Monday, April 15, 2013

APS eCADEMY students will not be allowed to work "way ahead"

Leave it to the leadership of the APS to take a perfectly good idea, an online high school, and find some way to screw it up.

The Journal reports this morning, link, that APS' eCADEMY is a go, as long as it doesn't go too fast.

"The classes at the new school will be teacher paced, meaning students cannot work way ahead ..."
How in the world are they going to stop them?

Why in the world would they want to?

Twelve thousand reasons come to mind.  Every year a student goes to APS, APS gets somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand dollars from the state.  A four year student could generate $60K for district officials to spend by the time s/he graduates.  If s/he finishes in three years, APS could "lose" up to fifteen large.  If they graduate in two years, APS "loses" twice as much.

Those are pretty good reasons (according the leadership of the APS)to drag the experience out for as long as possible.  Any other reason(s) they might have, have yet to be articulated.

The board also expressed their fear that some students might
"... complete classes quickly at the end of the semester."
Again you have to wonder, why not?  Who cares?
If a student can pass a course-end test, and the test is valid,
why do we care whether they take the test after 56 hours of preparation, or 56 days?

We don't.

The "leadership" of the APS does.  Why?

Don't look to APS' million dollar a year communications effort for any answers, and don't look to the Journal to be asking any questions.

1 comment:

Steve Koch said...

Some chatter on your story on public Facebook thread.