McCain-Correll: 3 Interesting Facts

Government Involvement in Distance Learning. I didn't know that the government played such a big role in the early years of distance education. I guess I always thought of "correspondence courses" as having begun as a commercial enterprise by companies out to increase their profit margins. Finding that the Dept. of Education actually sponsored education via radio broadcasts for farmers in rural areas came as a surprise to me. Also of note is the eGovernment initiative to “make better use of information technology (IT) investments to eliminate billions of dollars of wasteful federal spending, reduce government’s paperwork burden on citizens and businesses, and improve government response time to citizens – from weeks down to minutes. “ (Executive Office of the President of the United States, 2003). Great idea, but I’m still wondering if it has actually saved much money.

Another surprise for me was the effectiveness of Sesame Street! I never really watched the show as a child, but I didn't think a simple television show that showed numbers and letters would be so effective in preparing children for learning. Since the show doesn't allow for communication between student and teacher, the student would be left alone to make sense of the program on their own. For some students, I'm sure this would be fine, but I didn't realize it could be that effective for the majority of children.

Lastly, I was amazed at the number of online K-12 public schools, as well as how the rate of enrollment is climbing at those schools. From 1.7% to 8% in about ten years is a pretty good increase in enrollment! From my own perspective, the enrollment in my district has been steadily dropping for the past ten years. I looked at the 2008-2009 enrollment data for the Florida Virtual School mentioned in the paper, and they had 71,750 “Physical Students Completed.” In 2001, that number was only 10,000+ students. Pretty impressive, and that’s only one state. It makes me wonder how this type of institution will fare in the future.