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Virtual High School Global Consortium
The US-based Virtual High School Global Consortium (VHS) was founded in 1997. It is a non-profit consortium that offers high school courses to students worldwide, and mostly to students within the US. Its offices are located in Massachusetts, US.
The total 2010 student enrollment in its "NetCourses" was 15,237.
VHS students typically access their (asynchronous) online courses from within their local, traditional schools. Courses are mostly supplemental, focusing on Advanced Placement, honors level, remediation and credit recovery.
Member schools pay an administrative fee and pay for professional development. There were 770 member schools worldwide, from 34 US states.
In September 2011, VHS announced a partnership with the private Connections Academy, designed to expand the number of core online courses offered for credit recovery purposes.
The Virtual High School Global Consortium web site is at http://www.govhs.org/.
More Details
The Virtual High School has 51 non-US members (international schools).
Students participate in organised online "classes" which do not exceed 25 students.
As noted on the VHS web site:
- Schools can join VHS as Individual School Members or Student-Only schools. Individual School Members participate in VHS by freeing a high school teacher one period a day to teach a VHS course online. Student-Only schools do not have a teacher teaching a VHS course, but only have students taking VHS courses. VHS also accepts individual students
VHS is "based in the Massachusetts Virtual High School" - an entity about which little discrete information exists.
Most participating schools sponsor one VHS course, allowing 50 students (per year) to take one online course through VHS.
References
- "A National Primer on K-12 Online Learning", iNACOL, October 2010, http://www.inacol.org/research/docs/national_report.pdf
- "Connections Learning Partners with Virtual High School to Expand Core Course Offering", Connections Academy Press Release, 12 September 2011, http://www.connectionslearning.com/connections-learning/news/CL-partners-with-Virtual-High-School.aspx
- "Keeping Pace With Online Learning: An Annual Review of Policy and Practice", Evergreen Education Group, 2010, http://kpk12.com/reports/
- Virtual High School Global Consortium web site, http://www.govhs.org/