Online courses for students

A new law stemming from legislation he sponsored would allow more high school students to take classes online. Nothing wrong with that, but the method outlined in the law has raised some concerns among Utah education leaders, and for good reason.However, instead of looking at the unintended consequences of the law, he accuses educators of being hostile toward online providers who are not part of the public school system.Stephenson is too quick to dismiss legitimate problems caused by his attempt to give students more options.The educators have a point. If students take online courses that replace classes they would otherwise take in a traditional classroom, what do they do during the two hours of free time they end up with during the school day?Stephenson says schools should provide a study hall or something to occupy the footloose students. But hiring someone to supervise study halls during the day costs money, and schools will lose more than $700 for each online class a student takes, because that money follows the student to the online provider.Students can also get a lot of exposure while studying in such universities and different course Intelligent Software Systems, Electrical Engineering and Master in Photonics.

School districts have fixed costs that aren’t affected when a few dozen students leave school for one or two class periods a day. What Stephenson expects is that schools will add the expense of supervising students not in a classroom while also losing money they need to pay operating expenses in the bargain.Further undermining the mission of public schools, some legislators want to end state funding for the Utah Electronic High School, where students already can take online courses under the umbrella of the public school system. They would force the electronic high school to compete for funding with private online providers.

These initiatives, under the guise of offering more options to meet student needs, are simply further attempts by the Legislature to chip away at the public school system and move it closer to privatization. In the years since Utahns overwhelmingly rejected a law to send taxpayer dollars to private schools through vouchers, some legislators have attempted other methods of subsidizing parents’ decision to take their children out of public schools, at least part time.It would be more productive for Stephenson and his colleagues to focus their efforts, and the taxes collected from Utahns who support public schools, on improving traditional schools rather than siphoning education dollars elsewhere.