Virtual and Blended K-12 Schools



 

Introduction
This IAE-pedia article is motivated by the Virtual Schools Report 2016 on the use of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in precollege education (Miron & Gulosino, April, 2016). That report examines the large scale use of CAI in two settings:


 * Full-time virtual schools deliver all curriculum and instruction online via the Internet or other electronic communication in precollege education.


 * Blended schools combine traditional face-to-face instruction in classrooms with virtual instruction in precollege education.

In both of these types of instructional use, the goal is to teach the traditional curriculum. Schools using these approaches hope to provide students with an equally good or better education at less cost.

The Virtual Schools Report 2016 provides considerable evidence that these types of CAI use are not proving to be particularly successful educationally as measured by student learning. Indeed, the report recommends slowing down the current rush to widely implement such use of CAI in K-12 education.

This article contains three main sections:


 * 1) Background information about CAI
 * 2) An examination of the Virtual Schools Report 2016
 * 3) My thoughts about the future of precollege CAI

Background Information about CAI
As soon as computers became commercially available in the early 1950s, some precollege students gained access and learned to make use of computers. This provided early information that such students were quite capable of being successful both at computer programming and solving problems using computers.

The previous sentence contains two key concepts:


 * 1) Programming computers.
 * 2) Solving problems using computers.

Although many of the earliest computer users did both, it was evident that a non-programmer could make use of programs written by programmers. This is an important idea to keep in mind as we explore use of computers and CAI at the K-12 levels. To what extent do we want to make use of computers and CAI to teach students to program computers, and to what extent do we want such uses to teach students to solve problems and accomplish tasks using computers that have been programmed by others? We will come back to this topic in the third part of the article.

Very Early History of CAI
Computer-assisted instruction (CAI) has a long history. The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) was a system of large computers and associated networking that was designed to detect a possible Soviet air attack on North America (SAGE, n.d.). SAGE became operational beginning in mid-1958, and employed a sophisticated CAI system to train its operators. A key part of this CAI was its ability to simulate a radar system showing incoming aircraft so that the computer users could both learn to detect a threat (possible incoming bombers) and to take actions based on the nature of the threat.

Computer simulations have proven very successful in a wide range of educational and training situations. For example, they are now routinely used to train airplane pilots, astronauts, car drivers, repair people, and workers in many different fields.


 * As an aside, you know that computers are often used in car driver training. Moreover, computers currently are becoming skilled enough at driving cars so that, on average, they are much better than human car drivers.


 * This provides a hint of some of the ideas to be covered in the third section of this article. The issue is, if a computer is quite capable in a particular area of solving problems and accomplishing tasks, what do we want humans to learn to do “by hand, or with non-computerized tools” in solving these problems and accomplishing these tasks? I consider this to be one of the most important topics in the field of education today.

Early Use of CAI in Precollege Education
In the mid 1960s, Stanford University was a “hotbed” of research on the use of CAI to teach traditional school content. A 1968 report provides some insights into this early research on uses of CAI in education (Stanford University, October, 1968).

By the mid 1980s there had been enough CAI research published that it became feasible to do a study of these studies—a meta-study. A 1985 meta-study found quite convincing evidence of the effectiveness of computer-based learning in elementary schools (Kulik, Kulik, & Bangert-Drowns, 1985). Quoting from this meta-study:


 * Achievement examinations. In each of 28 [elementary school] studies with results from achievement examinations, students from the CAI class received the better examination scores; in no study did students from the conventional class get better scores on a final examination on course content. A total of 23 of these 28 studies reported, in addition, that the difference between CAI and conventional classes was statistically significant. Overall, these box-score results strongly favored CBE [computer-based education].




 * The average ES [effect size] of 0.47 for the CAI studies means that in the typical study, performance of CAI students was raised by 0.47 standard deviations. To interpret this effect more fully, it is useful to refer to areas of the standard normal curve. Approximately 68 % of the area of this curve falls below a z score of 0.47. We can conclude, therefore, that students from CAI classes performed at the 68th percentile on their examinations, whereas the students who received only conventional instruction performed at the 50th percentile on the same examinations. Or put in another way, 68% of the students from CAI classes outperformed the average student from the control classes.

Remember, the above results are from more than 30 years ago. The technology has improved substantially since then, and the cost has decreased substantially. It is now economically possible to provide all precollege students with good access to computer facilities, the Internet, and “reasonably good” CAI materials.

