Parents made these points in an online school choice survey that the district conducted to see why students left for other schools.

The online survey, which ran from October to December, got only 32 responses, or 6.6 percent of 480 students who left the district, mainly to pursue school choice or charter school opportunities, said Carol Woodbury, D-Y regional school superintendent. The most recent figures available on the school district’s website show 3,241 students in the district as of October 2010.

“I wish I had 50 or 60 percent that responded,” she said. But Woodbury said she believes school officials can learn from concerns cited by parent respondents.

The district offers accelerated and innovative programs for students in grades 4 and beyond, including advanced placement courses at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School and virtual high school courses in subjects such as Latin.

For the rest of the article, go to Parents to D-Y district: Offer more, fight less

(f) I want to find ways to provide top notch programming and services, without charging people fees upon fees upon fees. A parent in our town with three kids in school could easily be paying $3000 in fees alone, between $500+ for buses, $800 for sports, more for activity fees, admission to sports events, music lessons, busses to the speech tourney, etc. I have often felt that this creates an inherent imbalance between those who can afford all the things they want, and those who cannot, and think that fees, quite simply, need to begin to go down, and then vanish, in my opinion – even if that means making harder choices in other areas.

For the rest of the article, go to Any interested School Committee candidates out there??

Fitzpatrick is one of 18 students at the high school taking online courses through Virtual High School Inc.

For the courses, students log into a website and receive instructions from a certified teacher, interact with other students, submit their work, “discuss” ideas and more.

Students and staff said the courses have several advantages, one of the most obvious being that students can study topics the district either can’t afford to offer or doesn’t provide due to limited student interest.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual High School Expands Students’ Options

Virtual High School was born out of a partnership between Hudson Public Schools and the Concord Consortium. In 2006, it celebrated its 10-year anniversary.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual High School creates chief learning officer job

In a special presentation during the Jan. 10 school committee meeting, BHS principal Pat Clark, vice principal Scott Pyy and math coordinator Kristen Harmon announced that the high school is among 26 finalists in the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative, a program that aims to include as many students as possible in taking higher-level Advance Placement (AP) courses.

According to Clark, Barnstable is one of 26 finalists hoping to be awarded one of 12 MMSI slots.

At present, Barnstable has 300 students taking 21 total AP classes, 17 in traditional sit-down classrooms and four via Virtual High School.

The MMSI program, with its emphasis on classes in science, technology, engineering and math, will make it possible for Barnstable to expand its AP course offerings, include more students in AP courses and allow for the creation of pre-AP classes for students at the Intermediate School level.

“It definitely is an opportunity to elevate the levels of academic rigor at Barnstable High School that exist right now,” Pyy said.

The Massachusetts-based initiative comes from the National Math and Science Initiative, created in 2006 to close achievement gaps seen in students at the collegiate level, particularly in science and math.

For the rest of the article, go to AP for all at Barnstable?

At AMSA, I teach 6th and 7th grade ELA and world literature. The curriculum at AMSA focuses on the classics (Greek and Roman mythology—reading the Iliad, Odyssey and the Aeneid), which I love to share with my students.

For the rest of the article, go to AMSA’s Mark Vital Garners Most Votes for Patch’s ‘Teacher of the Year’

say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program[.]

As the Massachusetts legislature thinks through this issue, it has to pay special attention to the fee structure and timing. Here the public model in Florida may provide important lessons in as much as there is no payment made to the Florida Virtual School until the student completes the course with a satisfactory grade.

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Getting the promise of digital learning right is going to be a challenge on a number of fronts. One challenge is that the two tons of money going into building and marketing product are not necessarily focused on high-quality academics. The general public has gotten so used to a low-quality public education product that their expectations may not be altogether high. I am willing to bet my best necktie that a look at the American users of Khan Academy, for example, will tell you that most of the users are from wealthier homes. These are homes that are more used to high-quality academics, homes where hard work and self-direction are more the norm, or wealthier homes where kids just are not fitting into the rubric of the traditional school.

For the rest of the article, go to Some lessons for virtual learning

Though the items listed above focus on the high school student, we recognize the need to re-evaluate the programs at the elementary and middle school as well. The District needs a forward thinking plan for the use of technology in the classroom. Online text books and virtual learning have demonstrated success and can be a more efficient use of time.

Our team understands that increased accountability throughout our District will lead to better results. We recognize that these initiatives represent necessary change to the status quo so that our District can embrace the challenge of improving upon our educational excellence.

For the rest of the article, go to Letter: Accountable to be Exceptional

But while VHS has as thorough an online professional-development offering as any virtual school’s, its leaders say their next focus is creating more-targeted offerings that focus on very specific sets of skills.

That’s to take nothing away from the quality of the five courses, they say, which each run for six weeks, require eight to 10 hours of weekly “in class” work, and are approved by the National Education Association Academy, the online-professional-development arm of the nation’s largest teachers’ union.

“While some teachers really want that and need that, some teachers who are veteran teachers want smaller, more marginalized, targeted PD offerings,” said Colleen Worrell, the manager of professional development for VHS. Through government and private grant funding, the school is exploring ways to meet that demand, Ms. Worrell said, though it is not yet offering any such service publicly.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtual Schools Offer PD Programs for E-Teaching