Cyber school on Snow Days

At traditional schools when there is a lot of snow the teachers and students take off work. According to the Washington Post the government loses $71,000,000 for each snow day that happens. In Cyber School when we get a snow day the students do not get off school, and the teachers continue to teach. There is no loss in productivity. The current climate change trend seems to be adding more snow days in the North East United States. This means we are likely to see more and more snow days. When teachers teach from home or students learn on their computers at home, snow days are just another school day.

When we add up the number of snow days already this year we can calculate quite a savings. For many schools there were a total of six snow days this year. This represents 4.26 billion dollars of savings in traditional schools. What could education do with 4.26 billion dollars of productivity? When the government shuts down there is no proven economic loss over the long term. When schools close there can be brain drain, and a lack of momentum. The loss of student achievement over the summer months is well documented. The start and stop of learning in the middle of a unit of study can also result in a learning deficit.

In addition to the learning lost there are also savings from snow days. As illustrated in the photo above there are no buses in cyber school on snow days. No buildings to heat, utilities to buy or building to clean.The traditional brick and mortar schools would do well to mimic cyber schools on snow days because it could more than pay for the money that is lost to cyber enrollment. 35,000 students receive $366 million in the state of Pennsylvania. What would we save by closing down schools on snow days? I would venture to guess that it may more than pay for the 35,000 student's tuition who have chosen to cyber school.

Since I have made this post in February of 2014 many districts have begun this practice. Should  Cyber Charter Schools  be resource schools for traditional schools for fund savings in the Pennsylvania Education System?

Earth Quake, Los Cangilones, and Dinner with Jose

In these pictures you are seeing some great shots of one the wonders of the Gualaca, Panama Area. It is called Los Cangilones. It is a miniature canyon with cliffs 20 feet high and water over 15 feet deep. After I tested it, some of our braver students were willing to jump off at the higher points. The students really enjoyed this outing, but that is not all what happened today. Today when we were in our final Spanish Class, we felt an earth quake. It was 5.8 on the richter scale, and it is believed to be an aftershock from the large earth quake in Chile last night. We ended our day by having a traditional Panamanian meal in a home of an old friend. The students enjoyed seeing American TV for the first time in three weeks. Jose treated us to a cassava based soup dish and bread. It was muy deliciouso.
Tomorrow we leave for the Beach and three more performances. I hope to talk to you soon.

Spanish Class with Maria in El Explorador

Today we visited The Explorador Garden in Jarmillo. Jarmillo is the mountain side that faces Boquete on the southern side. When you look to the north you can always see Vulcan Baru the inactive volcano that towers over everything.  Today we held our Spanish class in a Japanese Garden. It was beautiful. The students enjoyed the sun and beautiful temperatures.  I enjoyed the flowers. The owner of the garden took a personal interest in us this year. She was very attached to Cierra. She invited us into her house for some fresh avocado. We were greeted at the door by two Yorkshire terriers. One was just a baby and really cute. The garden had swings and home made gymnasium equipment. The lady placed many philosophical signs all over the garden to stimulate interest and the learning of Spanish. If I had a garden, I would make it very similar to this.  It was like walking around in someones dream, and enjoying it with them. She gave us samples of many of the fruits in her garden. We even ate hot peppers.

Later on that day we were able to arrange our return stay in The Panama House in Panama City. We will be there April 5th and 6th.  I was also able to drop off some coloring books to Casa Esperanza. My colleague, Sarah Aungst has done service projects with this private school in the past. They were appreciative, and I hope we will still be able to work with them in the future.

Tomorrow we will go to the miniature canyon of Panama, Los Cangilones to swim. We will have our last full day in Boquete, our last Spanish Class, and we will prepare to leave for San Felix and the beach.  Thank you for following our BLOG! Please feel free to share it on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumbler or Instagram.

5 Mime skit performances today in Boquete, Panama

Today is performance Day in the Boquete Area. We did 5 performances to over 200 students today. We completed performances in Boquete, Palmera, Baha Mono, and Volcancito. What a surprised look we got from the Ngobe when they heard me speaking their language. It was also very cute when one of the little girls ran to back of the classroom when Keon the Jaguar came out to his lair. Today was a major success!