Computer Simulations for Use in High School Science Education
The Huntington Project, directed by Lud Braun, was among the best of early efforts to use CAI in secondary schools (Visich & Braun, January, 1974). Quoting from this article:


 * During the period 1967-70, the National Science foundation supported the exploration, by the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, of the uses of digital computers in high school curricula. More than 80 high school teachers and more than 3,000 students in 30 school districts participated in this effort. The experiences gained in this period indicated that simulations were potentially valuable educationally. In order to permit a more detailed exploration of the potentiality, the National Science Foundation funded a two-year effort for the period 1970-72 at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn for the development of simulation materials to support high school curricula in biology, physics, and social studies. This effort was extended an additional two years at the State University of New York.




 * The Huntington Computer Project has developed 17 simulation games which can be used for instructional purposes in high schools. These games were designed to run on digital computers and to deal with material from either biology, physics, or social studies. Distribution was achieved through the Digital Equipment Corporation, which disseminated teacher manuals, resource manuals, and student manuals to over 600 teachers and 25,000 students in 400 secondary schools during the 1972-73 school year; these target populations were expected to quadruple in the following year. Evaluation of the use of the computerized simulation games led to the conclusion that they made a significant contribution to learning. This was particularly true in situations in which students were denied direct experience with the phenomena being studied due to such problems as the students' inexperience with experimental techniques, the lack of laboratory equipment or time, difficulty or danger in obtaining adequate samples, and the impossibility of controlling extraneous variables in real life. [Bold added for emphasis.]

The 17 simulations developed by the Huntington Computer Project opened up a new dimension for the use of computers in teaching. The simulations were based on “solid” science and allowed students to explore various aspects of science in a manner that had not previously been available in secondary schools.

CAI As an Education Reform Vehicle
Eventually support grew for use of CAI and other computer technology to help reform education systems. See, for example, Using Technology to Support Education Reform (U.S. Department of Education, September, 1993). Off and on, over the years, computer technology has been heralded as a possible source of great improvements for our school systems, and a large commercial industry has developed to support such activities. This industry has blossomed as more and more schools have acquired computer facilities—first a lab, then sets of mobile computers, and now many schools provide one computer (a laptop or tablet) per student. Moreover, today’s Smartphone can be thought of as mini tablet computer, and current worldwide sales are at a rate of more than a billion a year.

Hanover Research 2011 Report on Blended Learning Programs
I have followed the CAI research for a great many years (Moursund, 2012). This research indicates that CAI has been relatively effective for a long time and has been gradually improving. For example, a 2011 report was quite favorable to secondary school blended learning (Hanover Research, September, 2011). This report defines blended learning to be:


 * …any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.


 * Other definitions may be more concrete or focus on specific aspects of the content delivery; the Sloan Consortium, for example, specifies that blended courses have between 30 and 79 percent of their content delivered online.

After an introduction that mentions the instructional use of films well before the development of computers, the report notes:


 * The low levels of interactivity that this mode of instruction [films] provided, however, precluded its rise as a possible replacement for teachers and books.


 * Early computer-based training was more interactive, and used a technique of “drill and practice” to communicate its content to users. The next step in the progression came in the form of internet-based training, which began its rise in the 1990s. The first article in internet-based training appeared in 1997. Less than a decade later, as a response to concerns that online learning was “not delivering satisfactory results due to the cost and time of developing courses and the inadequacies of the learning process,” blended learning came into being.

The report provides information about the some of the pluses and minuses of both blended and virtual education. Quoting again from the Hanover Research report:


 * In 2010, the Department of Education published a meta-analysis and review of online learning studies, including those that focused on blended learning. [See Means, et al., September, 2010.] One of the major findings of the study is that there exists very little research on online learning for K-12 students. Indeed, between 1994 and July 2008 there were only five experimental or controlled quasi-experimental studies that compared the learning effectiveness of online and face-to-face instruction for K-12 students and provided a satisfactory amount of data. [Bold added for emphasis.]

Quoting from the 2010 Means report cited above:


 * A systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008 identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 50 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. The difference between student outcomes for online and face-to-face classes—measured as the difference between treatment and control means, divided by the pooled standard deviation—was larger in those studies contrasting conditions that blended elements of online and face-to-face instruction with conditions taught entirely face-to-face. Analysts noted that these blended conditions often included additional learning time and instructional elements not received by students in control conditions. This finding suggests that the positive effects associated with blended learning should not be attributed to the media, per se. An unexpected finding was the small number of rigorous published studies contrasting online and face-to-face learning conditions for K–12 students. In light of this small corpus, caution is required in generalizing to the K–12 population because the results are derived for the most part from studies in other settings (e.g., medical training, higher education). [Bold added for emphasis.]

