Tosa Schools Viewing More Virtual Classrooms on the Horizon

The writing is on the wall – as in the Facebook wall. Online classes are going to become firmly embedded in secondary education throughout the country and around the world.

One factoid offered during a presentation Monday to the Tosa School Board on virtual schools illustrates why.

"If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest."

That doesn't mean that everyone one Facebook is suddenly going to start taking online courses. It is simply meant to show that living online, 24/7/365, has become the norm for this generation of students, and so offering education only during scheduled weekday classes, in a brick and mortar building, is not only an anachronism but a lost opportunity.

If young people are willing and eager to spend much of their time online, why not channel some of that time toward learning?

Wauwatosa Schools Superintendent Phil Ertl has a vision that someday in the not-too-distant future Wauwatosa will be a center of online learning for the entire state, with students from Ashwaubenon to Weyawega logging on – and bringing public education funds – to attend full-time virtual school in Tosa.

Why Tosa? "We have the highest ACT scores of any district that provides (virtual learning)," Ertl said.

Ertl had a more immediate problem, though, that prompted him to invite Advanced Academics, a national provider of online coursework, to put on a presentation Monday. Twenty families with children who have been attending Tosa schools – but who were not thriving in the classroom environment – were planning to leave the district for alternative education opportunities.

Those families were willing to listen to a pitch to stay in the district if it included the possibility of full-time online education.

In fact, the Tosa schools have been offering online courses for six years, but those offerings are not comprehensive or rigorous enough to translate into a full-time slate of coursework through graduation.

Advanced Academics offers 170 accredited courses for grades 6 through 12, said company representative Gary Crary, covering all the core subjects and many elective and specialty classes, creating the opportunity for full-time education.

All those classes, he said, are conducted by certified teachers who are available to students "24/5": From 9 p.m. Sunday to 8 p.m. Friday. What's more, for those students who need extra help and personal attention, the company offers online tutoring at all hours of the day and night, every day.

"Students want it now; they don't want to wait," Crary said. "I really believe that this is going to become a requirement in every school district in the country."

School Board member Phil Kroner was concerned that online learning would "dilute our trademark. We would have students graduating with a Wauwatosa degree when they haven't taken a single Wauwatosa course.

Kroner said he was skeptical of opening that door to many students "just to keep 20 students in the district."

Crary responded that there were ways to avoid losing touch with traditions and the special experiences of local schools.

Tosa teachers "who have developed their own courses – you can put that on our platform," he said. He recalled that Houston schools had asked Advanced Academics to develop a seventh-grade course on Texas history, and that it was now being considered for adoption statewide.

He also said that the company was open to customized branding and marketing online.

"If you want it to say, 'This is a local school district," that's fine," Crary said. "It can say 'Powered by Advanced Academics' somewhere down at the bottom of the page."

Ertl answered Kroner by saying that although he certainly was interested in keeping those 20 challenged families in the district, there was already far more interest developing in online courses among Tosa's many of the best-performing high schoolers, with 82 students having signed up for a summer online economics course.

Board President Lois Weber used her position to put in the last word.

"I don't think we can afford not to do this," Weber said. "We're giving these students one more opportunity for success."