Education Week - October 24, 2012 - Special Report - S10

EVALUATING WHAT WORKS: SCHOOL MODELS

FLEXIBLE LEARNING A MOTIVATOR
Students work through online courses at their own pace with classroom support BY KATIE ASH

C
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S10

San Francisco and Morgan Hill, Calif.

onnor Kearns did not expect to spend his junior year thinking about college. “In 7th grade, I thought I might as well join the Marines and then do trade school like my dad,” said the 16-year-old California student. In fact, for his final semester in 9th grade at the school he then attended, Mr. Kearns said he received two D’s and failed the rest of his classes. Although that school, Northgate High School in the Mount Diablo school district outside of San Francisco, was considered one of the best in the area, “I was a number failing through the system,” he said. Mr. Kearns is now entering his second year at the 152-student San Francisco Flex Academy, a blended charter school operated by the Herndon, Va.-based K12 Inc., the largest forprofit provider of K-12 online learning.

“Now, I am in ap and honors classes, and I passed with a higher than 4.0 gpa last semester,” said Mr. Kearns. “I came here and turned things around, and started thinking about college. ‘Where am I going? What am I going to do?’ I’ve never asked myself these questions before.” Students in the flex model, which now has two locations— one in San Francisco and the other in Silicon Valley—spend five days a week at school working through the K12 Inc. online curriculum for part of the day and attending breakout classes taught by teachers face to face. “[Students] are not being confined to time, path, pace, and place,” said Leah Rodgers, K12’s senior director of academics for blended learning. “They’re not being told, ‘This is when math starts, and this is when it stops.’ … If [students] are learning, that’s what we care about.” The San Francisco Flex Academy, located in the heart of downtown in the city’s former Press Club, is the original flex academy, opened during the 2010-11 school year. The school

Academic coach Christina Hewko leads one of the after-lunch advisory meetings at San Francisco Flex Academy. The school operates on a blended learning model in which students have some face-to-face time with instructors and some online class time at individual workstations.

RESULTS
San Francisco Flex Academy received an overall score of 644 on California’s Academic Performance Index, or API, for 2011, putting it in the 20th percentile of schools in the state with a comparable grade range and 156 points shy of the statewide goal for all schools. On the California Standards Tests, 9th graders at the school performed almost as well as the state average in English/language arts: They had a 56 percent passing rate, compared with the 57 percent average. The school’s students lagged behind the state averages in all other subjects and grade levels, but the student-retention rate was high. Silicon Valley Flex Academy has been open for only one full year, so data on its student achievement are not yet available.

87%
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OCTOBER 24, 2012

The studentretention rate at SF Flex is 87 percent

SOURCE: California Department of Education

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EDUCATION WEEK: EVALUATING WHAT WORKS IN BLENDED LEARNING > www.edweek.org/go/elearning-blended


http://www.edweek.org/go/elearning-blended

Education Week - October 24, 2012 - Special Report

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - October 24, 2012 - Special Report

Education Week - October 24, 2012
‘Smart Pills’ Promising, Problematic
At S.C. School, Behavior Is One of the Basics
Obama Finding Teacher Support Secure, if Tepid
Focus On: Curriculum: Calif. Laws Shift Gears on Algebra, Textbooks
Table of Contents
News in Brief
Report Roundup
‘Value Added’ Use at Secondary Level Questioned
National Board Seeks to Revive Impact on Profession
Industry & Innovation
Blogs of the Week
Debates Push Fate of NCLB Waivers to Fore
Policy Menu Varies in State School Board Elections
Policy Brief
The Election: Debating Education
Genevieve LaFleur & Scott Poland: Schools Can Be the Difference in Preventing Suicide
Kenneth Wesson: From STEM to ST2REAM: Reassembling Our Disaggregated Curriculum
Letters
Top School Jobs Recruitment Marketplace
Erica Frankenberg & Gary Orfield: Diversity or Resegregation? Why Suburban Schools Need a Plan
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