Iowa's first virtual high school grads move on

It's graduation season, and that snickering sound you hear is from thousands of grads laughing at familiar classmates looking suddenly foreign in mortarboards and gowns.

But for at least eight Iowa high school graduates, the flesh-and-blood presence of their classmates was a novelty. Our first-ever graduating class from virtual high school marks a milestone moment, too, for a state struggling to transform public education.

Last Saturday, Iowa Connections Academy, one of the state's first virtual public schools, held a graduation ceremony in West Des Moines for its inaugural graduating class.

The students came from Fayette and Davenport, Independence, Dubuque, Moravia, Burlington and Osceola. All open-enrolled with the CAM Community School District, which began offering online coursework to students from anywhere in the state back in 2012.

The district partners with Connections Academy, a private company that operates in 24 states, according to the company website. They use state-certified teachers; tuition for students is free. Curriculum includes core courses, Advanced Placement and several electives. There's even a chess club. Proponents say it gives students the flexibility to learn on their own time.

But others are concerned about the explosion of public-private partnerships offering online learning programs.

Earlier this month, the National Education Policy Center, in a review of 311 full-time virtual schools operating in the U.S., compared the online learning landscape to the “wild west.”

Their concern: Big claims, tepid outcomes and lots of taxpayer money at stake. They credited marketing, not performance, with the explosion in online learning.

Iowa's first online students appear to have done well: One each will go on to study at Iowa State, Harvest Baptist Bible College and the New Hampshire Technical Institute.

Two others plan to attend community college, Connections Academy spokeswoman Annie Drury told me in an email. She said Iowa Connections Academy Principal James Brauer didn't yet have stats about GPAs or college placement exam scores. Moving forward, that will be important information to track.

Online high school learning could be an important piece of Iowa public school transformation. But we must be sure our kids - online and in person - are getting the education they deserve.

Comments: (319) 339-3154; jennifer.hemmingsen@sourcemedia.net

An earlier version of this column did not include the name of Iowa Connections Academy Principal James Brauer as spokeswoman Annie Drury's original source of class data.