All students have access to high-quality digital content and online courses.
Metrics:
- Digital learning environments, including online and blended-learning schools, courses, and models, have flexibility with class-size restrictions and student-teacher ratios.
- No school district may restrict student enrollment in full-time online school or in an individual online courses through enrollment caps or geographic boundaries.
- All students can enroll in an unlimited number of individual online courses.
- No school district may restrict a student’s ability to enroll in an online course based on course offerings (substantially similar courses).
Digital learning opens the virtual door to a high quality education. Where technology has created unprecedented access to a high quality education, policies that limit or control access threaten to build virtual barriers where the walls have already come down. Moreover, restricting access based on geography, such as where a student lives, is illogical in the digital world where learning can occur anywhere and everywhere.
Capacity – not arbitrary caps on enrollment or budget – should be the only factor in limiting access to digital learning. A number in state statute should not deny a student access to digital learning where space is available.
With digital learning, teachers can provide one-on-one instruction and mentoring to many students across the nation. Artificially limiting class size, prescribing teacher-student ratios or restricting a teacher’s ability to serve students at multiple schools ignores the freedom and flexibility that comes with digital learning.
Requiring students to take a high quality college prep online course ensures students are better prepared to succeed in life after graduation in the digital age. A robust offering of digital content and online courses expands options and ensures students acquire knowledge and gain skills from the experience of digital learning.