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TPS to host all-district high school fairs

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tulsa Public Schools has announced two, all-district high school fairs for prospective students and their parents.

At both fairs, administrators, counselors, teachers, department chairs and students from all nine of the district’s traditional high schools, as well as one alternative education high school and the TPS virtual school, will be on hand to provide information and answer questions.

Brochures and other materials will also be available, providing details about curriculum, magnet programs and schedules.

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Farmer delivers good news

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Farmer said that calculating the drop-out rate is difficult because some students leave school all together, while others enroll in virtual schools or other education formats.

Students drop out of school for a variety of reasons ranging from lack of parental support to getting behind on their credits and losing hope of being able to graduate Farmer said.

“Every student’s situation is different. We have to make sure these kids know there are alternatives to dropping out,” he said.

Sallisaw High School has nearly a 98 percent senior graduation rate, Farmer said.

“Once we get them to their senior year we have a very good chance of seeing those kids graduate. That is why we are very pro-active and look at every alternative we can to get the students into their senior year,” he said.

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A Reality Check For Oklahoma ‘Virtual’ Schools

November 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

TULSA, Oklahoma -

The state school board backed off some new rules for online classes Thursday, after local school boards complained they would cut into funding for students at brick and mortar schools.

The rules would have required schools to pay for students to take lessons online, and provide teachers to oversee the program.

Virtual schools and online classes are an increasingly popular option for students, but there’s always been a clear division of funding between local, publicly supported schools – and their online counterparts.

The state board of education changed that to requiring local schools offer, and pay for online instruction for any student who wants it.

“And we all believe in online education and that should be available and we ought to be responsible for those dollars and accountable for those results. This was very rushed without an opportunity for input, none of us had the opportunity for input,” said Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Keith Ballard. Superintendent.

It’s called the Supplement Online Course Program. It requires districts to allow students to take up to 5 hours of daily online instruction. Students spend the 6th hour physically at school.

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Virtual Education Sees Shift to Accountability

November 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Virtual schooling is in the era of a fundamental shift in its development that should be embraced, not feared, said authors and sponsors of the 2011 version of the Keeping Pace annual report on virtual schooling here at the Virtual School Symposium in Indianapolis Thursday.

While most virtual school advocates in the past may have focused on gaining exposure for their programs, they should shift toward emphasizing accountability and transparency in those programs to a community at-large becoming more aware of virtual education, the panel said. And despite some recent negative press about online schooling’s benefit or lack thereof, they agreed that many virtual providers are doing this.

“When these programs started, they started out of a point of pain,” said Andy Scantland, the vice president of sales and marketing for Advanced Academics Inc., the Oklahoma City-based provider of public and private online programs, and a sponsor of the report from the Evergreen Group of Durango, Colo. “As a result, there wasn’t a lot of measurability or a lot of accountability. I think that’s changed a lot, and the report reflects that.”

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APEX offers students online credit recovery

October 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

DeSpain said at this time there are fewer than 200 students using the credit recovery program but the district has the capability of reaching 300 students. She added 57 1/2 credits were earned in summer school by students taking APEX online courses.

“We are taking it pretty slowly so we can identify and take care of any unforeseen problems,” DeSpain said, “and teachers at every site are giving feedback as to the way the program is progressing.”

“We chose APEX over Odyssey because eventually we are looking at offering a virtual school where the students will do coursework at home.

“Although this is something we are looking at in the future, the school board members decided last spring to take changes in measured steps. Odyssey was not as rigorous and complete as APEX.”

DeSpain added APEX also has an AP component, where students can enroll in different levels, to appeal to the different needs of students.

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Online Schooling Seeing Explosive Growth in Oklahoma

September 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

From promotional radio and TV commercials and direct mailings aimed at parents to newspaper headlines and explosive enrollment growth, “virtual schools” and “virtual students” are this school year’s buzzwords in Oklahoma.

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Norman named pilot site for national virtual learning program

August 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

“We do get a great value for us from a financial standpoint, but it also enables us to accelerate the direction we wanted to go,” Superintendent Joe Siano said. “It’s an infusion that allows us to accelerate our mission related to online opportunities.”

Siano said that for the past three years Norman schools have been using a variety of vendors to provide online education programs with the goal of giving students a broad array of options for both catching up and excelling academically.

The goal is to move to a blended learning environment in Norman that allows student to go from virtual courses that allow flexibility to traditional classroom settings, where students get the benefit of face-to-face interaction with a teacher.

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TPS virtual program seeing record enrollment

August 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

School starts August 22nd in Tulsa and a record number of public school students won’t have to worry about catching the bus or even having to wear the district’s new mandatory school uniforms.
TPS parents at virtual school orientation Thursday say with the on-line education is one way to not have to worry about class size, because their students won’t even sit in a classroom.

Right now the virtual school, which is has a “classroom” inside Promenade Mall, has about 150 students from Tulsa. Enrollment just got underway and officials expect to see around 300 to 350 students on-line by the end of the semester.

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Coming Monday: Virtual schools gaining popularity in Oklahoma

August 15, 2011 By Leave a Comment

From promotional radio and TV commercials and direct mailings aimed at parents to newspaper headline-making controversy and explosive enrollment growth, “virtual schools” and “virtual students” are this back-to-school season’s buzz words.

A Tulsa World analysis of state records shows that the number of Oklahoma public school students doing schoolwork through computer-based programs has increased nearly 400 percent over the last three years.

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Reintroducing the trustworthy banker

August 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

O’Leary began his banking career at The Bank of New York in 1964, and worked at banks in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. He served as a faculty member and thesis advisor at ABA’s Stonier Graduate School of Banking for more than two decades, and served as long as a faculty member for ABA’s undergraduate and graduate commercial lending schools.

Today he works as a consultant and expert witness, and serves as instructor for ABA e-learning courses and has been a frequent speaker in ABA’s Bank Director Telephone Briefing series. You can hear free audio interviews with Ed about workouts here.

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