South Dakota Online High Schools
Learn about online high schools in South Dakota, free online high schools, and earning a high school diploma online
The South Dakota Virtual School is an online clearinghouse of tuition-free distance courses offered by approved providers. All course offerings and providers are approved by the South Dakota Department of Education. The goal of the Virtual School is to provide choice, flexibility and quality for all students across the state. South Dakota Virtual is not a diploma granting institution.
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The number of online high schools across the country continues to grow with virtual schools now operating in 12 states and five other states working on similar projects, according to Education Week’s annual School Technology Report.
The editors of the fifth edition of Technology Counts 2002: E-Defining Education, praised the growth in online classrooms, but warned that the quality of such programs must be monitored.
“E-learning is poking holes in the walls of the traditional American classroom and giving students unprecedented access to challenging course and academic material,” says Virginia B. Edwards, the editor and publisher of Education Week. “But there are still problems and unanswered questions about this way of teaching and learning. And one of the chief concerns is ensuring the quality of online courses.”
For the rest of the article, go to Virtual Schools, E-Learning, Sweep The States
Colman-Egan was paying $3,600 for one slot at Strive but rarely used it. Instead, that district will look to the South Dakota Virtual School, a clearinghouse of distance learning providers available through the South Dakota Department of Education. Superintendent Darold Rounds said, “It just didn’t make a lot of sense” to keep paying tuition when Virtual School classes cost only about $250.
Interim Education Secretary Melody Schopp said the state added credit-recovery classes to the Virtual School two years ago, when the state changed its compulsory attendance age from 16 to 18. The ability for students who fall behind to catch up was a huge concern, she said. Virtual School students are assessed at the start of each class so they don’t repeat content they already know.
For the rest of the article, go to Strive High loses favor as online options grow
NovaNet Courseware is developed and backed by the world’s largest educational company, Pearson, according to NovaNet’s website. The program can be used for credit accrual, dropout prevention, summer school, credit recovery, virtual schools and more.
For example, a student who moves into the district from out of state could catch up on a prerequisite class that he or she missed in their previous district. The school also could use NovaNet to evaluate a student’s knowledge of a topic. For example, Talcott said, if a home-schooled student wanted to enroll at Brandon Valley mid-semester, NovaNet could help administrators know where to place the student.
For the rest of the article, go to Brandon Valley students make up ground online
Chinese will be taught online this year in Sioux Falls after Lincoln High School’s longtime teacher left for another job.
LHS Principal Val Fox said the school tried to replace Chengkuan Zhou with another teacher but will instead use a virtual classroom for Chinese I and II classes.
“This is kinda new for us,” she said.
For the rest of the article, go to Chinese classes at Lincoln High School move online
One initiative, known as the E-Rate, is a national discount for Internet access for libraries and schools. In addition to a national broadband plan that includes $7.2 billion for rural areas, the federal government is discussing the expansion of the E-Rate, a development that Oster said is “wonderful news” because without it, much of the technology in public schools would not be possible.
That technology includes the South Dakota Virtual School, which allows the 120,000 K-12 students in the state to take online classes to which they would otherwise lack access.
“We believe that the virtual school then provides equal educational opportunities for students across our state irregardless of where they live or what their ZIP code is,” Oster said, noting that some state school districts encompass more area than the state of Rhode Island.
For the rest of the article, go to Officials: Technology can boost rural schools
The state’s university system is trying to lure back students who dropped out just short of graduation and now have new obligations or interests standing in the way of a diploma.
A recent report to the Board of Regents said 1,889 students left the university system from 2003 through 2008 and never returned after accumulating at least 90 credit hours – roughly the equivalent of a third-year student.
Regents staff found that it wasn’t poor grades but rather an illness, financial problems, schedule conflicts, work obligations or personal problems that most often sidetracked a student.
“A lot of these students in their final semester in school got a grade point average of zero despite having almost a 3-point GPA overall,” said Paul Turman. “They just walked away. Something happened” in their life.
Turman, associate vice president of academic affairs for the regents, is overseeing a two-year project to identify those students and make it easier for them to return to the university system on campus or through the three off-campus university centers and online programs.
South Dakota, New Jersey, Arkansas, Colorado, and Nevada are studying the so-called ready adult population under grants from the Lumina Foundation for Education and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education.
For the rest of the article, go to South Dakota Regents look to lure university dropouts back to school
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