Spekkio
He bowls overhand.
Anecdotal evidence or not, I think if research were out there that virtual learning was equally effective to in-residence learning for K-12 then our educational model in the U.S. would have started to shift a half a decade ago.
The issue isn't bright college students or honor roll high school students. The issue is young elementary school children who can barely read (because they're 6, not because they're disadvantaged) and need someone to coach them on how to do the work and what the directions mean, that they need to learn from someone to employ learning techniques that children respond to, that there are dozens more distractors at home than in the school environment that detract from learning, etc. There are millions of families right now where mom and dad have to juggle teleworking with getting 7 year-old Johnny to sit at a computer for 5 hours a day do to his work, and a good amount of families end up missing some assignments for one reason or another. Part of this is some teachers are not very good at organizing the assignment list and promulgating it in a one-stop-shopping location, which makes it difficult for both children and parents to figure out what needs to be done. My personal frustration is teachers who 'trickle' the assignments throughout the day vice just putting out a schedule in the AM...nothing like a 9 year old who thinks she's done with her work for the day at 1410 and then we get a notification of an assignment posted at 1430 and have to put her back into 'school' mode.
If we're saying that virtual learning is as effective as in-residence learning at the K-12 level, the implied conclusion is that we can save a whole lot of taxpayer dollars by permanently shutting down brick-and-mortar schools and that the education and training teachers receive to perform in their profession is superfluous.
In many states, schools at the elementary school level have shifted away from grades. We now get report cards that read like FITREPs on steroids. Teachers are even employing the 'forward progression over the course of the school year' methodology to giving out marks because they are supposed to be standardized to end of year expectations, which doesn't help me as a parent whatsoever determine what my children's weak areas are and what to focus on at home (and yes, we have to come up with it because sometime in the last 20 years we decided HW wasn't a valuable educational tool at the elementary school level). Like oh, my 3rd grader can't do end of year 3rd grade math in October? Thanks for the insight!
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