Georgia Virtual School

The purpose of this article is to trace the creation and evolution of Georgia Virtual School (GVS) and to discuss the reasons that Georgia students are participating in the program. The program details and offerings and what GVS students and teachers are saying about the program are also discussed.

The Georgia State Board of Education approved a plan endorsing online Advanced Placement (AP) courses as well as core curricular courses in August of 2001. The Virtual Learning Business Plan was approved in order to address a need for online courses in Georgia schools to provide special curricular opportunities and options for schools that had problems with providing complete course offerings, that were experiencing scheduling conflicts, and that had a shortage of highly qualified teaching staff (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

In October of 2001, Georgia’s virtual learning program was turned over to Technology Services. Georgia had qualified for a 3-year federal grant Advanced Placement Test Fee Program offered by the U.S. Department of Education that targeted low-income and disadvantaged Georgia students who take AP courses. Georgia qualified for the grant based because more than 50% of its students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

AP Nexus was the official title of the grant, which was a collaboration among Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina. The objective of the grant was to make online courses available to those students who were the target of the grant, the low-income and disadvantaged students. Apex Learning was hired to provide the courses online. At the time of the contract, Apex Learning was the largest online AP course provider (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

The AP Nexus program became known to Georgia schools and interest was expressed by many schools systems to participate in the program. Many of the schools that expressed interest in the program did not qualify for the grant, and the Georgia Department of Education began to hear of a need for more online AP as well as regular core curricular courses to be offered. This led to an expansion of Georgia’s online offerings with other vendors and new contracts (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

Several Georgia school systems had already been interested in online learning and met in Atlanta to address the need for a state-sponsored virtual school. The response to creating a statewide virtual school was great, and all of the system representatives in attendance at the meeting agreed to collaborate and assist with the creation of Georgia Virtual School (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

Georgia's governor signed the GVS bill on May 4, 2005, establishing Georgia’s first virtual school. GVS offers courses to public students as well as private and home-school students. Each of GVS course meets Georgia’s standards for Quality Core Curriculum and Georgia Performance Standards. GVS also meets College Board standards, and offers a variety of scheduling options to meet the needs of all local school systems. GVS is expanding continuously and refining and adding course offerings (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

GVS’s faculty includes retired, former, and full-time teachers. Some of GVS’s teachers have made the choice to stay at home to teach due to personal reasons (Reinolds, 2005).

GVS teachers must complete a ten-week online training course. They become familiar with the pedagogy and teaching of virtual learning. They receive training in the technical aspects of online teaching and get hands-on training by a mentor teacher. They complete a student teacher training period, which is facilitated by experienced online teachers (Georgia Virtual School, Teacher Training Section, 2010).

All GVS teachers are highly qualified. They must complete the online training course. They must be cognizant of the special policies and procedures that are unique to the virtual learning environment. The mentoring process for GVS teachers assures quality and consistency throughout the program. GVS teachers who teach AP courses must also complete a special training course before teaching AP classes. Sixty of the 165 highly qualified instructors with GVS have become certified to teach AP courses (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

Twenty-two percent (77) of Georgia’s high schools do not offer AP courses, and 19 of them do not offer more than one AP course. When students apply for college, they are at a disadvantage over other Georgia students if they have not taken AP courses. Since AP courses help students prepare for the college-level work, these students are not on a level with the students who were able to have access to the AP courses. The size of the school systems, along with staffing problems, hinders these systems from being able to offer the types of course offerings that they would like to offer. Georgia has 180 school systems, 35% of which have less than 2,500 students. Over 33% of Georgia’s school systems have one high school. Ten percent of Georgia's high schools have a population of less than 500 students. This limits these systems in course offerings and properly qualified staff to teach the desired specialty courses (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

Students have scheduling conflicts, want to add to their current course choices, move faster in their program of study, make up failed courses, have illness which renders them homebound, or may have moved in from another state and need to catch up on Georgia’s high school requirements for graduation (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

In the fall and spring, GVS allows students to take one Carnegie unit during their regular state-funded school day. Students who are homebound due to medical reasons are allowed to enroll on a case-by-case basis. Public school students are given priority over students who attend private schools and those who are home school students (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

There is a two-phase process to registration in GVS. Phase I consists of allowing public school students a period of time to register for the limited number of seats before private and home school students are allowed to register. Phase II allows the private and home school student to register for the full-time employee-funded seats, if available, after Phase I (Georgia Department of Education, 2007)

GVS offers a half Carnegie unit courses for $300 and one Carnegie unit for $600. The tuition only applies to nonstatefunded seats in GVS (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).

