Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2006 > October > 10
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
A laptop is a school
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before school officials botched it, Cobb County was onto something with its laptop program.
A laptop is a school without buildings. It convenes any place instructors and students connect, at any time of the day or night, at any level. In time it will open new worlds for parents, just as the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog did for rural families a century ago by freeing them from dependence on merchants within the range of their mules.
Atlanta writer Evelyn Coleman has the Sears catalog of education. Her 15-year-old granddaughter, Taylor Blayne Parker, accesses it every school day. She shops for knowledge without regard to whether she is on the farm or in Chicago, just as farmers with a Sears catalog shopped for store-bought exotica at any time of the day from any place a hundred years ago.
Parker, a 10th-grader, is one of about 30 Atlanta area students enrolled in a virtual school pilot being run by Connections Academy, a for-profit education company started in 2001 by Sylvan Learning.
Connections provides the books, individual lesson plans, state-certified instructors, principals, guidance counselors and other support to parents who don’t choose to educate their children in the traditional school setting.
Connections operates charter public schools in 11 states, though not yet in Georgia. A group of parents in Paulding County, including Erica and Kirk Williams, applied two weeks ago to the Paulding County Board of Education for a virtual school charter. Their application was rejected, 7-1, but with constructive suggestions — such as making sure Georgia history is added to the curriculum — that led them to believe they’ll be successful by the start of next school year.
Paulding is a fast-growing system where school overcrowding is a growing problem. Voters last month rejected a $125 million school bond issue, apparently upset at the way proceeds from a local-option sales tax for education had been managed.
Comaneci Davis Brooken of Atlanta, the Georgia project director for Connections Academy, says the state charter school law did not specifically sanction virtual charter schools until state Sen. Dan Moody (R-Alpharetta) fixed that with a bill that passed the Legislature and was signed into law in April.
Just after that, Coleman’s daughter and Taylor moved back home. Unsatisfying experiences with unhelpful school system officials that ended with, “Well, that’s your only recourse, ma’am” struck a nerve.
Coleman is the author of 20 books, 18 of them for children. Her response to “That’s your only recourse, ma’am” was: “I thought, ‘well, I’m an educated person so it’s not really my only recourse.’ ”
Coleman found Connections Academy on the Internet and liked the curriculum. A dinner with Connections officials and Moody and his wife persuaded them to give it a try.
Shortly after completing her first lessons in April, Coleman says, Taylor came to her. “She said ‘Grandma, you know what? I forgot that I liked to learn.’ I almost cried, really. She was excited. She did the work. She has really enjoyed it.”
Because Coleman shares a family trait toward insomnia, she usually writes late at night. Taylor, too, prefers to do schoolwork at night. “She’s groggy in the morning, so I let her sleep late. The assignments show up every day. She’s very disciplined. She’s able to work at her own pace.
“She’s very acclimated to the Internet. She says it’s easier for her. The teacher calls her every other week, but they e-mail back and forth every day. She has a homeroom teacher and different subject teachers. She has really done well.”
She and others say teachers can be more productive and work with larger numbers of students because they have no discipline problems or distractions. Part of the virtual school agreement is that a parent or another adult will act as a learning coach. In some subjects, that’s Coleman. In others, it’s her husband, Talib, an educator who was formerly a research librarian.
The learning coach has a site, as does the student, so that the instructor and coach can see how well the student’s doing and how much time is being devoted to each lesson.
A laptop can be a school where children learn when and where they and their parents choose. The old education model was the crossroads store. Then the catalog came and eventually even Wal-Mart. It’s all about choice and individual needs.
A Monday AJC story asked whether anybody cares about the state school superintendent’s race. It’s low profile. One of these days, though, the debate will be about whether education reform is to be something other than smaller class sizes and higher pay. It’ll be about choice and real alternatives.
Permalink | Comments (128) | Post your comment | Categories: Education