Visit our Panama Excursion for #PALCSPanama2014. This post is Day 7 but there is much more.

Our crew!

Keon our leader

 

What a group

Our most photogenic member

It is hard to believe it has been one week since we arrived in Panama. So far the trip has gone extremely well. We were able to book 8 performances and we should be able to distribute all 300 coloring books and crayons. We did a team building activity on our day off today. We went zip lining at 8 AM. It was very exciting. One of the lines was the longest in North and South America. The guides had to literally throw us as hard as they could from the platform so we can reach the next station. There were 13 platforms and 12 zip lines.  People would not reach the platform on the longest line because they would use their hands to slow themselves with a braking action. When the students got stuck before they reached the platform, the guides would yell Amarillo into their walkies. Olivia was the first to complete the long zip line without stopping.  She did amazing well for her first time zip lining. Keon led the way and was the first to jump off the platform from the entire group. He is the youngest member of the group, but he showed real courage today.
In the afternoon we visited Caldera and went on a hike on a very rocky road. Our guide, Mr. Parris choose, “the road less traveled,” but unfortunately unlike Robert Frost he got us all lost instead of being, “all the better for it.” We doubled back and earned our right to jump into the naturally hot springs. They were very therapeutic and a number of us felt light headed when we got up out of the water heated by the vulcanism of the earth. It was really nice except for the sulfur smell. Some of the students thought that it was gas, but it was actually the natural smell of geothermal heat.

Time for bed. Tomorrow is our first performance! For more post and to talk to our students post here!

Day 7 Zip line, The Hot Springs, and our dress rehearsal

PA SB 1085's Impact on Cyber Charter Schools

When I first read SB 1085, I was encouraged that the bill attempted to reform Cyber Charter Schools in a way that would reform all schools. Education reform is valuable and is needed in our nation as well as in Pennsylvania. In a recent BLOG post, Ali Carr-Chellman, a Penn State Professor and former critic of Cyber Charter Schools,  suggests that Cyber Charter Schools are not a bad thing,  "I'm very much in favor of  local and district-level innovations. This is really pushing them to do some innovation. That's not a bad outcome." She is, however, against the diverting of monies into corporate non-profits with unethical vendor arrangements. She calls this a "Gold Rush" for these schools. She also thinks that we are currently in a state of detente, allowing local cyber charter schools to develop.

I believe that SB 1085 is meant to correct problems, however, the legislators have added a 5% cut in funding to Cyber Charter Schools. This cut is meant to correct the pension double dip. HB 618 was meant to do this last year. It was not passed because many legislators want school choice, and realize that there is a price for innovation in school reform. This price is never less money at the development stage. Traditional schools who choose to use snow days this year to teach Online would never have attempted that 5 years ago. This year SB 1085 has been revised to include a 5% cut in Cyber Charter Schools to pay for the pension double dip. Here is some of the reasoning from Dr. James Hanak, CEO of Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School, about why HB 618 and the revised SB 1085 are a bad idea. 

1. All charter schools begin with only 70 cents on the dollar from the home sending school district.  Despite this, charter schools are held to higher standards than their traditional counterparts, and Cyber Charter schools are graded with more stringent requirements than their equal brick and mortar counterpart.
2. The bill (618) will hold cyber charter schools more “accountable.”  This argument was a diversion designed to draw attention away from the real purpose of the bill – to cut Cyber Charter funding.  Most of the so called “accountability” factors contained in the bill have already been put in place in law, and all Cyber Charter Schools are already carefully complying with these accountability requirements.
3. The only thing this bill does is further cripple Cyber Charter Schools by 5%.  It cuts cyber schools’ funding dramatically but only saves local school districts .02% of their budget (two tenths of one percent).  It saves the State nothing.

What will happen if Cyber Charter funding is cut by 5%?

