January 2003 — Industry Perspective
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Filling Educational Gaps With Online Learning: An Educationally, Economically Sound Solution
In many ways, the 1990s were good years for our country. From 1992-2000, the United
States saw its longest period of uninterrupted economic growth, largely due to the booming Internet economy. School districts also reaped the benefits of this prosperity in terms of local, state and federal funding for technology. According to the Education Commission of the States (www.ecs.org), average overall spending for schools increased 31% from 1996-2001.
Recently, however, we have seen repeated economic setbacks, including the events of Sept. 11, an unstable stock market, the dot-com crash and the fallout from corporate calamities, such as the Enron collapse. It’s not surprising then to realize the impact these events are having on K-12 schools and districts. School boards and superintendents are now faced with increasingly tight budgets, while coping with ongoing challenges like the growing teacher shortage and increased demands for educational accountability. While President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act increases funding for schools on the federal level, it also adds an additional layer of accountability for meeting student learning needs for states and school districts.
In this country, we also recognize that this is the most important time for us to focus on ensuring that students have access to high-quality educational opportunities. Now, it is more critical than ever that those students have access to courses they need to ensure that they will be successful in college and in life. This sounds like a bit of a catch-22 with the increased demands on K-12 school districts, which are dealing with diminishing dollars. Yet, through innovative budgeting and planning strategies, superintendents and principals everywhere are discovering creative tools for meeting the needs of all students.
Expanding Educational Offerings
Online learning is one such tool, offering a cost-effective way to expand a school’s educational offerings, while addressing the unique needs of individual students for both the short and long term. Planning an online learning program that fits within increasingly tightened school and district budgets, however, begins with a careful evaluation of needs. For example, a high school might have five students who need to take economics, but not have a teacher who is qualified to teach the course. In this instance, contracting with a company that can provide a high-quality online course that meets state learning standards may make the most sense.
However, if 25 students need to take Spanish II to graduate and a school has other foreign language educational needs, then searching for a qualified foreign language teacher is probably the best educational and most sensible decision. That is, if the school can find a teacher. In many parts of the country, the growing teacher shortage has had an impact on schools’ abilities to hire and recruit teachers, particularly in hard-to-staff subject areas, such as math, science and foreign languages. So, while many educators would agree that hiring a full-time classroom teacher is the best educational decision, in the short term this may not always be a possibility for schools. Online learning fills that void in the educational program, giving students the courses they need to apply for college or, in some instances, graduate on time.