My reading of the Means report suggests that in 2010 we lacked adequate research to support moving rapidly ahead with wide scale use of CAI and blended learning at the precollege level.

The Virtual Schools Report 2016
This section focuses on the Virtual Schools Report 2016 (Miron & Gulosino, April, 2016). It is not surprising that, in the past few years, there has been considerable pressure for substantially increasing the use of online instruction as a component of blended instruction and/or as a virtual standalone replacement for traditional instruction at the precollege level.

What is surprising to me are the relatively negative results presented in the Virtual Schools Report 2016. These results are quite contrary to those one would expect based on the relatively positive data reported in earlier years of the research literature.

This section uses the following definitions:


 * Full-time virtual schools deliver all curriculum and instruction online via the Internet or other electronic communication.


 * Blended schools combine traditional face-to-face instruction in classrooms with virtual instruction.


 * Education management organizations (EMOs) are for-profit and non-profit organizations that manage virtual and blended schools.


 * Charter schools in the U.S. are publicly funded independent schools established by teachers, parents, or community groups under the terms of a charter with a district or other educational authority.

The Virtual Schools Report 2016 explores K-12 schools on a continuum ranging from those serving students with a combination (a blend) of face-to-face and online activities to the far end of the continuum with full-time virtual schools providing all instruction online. It does not address schools with a minimal use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), ones where some individual courses are delivered online to students who are otherwise enrolled in brick and mortar schools.

The report indicates that in the U.S., during the school year 2013-2014:


 * 1,447 full-time virtual schools enrolled close to 262,000 students. Thirty-three states had at least one full-time virtual school.


 * 87 blended schools enrolled 26,155 students. Sixteen states had at least one blended school.

I was somewhat surprised by these modest numbers. The “hype” in the media I read had led me to believe that the numbers were much larger than this. While there has been a rapid increase in virtual and blended schools, the number of students enrolled in such schools is quite small relative to the 50.1 million students in U.S. public schools (NCES, 2015).

Here are some additional details and examples quoted from the report:

Among the full-time virtual schools in the inventory, 51.5% are charter schools; together they accounted for 82.6% of enrollment. School districts have been increasingly creating their own virtual schools, but these tend to enroll far fewer students.

Although only 44.4% of the full-time virtual schools were operated by private education management organizations (EMOs), they accounted for 74.4% of all enrollments.

Comment from David Moursund. In the year 2012-2013, charter schools made up 6.3% of all schools in the U.S. (NCSL, n.d.). So, I conclude from the above information that in 2013-2014, a disproportionate number of relatively large charter schools were full-time virtual schools. In addition, in terms of enrollment, the private education management organizations dominated. Likely the private sector believes that there is money to be made in the EMO schools.

The following quotes about blended schools also are from the Virtual Schools Report 2016:


 * Blended schools are rather evenly split between district schools (47.7%) and charter schools (52.3%). However, the charter schools had substantially larger enrollments: blended charter schools enrolled an average of 409 students, while blended district schools enrolled an average of 191 students.


 * While the average student-teacher ratio in the nation’s public schools was 16 students per teacher, blended schools reported more than twice as many students per teacher (32.4 students per teacher), and virtual schools reported more than twice as many students per teacher (35 students per teacher). Full-time virtual schools operated by for-profit EMOs had the highest ratio (44 students per teacher), while those operated by nonprofit EMOs had the lowest (19.5 students per teacher).

Comment from David Moursund. This information led me to the same conclusions as those made for the full-time virtual schools in my previous comment. In addition, I was surprised by the claim that the average student-to-teacher ratio in U.S. public schools is 16. This number seems small relative to the media reports about increasingly large class sizes. However, the same data is reported by the U.S. National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES, May, 2015).

Virtual and Blended School Performance Data
How well are students doing in full-time virtual schools and in blended schools? In brief summary, the Virtual Schools Report 2016 indicates that they are not doing too well. Here are two quotes from the report:


 * Multiple or expanded measures of school performance reveal that virtual school outcomes continued to lag significantly behind that of traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Blended schools tended to score even lower on performance measures than virtual schools, although this may be influenced by the fact that blended schools serve substantially more low-income students.


