A virtual school year wrapping up

By Bob Priddy
The state's first virtual school year is virtually over. The program has had its successes and its failures.
The virtual school program lets students study from home, working through the computer with distant teachers. Program Coordinator Curt Fuchs says 32-hundred students enrolled, but forty percent dropped out--perhaps because the courses proved to be tougher than they thought they would be. Some just flunked out, many of them doing so for the reasons students flunk regular classes.
But Fuchs says there were a lot of successes, such as the child of some missionaries in New Guinea who took four advance placement courses and a fifth course as a high school junior and passed them all. He will enter his senior year in high school with four college courses already to his credit, thanks to the Virtual School Program.
Fuchs says Missouri started with a much larger number of students than most other states have started with. Fuchs says the education department also learned it needs more policies to deal with the program.
Because students enrolled at various times, they will finish their work at various times. Fuchs says the last of this school years' students should finish next month. Enrollment already has begun for the next virtual school year.