoulders of students,” said Jeanne Repetto, an associate professor in the department of special education at the University of Florida, in Gainesville. “They feel the confidence and control, which is why online learning can be good for this population.”

When students do not take responsibility for their own learn-ing, however, and their virtual teachers cannot maintain steady communication with a support team, such as a school contact or parent, the students are much less likely to be successful, said Michelle Lourcey, the director of credit recovery for the North Carolina Virtual Public School, or ncvps.

“Our teachers are constantly working with [students] and par-ents to keep them [on track,] but if there’s no motivation and no accountability at the school level,” the students may not make it through, she said.

Typically, ncvps assigns a distance-learning adviser, or some-one at the student’s home school, to each student to prevent that problem.

“We have found that if we can get the student feeling success in the first unit, they’ll stay with us,” said Ms. Lourcey.

At-risk students in virtual education are generally grouped into credit-recovery programs that help students who have fallen behind obtain the credits they need to graduate.

Ncvps had 2,200 credit-recovery enrollments out of a total of

17,000 enrollments in the spring of 2011. During the summer, out of 10,000 total enrollments, 3,000 were for credit recovery.

Building strong teacher-student relationships is key to helping struggling students be successful, said Ms. Lourcey.

“With at risk students, if they feel valued, that is very power-ful,” said Darlene Schaefer, an English teacher at ncvps. “If they know that there’s somebody out there that has their back and believes in them, they believe in success and accomplishment.”

StARtinG oVERFor some of those students, being in an online classroom may

be the first time they are able to form positive relationships with teachers, said Michelle Barnhill, another teacher at ncvps.

And once those students trust the teacher, they begin to feel more confident in their learning, said Emily Parrish, a science and math teacher with ncvps.

“If a student hasn’t had success before and begins to feel suc-cess, they’re going to want more of it,” she said.

Having engaging, interactive content is another key to help-ing struggling students get back on track, said Ms. Lourcey, the credit-recovery director.

“If we’re teaching photosynthesis, we want [students] to be able to read about it, but also hear and visually see what it is and then be able to practice the concept immediately,” she said. “If [the students] master the content, they get to move on to the next concept. If they haven’t mastered it, they go through remediation, where the content is presented in a different way.”

Credit-recovery classes are kept small, too, said Ms. Lourcey, at a ratio of one teacher for every 20 students, to ensure teach-ers have the time and capacity to individualize the curriculum for each student.

Richard Landolt is the principal of CrossRoads, an alterna-tive school that serves about 450 students in grades 6-12 in the 39,000-student Cherokee County school district in Canton, Ga.

CrossRoads began as a school for students who had been ex-pelled from other schools in the district, and while it continues to serve that population, students can attend voluntarily as well. As a result, the school serves students who are on track for graduation, as well as those who may need to undergo credit

At-Risk Students’ Virtual Challenges An online education environment can offer such students a fresh start and welcome flexibility, experts say—if they can connect with support and resources to help them thrive and take responsibility for their own learning.

At Risk !

recovery to graduate on time.Students at the school choose whether they would like to

work through online courses provided by the online-course provider Apex or a traditional textbook-based curriculum.

The students at the school then work individually at their own pace, with facilitation from a teacher.

How a student performs in the first semester is critical to keeping the student engaged, Mr. Landolt said.

“If we can get [students] to [recover] one or two credits within the first 15 weeks, they begin to see they’re making progress and getting good grades,” he said. “It still comes down to motivation.”

‘focuS on EDucAtion’Nick Wilson, the communications director of the Columbus,

Ohio-based Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, or Ecot, a pub-lic online school serving 10,000 K-12 students in Ohio, said the continuous stream of data possible from online learning can also play a significant role in helping struggling students find success.

“We have a whole team of teachers that are responsible for assessing continuously,” Mr. Wilson said. In addition, the learning-management system used by Ecot tracks all of the students’ interactions in the courses, “so we can see how that’s correlated to their success,” he said. “You can’t do that in a traditional environment.”

Brady Exploration School, in the 84,600-student Jefferson County school system, just west of Denver, serves at-risk stu-dents from the district in a hybrid of virtual and face-to-face learning environments.

According to the school’s principal, Troy Braley, 65 percent of the student population qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, 16 percent are homeless, and 75 percent do not read at grade level.

What started as a hands-on, exploratory instructional model has since turned into a hybrid learning environment in order to cut down on the high number of disciplinary problems the school experienced when it opened in 2005, Mr. Braley ex-plained.

“I had the worst discipline in the state,” he said. “[The switch to online classes] was not easy for the staff or the community,

but the discipline issues stopped, and we could finally focus on education.”

Four years later, the school boasts a host of services for struggling students and their families, such as a clinic for free immuniza-tions and checkups for parents and their children, access to bus passes and bicycles, drug-treatment services, and English classes for students and their families.

