Parents Gaining Control on Education!

August 23, 1997

California District Puts Public School Online By MATT RICHTEL

Ammy Briggs starts 11th grade in September, she easily could wear her pajamas to the first day of class. She may not even leave her bedroom. And her teachers won't object if she chews gum in class; in fact, they won't even know if she does.

Briggs is one of 160 students at Choice 2000 On-Line School, a maturing but sometimes embattled experiment in alternative education and cyberspace. The school's students take their entire course load from home computer, even performing science experiments online, and chatting with friends and teachers by e-mail in a virtual schoolhouse.

"I have PE for an hour each day. I usually walk my dogs or work in the garden," said Briggs, 16, who has attended the school for three years. "I'll be taking care of my dog a lot because she's going to have puppies." Numerous colleges, and a handful of high schools are putting some courses online and exploring "distance learning." At least one private high school, Cyber High, purports to hold its entire curriculum over the Internet.

However, the Southern California-based Choice 2000 is apparently the only school that is not only entirely online but that also is public. That means it is financed by the State of California, $3,800 per student per year. The school, which covers grades 7 through 12, is one of roughly 100 schools that have been approved by districts in light of 1992 referendum that authorized creation of charter schools.

Education observers say it is too early to tell if the charter schools on the whole have been effective. The early evidence indicates Choice 2000 has had mixed success; test scores are higher than those of the Perris Union High School District in Riverside, near Los Angeles, where the Choice 2000 resides, but the "attendance" rate is 5 percent lower. As a result, the school lost $70,000 in financing this year and is undergoing its second audit.

The school's principal, Myqe Jeffers, said she is "very concerned" about the attendance, which is measured by the number of minutes a student is logged on. She said that parents receive e-mail regularly telling them how their children are performing, but sometimes they don't bother to check it, or to pay attention. "Last year I had a parent call me in June screaming and yelling that his son was failing," Jeffers said. "I asked him the last time he signed on and he said, 'February.'" "It's hard to blame the students, when the parents are just as guilty," she said.

On the flip side, the relative freedom permitted by the school attracts some independent-minded students and families. Choice 2000 is the choice for a handful of students who are focusing heavily on extracurricular activities, including one student last year who won first place in the junior Olympics in karate. The school also attracts high achievers, students who were bored or felt confined by traditional classrooms. Jeffers categorizes roughly 50 percent of the students at Choice 2000 as "exceptionally bright," which may partly explain why the school has exceeded the Perris district's test scores in mathematics, reading and language comprehension.

The results may also be attributable to the fact that some students simply learn better in a less structured environment, according to Eric Premack, charter project director for the Institute for Education Reform, a nonprofit think tank in Sacramento. "This is a good way to reach and work with a lot of kids who don't work well into '30 in a cell and a bell' environment," Premack said.

Choice 2000 has also become the school of last resort for troubled children. Roughly 30 percent of the students attend after getting suspended or expelled from regular public schools. "This is their last chance," Jeffers said. Briggs, who starts 11th grade on Sept. 8, has been at Choice 2000 for three years. She came to the school in eighth grade after she felt she was getting teased too much at her bricks-and-mortar institution. "I really don't get along with a lot of people," she said. "It's better if I stay at home."

Briggs, like all the students, studies the same curriculum as other students in the district. The difference is that most assignments are assigned by e-mail and much of the work takes place on computer. For instance, for math class, the students will read a lesson on the screen, clicking "next" when they've finished each page, and then go on to answer questions about what they've read. Each class then meets twice a week for e-mail conferences with a teacher who answers questions and leads discussions.

The assignments are created either by the teachers — three full-time and two part-time — or by an online educational service called Novanet. Novanet provides Internet-based curriculum, including graphics, text and sound. Briggs said she likes the environment because she can go at her own pace. She said the only drawback is that there is no hands-on science lab, and she aspires to be a veterinarian. "You can't really dissect frogs," she said, adding that during an experiment last year on how algae breathe in water, she was relegated to pointing and clicking. "You could click on different things, but it was not really hands-on."

Meanwhile, Briggs said she is much more comfortable socially at the school. She said the students e-mail each other and spend a lot of time in a real-time teleconference room that serves like an online cafeteria or schoolyard. Since 70 percent of the students live within a half-an-hour driving distance of the Choice 2000 headquarters, Briggs said the students frequently congregate for social events. The students also meet for field trips. Last year, they visited the tide pools in Palos Verde, the Museum of Tolerance Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles and Magic Mountain Theme Park.

The school has typical discipline problems, too. All the classrooms and teleconferences are monitored, and students can be reprimanded for using profanity or for discussing such topics as sex and drugs. When students are punished, they aren't held after school, they're "zapped."

"When they're zapped it means a teacher has typed in a command and you hang up the student's modem," Jeffers said. "We're very serious about not letting them use improper language in an online environment." Among parents, the school has some true believers. Cindy Japsen used to attend public school with her dyslexic son, and sit next to him in class, because she wanted to help him stay organized. Since she moved her son to Choice 2000 two years ago, she has been able to help him at home, and she said his scores and scholarship have skyrocketed.

As to social aspects of the school, or lack thereof, Japsen is tired of hearing the criticism. "That's what everybody asks, and it's the biggest joke. These kids are so social," she said. "If a kid is social, they'll find a way to be social." The school has been visited by educators across the country looking for online alternatives. But while Choice 2000 is seen by some as a model, Jeffers is concerned about lingering issues. She said, for example, that parent involvement is so low that she's having trouble attracting 10 parent volunteers just to help make sure the other parents are taking a keen enough interest in their children's education.

"I tell them, 'this place is limited only by your imagination,'" Jeffers said. "We readily ask for their input, tell them the door is open -- and nothing (happens)." Meanwhile, Riverside County is auditing Choice 2000's attendance figures after a former employee said the school was inflating the data. The school reports its attendance at 93 percent, compared with 98 percent of the Perris District. Jeffers said the accusations are false, adding that it would be illogical for the school to falsify attendance figures that are so low.