 * Another measure of virtual school performance was produced by comparing student performance on assessments in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics in individual virtual schools with state averages. Of the 121 virtual schools for which data were available, 22 (18.2%) had proficiency rates above the state average; 82 percent had proficiency rates below state averages.

Figures 1 and 2 are copied from the Virtual Schools Report 2016. They draw on data the individual states use to measure academic progress. In analyzing these tables and other data from the report, please keep in mind the following quote from the report:


 * It is fair [important] to note that blended learning schools have a higher proportion of students in poverty than virtual schools. Furthermore, given the differences in student demographics, incomplete data, and the overall quality of data reported by virtual and blended schools, the findings comparing blended schools and virtual schools should be considered tentative and in need of further research.



Figure 1. Percentage of full-time virtual and blended schools that outperformed state averages in terms of proportion of students meeting or exceeding state proficiency benchmarks.</Center>

 Figure 2. Mean graduation rates for virtual schools relative to all pubic schools, 2013-2014.</Center>

Credit Recovery Courses</Center>
This subsection is related to the Virtual Schools Report 2016 but is not part of that report. Remember, the Virtual Schools Report 2016 covers entire schools that fit the definition of being a full-time virtual school or a blended school. In the school year 2013-2014, about 2.7 million K-12 students made use of virtual or blended courses in schools that are not full-time virtual schools or blended schools (Connections Academy, 2015).

Many secondary school students fail one or more required courses and need to gain credit for the course(s) in order to graduate in a timely fashion. Thus, the idea of Credit Recovery was born. Students could be offered the chance to “retake” the course in a summer session or via distance learning.

Quite a bit of research literature is available on Credit Recovery Courses through the use of online courses (AIR, April, 2016; Le, 6/16/2015; Schaffhauser, 4/13/2016). These reports provide evidence that, in one specific type of online instruction at the secondary school level, the results are not very good. Note, however, this is a quite specific set of students—students who have failed the course they are then retaking online.

Also, note the following money-related quote from Ly Le’s report cited above:


 * Private companies such as Plato, Pearson, Apex, and Kaplan have also tried to fill this niche by offering to charge between $175 and $1,200 per student per credit. Online credit recovery represents approximately half of all instruction in the $2 billion online education industry. [Bold added for emphasis.]

It is quite costly to develop a good quality online course. But, the additional cost for each student served is quite small. Thus, course developers are eager to gain large enrollments.

Recommendation from the Virtual Schools Report 2016</Center>
I expected that the Virtual Schools Report 2016 would provide promising information about the current potentials of possible widespread, whole school, online education at the precollege level. I am surprised—indeed, “stunned”—by the report.

The report includes the following recommendation:


 * Policymakers [should] slow or stop the growth in the number of virtual schools and blended schools and the size of their enrollments until the reasons for their relatively poor outcomes have been identified and addressed. States should place their first priority on understanding why virtual schools and blended schools perform weakly under a college- and career-ready accountability system and how their performance can be improved before undertaking any measures to expand these relatively new models of schooling.

I strongly agree with this recommendation. It could well be that proponents of both full-time virtual schools and blended schools at the precollege level lack sufficient research on what happens as the currently available online materials are used in whole school (all students) environments.

My Thoughts about the Future of Precollege CAI

 * “Books will soon be obsolete in the schools.... Scholars will soon be able to instruct through the eye. It is possible to touch every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture.” (1913 quotation from Thomas A. Edison; American inventor and businessman; 1847-1931.)


 * “I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.” (1922 quotation from Thomas A. Edison; American inventor and businessman; 1847-1931.)

I always get a chuckle when I read these two Thomas Edison quotes. Now, a hundred years after his first statement, we have not yet come close to fulfilling his forecasts. However, the nature of “book” has been undergoing a huge change.

Historically, a book consisted of text and might contain a few black line drawings. Improvements in various technologies eventually led to inexpensive, mass-produced books that often include color as well as black and white photographs, graphs, maps, etc.

Now computers have brought a new dimension to traditional paper books. I have an inexpensive tablet computer (and I also have a Smartphone) that can store hundreds of books and provide me with easy access to hundreds of thousands of books available online.