The school is open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. to accommodate the schedules of the students, many of whom have part-time jobs or families to take care of, and classes switch instructional methods every 20 minutes to keep students en-gaged in the material.

“The traditional school just can’t meet their needs,” Mr. Braley said. Each student is assigned a graduation coach, who looks out for students who otherwise might fall through the cracks.

“If a kid’s not doing their homework, [the graduation coach] will call up the parents and say, ‘I’ll come over, and we’ll do it together,’ ” Mr. Braley said.

RE-EnGAGinG StuDEntSTo help combat the dropout problem in the 2,750-student

Westwood Community School District outside Detroit, admin-istrators opened Westwood Cyber High School, a solely virtual school that serves students in that district. In two years, the school has expanded from 180 students to over 700.

“All of our students are at risk, but a number of them have actually dropped out or are on the verge of dropping out,” said Hilliard Hampton, the managing director for the school. Westwood Cyber High is based on a model from the United Kingdom called “not school,” said Mr. Hilliard, which has a focus on virtual learning and project-based classes. Students in the school are referred to as “researchers,” while teachers are called “mentors.”

Students also receive home computers, Internet access, printers, and cameras to complete their virtual courses—equipment they get to keep if they graduate successfully.

“One of the key factors ... for us to understand is that when

[stu-dents] come into the program, education is not high on their priority list,” Mr. Hilliard said. “The first may be to help provide food for their family, or they may have a child themselves.

“Our first challenge is to re-engage the student and raise the level of priority of education,” he said.

To do so, the curriculum students undertake is largely based around their own interests.

“We take things that interest them, such as skateboarding or even playing basketball, and apply it to projects,” Mr. Hill-iard said. “For example, the amount of arc that’s required for a student to land a skateboard jump.”

By making what students are doing relevant to their own lives, he hopes the students will re-engage with the curricu-lum and their education.

“These are students who have for some reason or another not been successful in current or prior educational settings,” said Sue C. Carnell, the superintendent of the school district. “You have to reinvent their confidence that they can do it.” l

28.3% Proportion of the class of 2008 that dropped out

1.2million number of dropouts based on that percentage

$9.6billion boost to the national economy from cutting the dropout rate in half

$7.6billiontotal of how much more dropouts would have earned each year had they graduated

aCaDEMiC hOrSEPOWErAnaihs Espinoza, 18, is entering her senior year at Brady Exploration School, in Lakewood, Colo., which serves academically at-risk students from the Jefferson County School District using a hybrid of virtual and face-to-face learning environments. Ms. Espinoza prefers her school’s learning environment because she does her own work on the computer and at her own pace. “It’s actually harder because it’s up to you to work or not,” she said. “If you want to graduate, you have to do the work.” She also appreciates the smaller setting. Ms. Espinoza, who has many friends who have dropped out, wants to graduate and enter the medical field.

“These are students who ... have not been successful in current or prior educational

settings. You have to reinvent their confidence.”

—sue c. carNeLL superintendent, westwood community school District,

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By iAn QuiLLEn

Researchers have found that, in the right circumstances, it is possible for stu-dents from special populations to com-plete an online class and demonstrate as much academic learning as those who completed a face-to-face course.

They caution, however, that using that conclusion to justify any particu-lar online learning option for special education, English-language-learner,

at-risk, and gifted students in need of an intervention is per-ilous, at best.

“We don’t really know at this point which [methods] tend to be the most effective” for specific populations, said Cathy Cavanaugh, a professor of educational technology at the University of Florida, in Gainesville, who was co-author of a study about improving outcomes for virtual school students with disabilities that was published last year. “We need to get to a much more fine-grained level of understanding of what’s going on,” she said.

Yet the small cadre of researchers who focus on online K-12 education believe making their case to the public for more nuanced research, as well as gaining support and funding for it, can be difficult, says Michael K. Barbour, an assistant pro-fessor of technology at Wayne State University, in Detroit.

“The problem is, most academic journals, most policymak-ers, and most people in the press want to find usable nuggets that can be used in other situations,” said Mr. Barbour, whose research includes a 2008 dissertation exploring rural online education in Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada.

“What we need is not large, generalizable studies,” he said. “What we need is for research and evaluators to work with programs in a design-research model.”

Mr. Barbour insists there are significant imperfections in-herent in most broad studies of online learning for special populations and, indeed, in studies of online learning in gen-eral.

For example, he said, some past studies have sometimes compared the achievement data of virtual students who chose virtual learning on their own against a general sam-pling of brick-and-mortar students. Other studies—such as research that has found students with autism perform better on standardized tests after receiving online instruction—have used a narrow measure of educational quality based largely on standardized-testing results, he said.

Mr. Barbour argues that shifting from wide-ranging, short-term studies to narrower, more in-depth explorations

design

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