The instructors at GVS are paid on a per student basis by the Department of Education: $130 per student for a half Carnegie unit course, $155 per student for a half Carnegie unit AP course, $260 per student for a one Carnegie unit course, and $310 per student for a one Carnegie unit AP course (Georgia Virtual School, careers section, 2010).

GVS offers students credit recovery for courses in which they have been unsuccessful in meeting the course requirements for graduation. The academic seat time has been satisfied, but the content standards have not been met. The credit recovery program’s goal is to increase the graduation rate and to help struggling students remain in school (Georgia Virtual School, Credit Recovery section, 2010).

Georgia students who were previously unsuccessful in attaining credit towards graduation and who are enrolled in a public school in Georgia may participate in the online credit recovery program. It is encouraged that these students be determined to achieve their goals, be independent, and be self-motivated (Georgia Virtual School, credit recovery section, 2010).

GVS offers 20 AP courses to Georgia students. AP courses are college-level and approved by the College Board. They help prepare Georgia's students for the AP exams required of each AP student in the spring of each school term. College credit is often awarded to students who pass the AP tests (Georgia Virtual School, Advanced Placement Courses section, 2011).

GVS offers the following courses: computer science, French, Spanish language, English language, English language and composition, calculus, statistics, European history, government and politics, human geography, macroeconomics, psychology, U.S. history, world history, biology, chemistry, environmental science, physics, art history, and music theory.

GVS offers the following regular courses, among others: Banking and investing, broadcast video, computing in the modern world, fundamentals of web design, financial Literacy, Chinese, Japanese, French, Latin, German, Spanish, advanced composition, journalism, speech, geometry, trigonometry, and astronomy.

In 2009, the language courses were the most popular with GVS students. Latin, Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese were among them (Benton, 2010).

Georgia is one of many states that have established virtual schools to enhance the educational choices for its students. In its second year, GVS doubled its enrollment (Starkman, 2007). By the end of the second year, GVS had increased its enrollment from 1,500 students to 4,600 students (Christensen & Horn, 2008). Georgia is expanding its course offerings and training more teachers with each new school year. Georgia purchases some courses from other online schools and also trades courses to widen the course offerings to its students (Starkman, 2007). Funding for GVS comes from both state and corporate grants which includes BellSouth, which granted GVS over $20 million dollars in its first three years (Starkman, 2007).

According to the GVS program director, online learning is definitely on the ascent and is not a wave of the future; rather, it is here—and to stay. She states that she truly believes in online learning (Starkman, 2007), and that GVS benefits students in both rural and urban areas. She notes that if an AP course does not make at a particular high school, there is a solution online. She also gives the example that students need free periods in order to take connections or exploratory courses such as theater and band and offering an online course after school can solve this scheduling conflict (Reinolds, 2005).

GVS offers solutions to Georgia students in areas that were unsolvable before 2005. Students in rural areas have access to highly qualified teachers in specialty areas such as foreign language, AP math classes, high-quality business and finance courses, and computer courses not available in the many small rural school systems. Students who are hospital homebound have access to classes and can work at times when they feel well enough to work. This alleviates the extra pressure that these students feel by being away from the classroom for extended or regular periods of time. Formally or currently home-schooled students have options to go beyond the limitations of their home-school teachers in areas of specialization. Many of the GVS course offerings require highly specialized training for its teachers. Students who transfer to Georgia from out of state areas have choices in catching up with their peers toward graduation requirements. Students who have been unsuccessful in required courses can take credit recovery courses and get back on schedule for graduation. Students who feel stifled in the brick-and-mortar setting can expedite their graduation date by moving ahead of the regular students. Students who have special talents, such as in music, dance, and sports, can work their training and or performance schedules around their schoolwork. There are many areas of benefit to Georgia students with the establishment of GVS. GVS plans to continue to expand its course offerings, including those for middle grades (Georgia Department of Education, 2007).