CURMUDGUCATION: Florida's Troubled Cyber School Launches Alaskan Spinoff

CURMUDGUCATION: Florida's Troubled Cyber School Launches Alaskan Spinoff

Florida's Troubled Cyber School Launches Alaskan Spinoff

So Alaska's teachers were just getting themselves set up to handle distance learning, when their governor pulled the rug out from under them. He'd had a chat with everybody's favorite failed Presidential candidate and education-busting former governor Jab Bush, who suggested that Alaska would be an excellent fit for Florida's Virtual School.

No, really. I wish I were making this up. But I'm not--in a stunning display of one-size-fits-allness, Alaska is now a client of Florida's cyber school.

Dunleavy should know better-- the man's pre-politics career was in teaching. But Dunleavy has been the target of a recall campaign having taken an axe to, well, nearly everything. That included whacking the heck out of education-- 21% off the K-12 budget and a whopping 41% chopped out of the University of Alaska system. Education just needed to get more efficient, he explained.

Not the Everglades.

And what could be more efficient than a cyber-school business that has been through one mess after another (not that Florida's public ed-hating legislature cares-- they're seeing if they can't use the current crisis to get FLVS to take over the whole business).

The above links, it should be noted, only get you to the problems with FLVS that are publicly discussed. Talk to Floridian teachers (off the record) and you hear all your worst fears about cyber-school confirmed. Tests taken by heaven-only-knows-who, including voices that can be heard in the background when doing a "live" hookup. Technical issues.

One would think that, since FLVS has been in business since 1997, a prospective customer might ask CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Florida's Troubled Cyber School Launches Alaskan Spinoff