1. Those schools that are growing (most of them) will...
1.   simply hold off raises for their teachers / staff.
2.   increase class sizes, or purchase less education software or the like. 
3.  create an environment encouraging staff to look for more stable job opportunities
2. Those schools that are not growing will...
1. make layoffs
2. create an environment encouraging staff to look for more stable job opportunities

Teachers are not entrepreneurs. They generally do not like risk. When Cyber Charter Schools are perceived as experimental, then many teachers will search for safer employment in the brick and mortar world. If fewer teachers choose to work for Cyber Charter Schools, then there will be less innovation. Is a.02% gain in revenue the reason HB 618 or the revised version of SB 1085 have traction? I do not think that this is driving the argument. The enemies of Cyber Charter Schools are. Innovation is needed in education. The enemies of Cyber Charter Schools include the teacher's union, and the school board association. Their gain is their windfall from SB 1085. This could easily result in the tax payer paying more money for less innovation in traditional schools.

Please join us in Harrisburg this year for the PA Families Cyber Day on the Hill on May 6th 2014. The permission slip and BLOG where you can make payment can be found here. 

From Americans for Tax Reform

Pennsylvania Senate Bill Puts School Choice at Risk!
S.B. 1085 unfairly targets cyber schools

School choice is being threatened again and this time the target is over 40,000 Pennsylvanian children. The Pennsylvania State Senate has introduced a bill, S.B. 1085, that would cut 5% of the funding for public cyber charter schools and reassign it to traditional brick-and-morter public schools.

Cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania have revolutionized the education system in Pennsylvania. Taking money from schools where students attend and arbitrarily giving it to public schools where they do not makes little sense. As a result, many families are asking for the Pennsylvania State Senators to hold off on a vote for reallocating the funding until a study on how money is spent in public cyber schools is done.

PA Families for Public Cyber Schools has this to say:
“Haste makes waste: This study will help inform everyone involved in the debate, including parents. It would be irresponsible to take preliminary action before benefiting from the findings of the proposed study.”

The cyber schools amount to roughly 1% of the education budget for Pennsylvania. When a student decides to go to a cyber charter school, those students receive only 81% of the funding that they were once getting in a public school setting. Public schools are given funding preferences, despite parental choice and lack of evidence indicating money for cyber charter schools is mispent. It has been estimated that the 5% reduction would be equal to one- third of cyber teachers' salaries. The cut limits the accessibility of cyber charter schools for families across the state and puts currently enrolled students at risk.

The bill does have some positives. It fixes a “pension double dip” for cyber schools. The bill also institutes measures of accountability and oversight that make cyber schools more transparent fiscally. It also gives universities more leeway in authorizing new charter schools, weakening school districts authority to flatten their competition, creating more equality.

A rejected letter from Pennsylvania State Senator Seth Grove.

Flea circus

Limiting beliefs can truly hold you back from greatness. Many strategies break the problem down into smaller pieces. Then you can celebrate your small victories and build confidence.When you see yourself caught in a limiting belief just remember the flea circus. It would be silly to bang your head on a cellophane barrier. It also is wrong to hold onto limiting beliefs.

This post was originally posted on November 21st. At that time I thought it was from my State Senator Ted Erickson. I was mistaken. The letter came from State Senator Seth Grove's office. I have apologized to Senator Erickson because he had nothing to do with this response, however, the meaning of the post still is valid. Seth Grove or someone in his office should not be using intimidation techniques to respond to the citizens of their state.  The letter below was faxed to my school's public fax number. I still would be wiling to meet with Senator Grove to discuss the content of this post.

Sir,

Recently, I received a faxed response from you with a few grammar and spelling corrections. It appears that you were trying to reinforce a weakness in my writing ability to undermine the content of my letter.

You said nothing about the content of the letter, so I think I made you angry. This was not my intention. You are a senator, and I respect you but, would you have answered my students in the same way? When Senator Jay Costa responded to my letter he addressed the main idea of student to teacher ratios. He said that because our school’s money came from local districts with varied per capita reimbursements, then it would be extremely difficult to tie funding to ratios. Although I disagree with Mr. Costa, would it have been that hard to write to this point as well? Mr. Grove, my letter was an opinion, not an assignment in a class. I am a teacher and administrator of leadership electives in a cyber high school. I am the adviser for our active student government organization where our students learn civic leadership in practical ways. If you wrote back this kind of response to one of them, would your influence limit their belief system? Would they ever write a letter to their legislator again?

