Florida Virtual School

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• The Florida Virtual School (FLVS) is a US state virtual school founded in 1997
• The first US statewide online public high school (i.e. open to all Floridians)
• Courses free to Florida residents; others may enrol and pay tuition.
• 213,296 semester course enrollments to 97,182 students in grades 6-12 in 2009-10; this represents an increase of 38% since 2008-09. Percentage of these from Florida unknown
• Roughly three times larger than any other state virtual school; 10-25 times larger than most
• Florida districts may select to set up FLVS Franchise schools
• Districts are required by law to provide students a full-time online learning option; students hoping to take FLVS online courses cannot be denied that opportunity
• Unique funding model can be characterised as follows:
  • Funding of FLVS is built directly into the state education funding formula
  • Funding is performance-based: FLVS receives funding only for students who successfully completes their courses
  • Same funding formula as the state’s traditional public schools, i.e. the funding tied to that student goes to FLVS
• Known (and sometimes maligned) for use of eLearning Centers (ELCs) and Virtual Learning Labs (VLLs). 150 schools in Florida have implemented these in partnership with FLVS:
  • The traditional school provides scheduled time and a workspace (such as a computer lab or library) and FLVS provides the teacher and an online course
  • ELCs and VLLs each have a facilitator to work in tandem with the online teacher
  • Statewide, the number of VLLs greatly expanded in 2009-10 (especially in Miami-Dade) due to class size reduction legislation (as districts select virtual options to meet the new requirements)

The Florida Virtual School web site is at http://www.flvs.net/Pages/default.aspx.

References

See http://www.flvs.net/Pages/default.aspx for more information.

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> Florida
> United States
> Virtual schools

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