October 2001 the Virtual High School™ graduates from a federally funded research project to an independent service. Since its inception five years ago, the Virtual High School has grown to include over 175 schools and offer over 150 courses. It has demonstrated that well-designed courses delivered by trained teachers can be successfully offered online.

A separate nonprofit corporation, VHS Inc., will take over the Virtual High School project on October 1, when federal funding ceases. The new organization will grow and refine its mission and continue the VHS™ history of success:

• courses that offer a breadth of intellectual riches to every school;
• a 20-to-1 student/teacher ratio;
• a 95% completion rate.

VHS has also rescued some schools from closure and proven the viability of online collaborative learning. But of all the unique ideas that inspired the original organization, the most important to emerge from VHS could be easily overlooked. VHS demonstrates how a decentralized cooperative can work. Administrators are often attracted to online courses because of the seductive argument that the Internet can lecture to mass audiences. The apparently large student/teacher ratios offer savings. However, teachers are vital to learning, and one full-time teacher simply cannot attend to the needs of more than 100-150 students at one time, whether online or in a traditional classroom. That translates into five courses of 20-30 students. VHS targets 20 and never allows more than 25 in a class.

All other projects offering online courses are centralized - an office, department, university, or business is offering the instruction. Someone has to pay for this overhead, which can be huge if good student/teacher ratios are maintained. Some projects do not charge for these costs initially, but if they are to be successful, local schools will eventually pay the cost, which will include the expense of regular courses plus the added cost of offering courses online. And centralization is bad for communities because it reduces the amount of instruction provided locally.

VHS works differently. Each school that contributes a course can enroll 20 of its students in any VHS course. Teacher time is contributed to the cooperative by the school. Joining the VHS keeps the amount of local teaching the same, so it supports the objectives of the community and supports teachers' unions.

This is why the charge for joining the VHS will always be lower than the actual total costs of comparable centralized projects.

During the transition to VHS Inc., the organization will maintain its current, successful administrative staff, with Bruce Droste and Elizabeth Pape as President and CEO, respectively, of the new organization.

When comparing online educational options, we are confident that educators will see the cost and quality advantages of the VHS model.

Robert Tinker is president of The Concord Consortium (bob@concord.org) and Bruce Droste is director of the Virtual High School (bruce@concord.org).

Copyright © 2001 The Concord Consortium, All rights reserved.
Last Updated: April 21, 2001
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