Schools consider online requirement

Local school districts are researching whether to make online learning a high school graduation requirement.

Beginning next year, the Sugar-Salem School District near Rexburg will become the first district in Idaho to implement the mandate in partnership with the Idaho Digital Learning Academy, the state-sanctioned online school. All students graduating in 2013, or later, must complete one online credit to graduate.

It could happen here.

"We hope to learn from other districts that currently require an online class for graduation," said Post Falls Superintendent Jerry Keane said. "We need more information regarding the costs and logistics involved in making such a requirement."

Michigan, Alabama and New Mexico require all graduating students statewide to take an online course.

Classes through the IDLA are offered in 98 percent of the school districts in the state and have grown in popularity since they started eight years ago.

While Coeur d'Alene doesn't have any current plans to require online learning, Technology Director Jean Bengfort said it is considering ways to increase online opportunities.

In a book Bengfort read last year, "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns," the authors provide data that suggests that by 2019 about 50 percent of high school learning will be done online.

"I thought, we have to look at this. That's only 10 years away," she said.

Bengfort said, of the district's 10,160 students, there were 243 enrollments in IDLA courses last year.

Coeur d'Alene students learn online using other programs, too.

The Bridge Academy, the district's credit-retrieval alternative high school, uses NovaNet, online courseware that students use with a classroom teacher nearby. It also gives students more flexibility when it comes to scheduling courses. With IDLA, there are set session dates districts must conform to.

Plato is another online software package schools use for remediation and enrichment programs, Bengfort said.

With the development of the Idaho Education Network, a statewide effort to provide broadband Internet access and virtual education capabilities to every public school and community across Idaho, there will be even more opportunities for online learning whether it be through IDLA or another online education resource.

The momentum toward making online learning a graduation requirement comes when the Legislature is considering cutting IDLA funding to balance the state budget.

Districts are at various levels on whether to make online learning a policy.

Wallace High was working on a draft policy, but when Gov. Butch Otter announced that IDLA cuts are possible, the decision to present it to the board was postponed.

All school districts are in the process of increasing graduation requirements based on the new State Board rules that apply to this year's freshman class, but those don't include an online learning mandate. That decision is left up to individual districts.

The highlights of the new graduation rules are three credits in math (one in the senior year), three credits in science, all students must take a college entrance exam and all seniors must complete a senior project.