Sir, I admit that you are smarter and more influential than I, but the only way I can perceive this letter is as a personal attack. When you faxed the letter back to my school without a comment apart from your corrections about my mechanics, this attacked my reputation as an educator. Was this your intention? I would think this would have been better handled with a phone call or meeting. Would you like to meet?

Did the students fail or did we fail them?

Why do Cyber Schools have high turnover and lower achievement test scores? Cyber schools receive students who have chosen to leave the public education system because it has failed them. Cyber schools are a second choice school for many students who are bullied, have bad grades, or unacceptable behavior. In some cases cyber schools have been able to re-mediate students and send them back to traditional schools, kick them out because they are not the right fit to be independent learners, or keep the ones who embrace the flexibility and independence of learning online. We can continue to criticize online learning, or marvel at the 35,000 students who have adapted to this kind of learning. It’s easy to throw out vague statistics to prove a point. It would also be good to judge the improvement of cyber learners from year to year and school to school. The pioneering spirit of online learners will prevail because of the way technology levels the playing field for students in rural, urban, and even developing countries. Students who are from economically disadvantaged families now have the opportunity to catch up to the privileged.

Teacher to student ratios and cyber school

I am a parent of five children who has put his children through the K-12 process. My children were home educated in places like Indiana, Phoenixville and Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. When they started college I looked with them at their choices, and one of the first things we looked at was teacher to student ratio. In all cases the schools with the lower teacher to student ratio were worth more money, and had better reputations.

The Philadelphia School District is currently cutting teachers because this ratio is too low. While I understand the tax payers prospective on this, it seems like we are moving in the wrong direction. In the School District of Philadelphia a 6th through 12th grader should not experience more than a 33 to 1 student to teacher ratio in a class. In some cases this ratio is lower so they are laying off teachers.This same ratio is  higher in cyber school. SB 1085 is currently cutting the revenue of cyber schools by 5%. This cut is ironic because the student to teacher ratio in cyber school is growing. The question is; should it be shrinking?  It is not unusual at some cyber schools for teachers to have over 200 students. SB 1085 will provide a motivation to raise that ratio further instead of shrink it to more effective levels. On a cyber level of education or in traditional education, the lower the student to teacher ratio is, the more effective the education. Every parent knows this, but perhaps some people think that cyber schooling is different.

Cyber School is not different. In our learning platform we have an instant messenger that allows us to respond to our students quickly when they have questions. Just now I answered  five students who needed my help with an assignment or project they were working on. Massive Open Online Courses (M.O.O.C.S) are different. In some cases they have tens of thousands of students in a single class. They serve the opposite objective of public education. They are attempting to leave all students behind, and recommend the cream of the crop to perspective employers who are willing to pay handsomely for this information. Students at a younger age than those participating in MOOCS are not as independent in their learning styles. If we make MOOCS the online learning template for public education it would be a drastic mistake. In my opinion, public education is about raising the bottom and mentoring the top. When my students fail at something I am always there to encourage them to try another door to an opportunity or learning. Students can get very depressed when they are compared to the best and the brightest in the world. The global economy has opened up greater opportunities, but it also has also created stress points along the way. When there is a coach or mentor standing in the doorway we can help our students when they feel they have made a mistake. I always tell my students there is always another door that they can go through. In a MOOC this does not happen. It is all about promoting the top and then grabbing them for a specific need. Public education should consider employment needs from the students' instead of the employers' perspective.

Philadelphia school teachers are being cut because they do not have the students to fill the schools. Should cyber schools be cut because they have too many students for their teachers to manage? I would suggest that our legislators consider teacher to student ratio when considering funding cuts. If they will consider this, then the current SB 1085 does not make sense. Minimizing our attention to students by raising student ratios will give us a short term cash bump for a long term unemployment outlook. It is like what Joachim Posada calls "Eating the marshmallow," instead of waiting for the good and healthy food. In a world economy where our students are competing for jobs that do not exist yet, it is important to maximize attention to our students, and their ultimate economic outcomes which will pay for our future retirement.

