This story originally was published in The Denver Post on January 16, 2007.
Littleton – Teacher Randy Freitik is huddled behind his computer in a cubicle at Walt Whitman Elementary school. A webcam propped upon the hard drive projects his image in a small box in the corner of his screen.
He is engaged, via phone and computer, in a lively math discussion with Emily and Tim, two elementary students who attend Connections Academy, which is based at the school.
The subject is probability. Emily uses her mouse to scrawl a question that appears on Freitik’s screen: “What is the chance of two holidays falling in the same month?”
Then the pair begin doodling smiley faces and snowmen, and Freitik prods them back to math.
Freitik is one of four elementary school teachers at Connections, which also has one special education and four secondary school teachers.
It is one of more than a dozen virtual schools in Colorado, where the number of students has soared. A recent state audit found that the number of online school students grew from 1,900 to 6,200 between 2003 and 2006.
Connections, a Maryland – based cyberschool with branches in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida and Idaho, appeals to families attracted to home schooling but who aren’t equipped to provide their own structured curriculum at home.
“The curriculum is laid out and they have a network for socialization and support for the parents,” said Denise Mund, a school choice consultant with the Colorado Department of Education.
Connections operates on a contract with Denver Public Schools, but serves about 355 students in kindergarten through ninth grade throughout Colorado.
Concerns about a lack of state oversight and poor performance among students at online schools – both cited in the state audit – have spurred two task forces to study ways to improve quality. The audit found online students scored worse on state tests than students in traditional schools.
Connections rated “low” last year on the School Accountability Report based on Colorado Student Assessment Program results.
Principal Sarah Ault said about 80 percent of the eligible students took the CSAP. When students don’t take the test, their schools get a negative score. She said the school was working to bring test sites closer to families who live in remote areas.
Vody Herrmann, finance director for the Colorado Department of Education, said state law doesn’t specify how much time must be spent online, but online school students must take the equivalent of at least four courses to get state funding.
For the 2006-07 school year, Herrmann said, Denver Public Schools received just over $2 million in state and local funding for roughly 355 students. Connections receives 95 percent of that.
Thornton mother Stella Parker said she and her husband, a mathematician, bought books and tried home schooling their 10-year-old son, Tim, but she felt she “was missing something.”
Tim, who has been in Connections for two years, misses being in a science class, but he does science experiments with his father using a Connections kit. “He’s analyzed rocks, sand, dirt (and) plants,” Parker said.
Recently, Stella Parker found something else to like about virtual schooling: “On those snowy days, you don’t have to get up and worry about taking them to school,” she said.
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-954-1684 or at krouse@denverpost.com.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, it incorrectly stated the percentage of Connections Academy students who took the CSAP last year. Eighty percent of eligible students took the test.
