Reply to BOE reconsidering the Virtual Academy, Leader in Me, and Innovative School Year Calendar

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Reply to "BOE reconsidering the Virtual Academy, Leader in Me, and Innovative School Year Calendar"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm curious what the cost differential would to farm out, the handful of kids who still want to do virtual out to k-12 or another virtual program.

Absolutely fine with getting rid of leader in me (majority of schools already quit the program). I would be curious to know if eSY calendar actually did anything impactful for the students at Arcola/Nix . I always thought it was bizarre that Rosco nix a primary school adopted a different calendar than its sister school Cresthaven
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Arcola said it was very helpful and numbers improved.  They want it.  Nix doesn't want it.  You should have paid attention.

Who would they far it out to?[/quote]

K12 being the obvious answer. But I strongly suspect it would be more expensive. K12 would need to carve out a curriculum for MCPS, so it doesn't solve the current problem with lack of scale.

The only practical long-term solution is for the state to establish a program that would serve students across all the counties. They'd probably need to contract that out to K12, but then they might have enough students to make it scale. 
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K12 isn't an equal program to MCPS. They don't have live teaching and they don't have special education supports.  And, the MVA could be expanded as it has a waitlist, which you seem to forget.[/quote]

K12 does live teaching in the states where they've partnered to do so. They could do it, but yes, it would almost certainly be more expensive than MCPS doing it itself. As I said, the only path that makes sense is MSDE taking it on for the entire state, at which point it might be large enough to scale effectively. And since, as others have pointed out, MSDE doesn't operate schools, the natural implementation path would be contracting out operations to an entity like K12.

VA isn't even close to enrollment levels that scale. First and second grades have less than 40 kids a piece![/quote]

Why do you want a state school?  It's bizarre and you post it everywhere.

They don't have the size as they don't have the funding.  They don't have more teachers to let more students in and keep regular classroom numbers.  There is a waitlist.[/quote]

A state school would be more cost effective in terms of staffing. It’s sad that Maryland is one of the few states that doesn’t already have this. Why do you keep bullying the PP that keeps bringing this up? You seem insecure in Maryland’s education system and very defensive. Did you know Maryland is also behind states likes Mississippi in reading education? Stop pretending like our system is perfect[/quote]

+1. So weird.  A state school would also likely solve some of the issues people are complaining about- e.g. variety of classes, including APs, because it would draw from a bigger pool of students. MVA is not really that great when you compare it to state programs across the country.[/quote]

I agree with the NAACP Parent Council reps who testified to the BOE that the MVA isn’t working as a replacement for full time in person school, especially with younger kids, and that virtual school by MCPS should at most be used to supplement in person schooling. Leave full time virtual to the state[/quote]

Agreed. Virtual does not work for elementary school kids [/quote]

Actually it does for some.  Listen to the testimony.[/quote]

Testimony is opinions and feelings.  Not data.[/quote]

Scientist here. Qualitative data is still data. [/quote]

The testimony was anecdotes. Really moving ones at times, I give you that.  Also as a scientist I’m sure you’d admit the attendees at the meeting were a self-selected, biased sample.  My friend taught for the VA last year and she could provide other anecdotes of students who never turned their camera on and didn’t do their work.  They weren’t sick, their parents plainly admitted that the kids just didn’t like going to school and would otherwise be skipping class.  My understanding was that as long as they are logged on, they werent counted as absent, even if they logged on  and walked away.[/quote]

And what are surveys? They can’t force people to provide their opinions. It’s still a first-person experience. It’s not bias. [/quote]

It could be considered bias depending on how the data is interpreted and used (wanted to add this but hit send too fast).  That’s where things can get a bit murky. Someone’s first hand experience is still valid information and it’s important to collect as much as they can to provide a well-rounded picture in order to determine future decisions.  Proper analysis should filter out selection bias and random errors with a large enough sample size.  [/quote]

In addition to survey self-selection, the construction of surveys often imparts bias.  Leading questions.  Omissions of questions that might provide relevant,  but inconvenient, findings.  Etc.[/quote]

Of course. It all depends on what was asked and how questions were structured (i.e. open ended for example).  [b]But any good analysis will weed that out.[/b] Also will have multiple methods of data collection. [/quote]

Have you [i]seen[/i] any of the analysis that MCPS has done on even mildly controversial subjects?  They draw conclusions for important BOE decisions based on tenuous confidence intervals that they never mention, for goodness sakes.  And they don't bother to hypothesize/analyze that which might lead to alternate decisions.[/quote]

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