We need more students to go on our DC and China trips. Click here to find out more information, and scroll down to the trips near the bottom of the page.

PALCS Cyber Charter School Short Film

Have you ever wondered why students choose a cyber education?
Please watch this brief film by 8th grader Sean Brown.

Professional Learning Network (PLN) for Cyber School?

I am discouraged today as I write this BLOG post. The wrongs of some of the more charismatic leaders in the cyber charter school movement have caused some legislators to question the value of cyber Education.These incidents all have one thing in common. A charismatic leader chose to take advantage of their position in way that brought public scrutiny. This public scrutiny is reaching a harmful point now that legislation pending could cut our school funding by as much as 20%. This post is about the teachers, parents and students who sacrificed, risked money and stability to achieve innovative teaching practices in The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

  

I am a cyber teacher and administrator at Pennsylvania Leadership Charter School. I started at the school in 2004. I had worked in the Philadelphia School District briefly, and was one of the first teachers hired at this school. I am grateful for the opportunity that Philadelphia and PA Leadership gave me to start my third career in education.  In my experience I have found all teachers to be mission minded. I am one of thousands of people who are working behind the scenes to provide a valuable alternative to students in cyber education.  Our 2500 students chose our school because of our unique blend of teacher inspired lessons, and independent learning. Many of these people would receive relatively low rankings on the charisma scale. However, they form a professional learning network that can change education. 

Technology is the great equalizer in education. Many students are receiving the equivalent of a preparatory school education when they choose alternative education models. Our University Scholars Program within PA Leadership Charter School prepared my son well for Drexel University. He is not struggling to keep up with his classmates, and is ahead of most of them. Many of our students benefit from the flexible assessment grading where they are able to work at their own pace. When we consider cutting education costs, we should also consider that we are discarding the capitol investment of technology before we have realized its benefits.  This is a bad business practice. 

Like most educators, cyber teachers have embraced the mission of education. In cyber education the parent and learner are in the driver seat. They have chosen an alternative form of education. The teachers, parents and students in cyber education are willing to take a risk for students to have better educational outcomes. They are the true unsung heroes of education.  When these unlikely heroes are cut from the system because of funding cuts, are we really stripping the sustainable forces of stability from the school?

One example of legislation pending to cut teachers is House Bill 618. This bill will cut pension funding for cyber schools. If this happens, then we will likely cut the funding of new employees pensions. This will likely create a dual system of pensions and another class of teachers. Most teachers will not like this. This kind of unrest can lead to the creation of teachers unions in cyber schools. If you have read any of my past posts you will know that this is not something I am in favor of. Unions will bring stability, but they will also slow innovation. In my opinion we need to increase innovation, and not slow it down. Our students are feeling the pressure of competing in a global market place, and it our duty to equip them with the best technology possible to help them. Cyber education is just one example of using technology in a way where we can give our students a competitive advantage.

Parent and student choice is at the center of the cyber school model. When we empower parents and students to choose, only then can we give feet to educational change. Parent and student choice should be the center of education reform. The professional learning network Of parents, teachers and students are in the best position to see the outcomes of the educational process. The world is changing rapidly around us. We need to move our students with the change. Maximizing parent and student choice is very much like the following story. A parent and their student is waiting patiently for their train to come on the station platform. The train arrives and the student notices that he has the wrong ticket. It is a local train instead of a express train. Fortunately, he still has time to rush over to the ticket window and exchange his ticket. If we were to put this story into today's educational system the student would miss his train. He would would have to call his guidance counselor, to change that ticket. He would miss the express career train, and perhaps an opportunity for a better educational choice, that could lead to better job. Cyber school teachers work with software learning programs that represent the cutting edge of education. They can connect students with more resources to keep up with the changing world. We are training our students for jobs that do not exist yet. We must empower students to make the choices that come at the speed of technology, or they may end up in the wrong job. Cyber School puts students back on track.