Those who have followed the path of the Florida Virtual School over the past few years may be aware that the legislature quite deliberately undercut FVS in the past few years by mandating that county school systems create their own online programs, many of which were bid out to fly-by-night operators by comparison with FVS. At the same time, FVS appropriations were cut. How did JulieYoung respond? By partnering with Pearson to sell its courses out-of-state, as the Orlando Sentinel reports.
I don't know if there's a strictly causal relationship in there, but a partnership with Pearson gives FVS another stream of revenue. Of course, Pearson is going to take a cut whenever the joint venture has a contract with non-Florida public school systems, but if I were Young and worried about keeping my team and staff together, I certainly would see the temptation to work with a for-profit entity that could connect FVS with various opportunities. And the legislature can't complain one whit.
The irony, of course, is that the counties that contract with non-FVS entities are reaping the downside of the empty middle of all this Andy Rotherham has recently pointed out, and those outside Florida get the (indirect) benefit.
Thanks Sherman. I didn’t know that.
I would like to mention the lack of scientific rigor found in online education in response to the demand by customers. I find it gives me pause to consider what their other curricula sidestep. After all, it’s easy to find the well-documented underbelly of creationism showing in a poor science program. But it takes an expert such as yourself to comb through a course that uses Declarationists to support odd historic claims.