I just returned from vacation in sunny Alaska to see how well the blog has been doing in my absence. Thanks to Jonathan Butcher for being my substitute blogger and to Greg Forster and Matthew Ladner for keeping everything running smoothly. Thanks also to Reid Lyon, Dan Lips, and Larry Bernstein for their guest posts. Looks like I missed a lot of interesting discussions.
The most striking thing about Alaska, other than the amazing natural beauty, is how remote living there must be. The state capital, Juneau, can only be reached by boat or plane. There are communities sprinkled throughout the state whose link to the outside world is regularly cut by snow, rain, fog, rock-slides, or high winds.
I kept wondering, how in the world do they offer kids in all of these communities a public education? By necessity, they don’t restrict their vision of public schools to students riding in yellow school buses to government built and operated school buildings. In Alaska a significant portion of public education is provided by distance learning technology, just as Matt Ladner has suggested in his post The Shape of Things to Come.
The Alyeska Central School is a statewide virtual school than began operating in 1939, when distance learning technology was the mail service. Until recently it was run by the state department of education but has recently shifted to being a charter school. In addition, about one-fifth of the districts offer their own distance-learning programs. In total, more than 10,000 students out of a public school enrollment of 133,000 receive their public education in their own homes via distance education technology. Many more are home-schooled with the assistance of distance learning technology but are not enrolled as public school students. Another 4,800 students are enrolled in charter schools, many of which rely heavily on distance learning. In total, well more than 10% of all students in Alaska are educated in their own homes with distance learning.
It’s hard to judge the quality of these distance learning programs without a carefully designed evaluation, but it is clear that distance learning makes it possible to offer public education to all Alaskan children at a reasonable cost. Keep in mind that almost everything has to be brought into Alaska since they grow almost no crop, have virtually no farm animals, and manufacture very little. The cost of shipping in difficult to reach environments has to be factored into almost everything. Their schools are more expensive to build, their teachers and staff have to be (and in fact are) paid more given the higher cost of living, and transportation of students is much more expensive.
Distance learning certainly helps Alaska control costs. With distance learning there is less need to build schools, lower cost for transportation, and the pupil-teacher ratios can be much higher. In the Alyeska Central School the ratio is 50 students for each teacher.
To be sure, distance learning isn’t for everybody, but if states want to offer make courses available to more students at lower costs, they should pursue distance learning. The student living in Manhattan or suburban Chicago may not be as remote as those in Haines, Alaska, but both may benefit from options other than taking a yellow bus to a brick and mortar school.
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