Blog Assignment 13

I chose to do Option 2 for this assignment. For this option we were to read My Teacher Is An App by Stephanie Banchero and Stephanie Simon and then write a summary of the article and our reaction.

A.) The Summary

Ms. Banchero amd Ms. Simon take us into the world of virtual schooling. They do this in the beginning by letting us see how different the siblings Noah and Allison Schnacky are doing their work in their Florida home one afternoon. Then the facts come. Starting with the number of online schools in many states and how many students are attending them. They then talk about the percentage increase for those attending them in the last three years, which is 40%, they are now up to about 250.000 students that attend full time online schools. Some of these schools are state run but for a lot of them, the school has hired for-profit companies like K12 Inc., and Connections Academy. These companies do the hiring and curriculum and the schools just provide the students.
They went on to talk about the standardized test score and how many of the students that are taking full time online classes have low scores. They went on to quote superintendents and teachers about the schools being completely online.

B.) Reaction
Part of what was discussed in the article was that teachers were 80% of the budget and the budget was the problem. Also that Teachers were less needed in the online classes. This made me worry that I am going through all these classes and studying like crazy for no reward at the end. As more and more classes and schools go online teachers are becoming less and less needed. My biggest concern is that by the time I finish school there will be no teaching positions open for me to show what I have learned and make some of the problem schools better for students.