My tablet computer and Smartphone provide me with access to the Web and also with the ability to communicate with people throughout the world. As I read a “traditional” book on my tablet computer, I can highlight a word to get a dictionary definition or a link to a website that explores the word in more detail. I can ask the computer to read the book aloud to me. I can search the text for a word or phrase. (Think of this as an index on steroids!) If I encounter text in a language I do not know, I can make use of free computerized language translation services available on the Web.

And, of course, I can view videos and listen to audio material on my tablet computer. I can picture Thomas Edison with a smile on his face as he thinks about the technological progress that has occurred since his time. A “book” isn’t what it used to be.

Mass Education</Center>
The “gold standard” in instruction has long been one well-qualified tutor working individually with a student. Of course, few students get such a high-quality, expensive education.

Gradually the educational leaders of each country decided it was advantageous to require many more years of education and to conduct this education via schools in which large numbers of students were taught in classes of perhaps 20 to 30 students, or more. This was far less expensive than individual tutors, and was “reasonably” effective.

As books became more readily available and decreased in cost, it became possible to provide all students with individual books to carry around and use, as well as access to a local library with books and, eventually, audio-visual materials. We developed public and private schools that emphasized students learning reading, writing, and arithmetic. With a modest level of skill in these three areas, some students found they could further their education by learning on their own from the print materials that were available.

The past decade has given us the Smartphone, inexpensive tablet computers, and increasingly good WiFi connectivity. In the U.S. and in many other countries, it is now economically feasible to provide every student with an easily portable and quite powerful tablet computer and access to instructional materials designed for use on such a machine.

Here are three major types of instruction that have emerged in recent years:

1. Training in which the student is trained to use a tablet and/or other computerized tools to solve “on the job” problems. Increasingly, these devices communicate with built-in data collection and diagnostic tools, such as in today’s cars and a broad range of other devices. The training is typically provided by a combination of a human teacher (a tutor, or a teacher of a class) and training by the tools that the student is learning to use. A key point here is that success is measured by how well a student can diagnose and solve a specific range of problems. Often these problems include interacting with customers—humans who have a problem and need help. In addition, students learn to know their own current capabilities and limitations, and when to ask for help from a “supervisor” who has had more training and experience.

2. Education designed to cover traditional school topics and/or modifications of the topics that better fit current “modern” times. Students learning to use the Web rather than a hard copy library illustrate the latter. Somewhat similarly, students now routinely make use of a word processor that checks their spelling and grammar as they write.

Remember that traditional education offers the strong advantage of providing students with substantial opportunities to develop “people skills” and to learn how to interact effectively with others. Examples include:


 * Diversity. Respecting the individual and group rights of others.


 * Taking turns, and not bullying.


 * Participating in group activities such as sports, drama, class discussions, and teams working to solve problems and accomplish tasks—as in project-based learning.


 * Developing and using communication skills—including both face-to-face conversations and communication aided by a range of technologies.

The Virtual Schools Report 2016 focused on the progress that has occurred in teaching certain aspects of the traditional curriculum. It did not explore the social, people skills aspects of the full-time virtual and blended schools.

3. A combination of Training and Education designed to help students function well as lifelong learners and responsible human beings in a world of diversity––and to work effectively with a steadily growing access to more and more powerful computerized aids to solving problems, accomplishing tasks, and communicating with people and machines.

Final Remarks
I believe the future of education lies with the third approach listed above. In brief summary, I recommend that we move our current educational system in the following directions:


 * 1) Provide a considerably increased emphasis on people and computers working together to solve the types of problems and accomplish the types of tasks that people face both in and outside of school. Spend less school time teaching students how to solve problems and accomplish tasks without the use of computers in situations when computers can clearly do these better than people, or when computers and people together readily outperform either alone.
 * 2) Place greater emphasis on diversity in its broadest sense, including individual differences among students. Schools should be places where students develop their communication and other “people” skills. They also should learn about themselves and others, and have opportunities to develop and explore personal areas of interest.These "people skills" include communication both in face-to-face setting and via the various other aids to communication such as social networking and working with others who are remotely located.
 * 3) Provide considerably greater individualization of instruction and learning opportunities to better fit the individual differences of students. While we are a long way from having general-purpose computerized tutors, we already have many examples in which a computer-as-tutor can produce better results than can a human teacher working alone with a large class. Students deserve to have the benefits of these steadily improving aids to learning.
 * 4) Provide students with a good understanding of the fact that computers are steadily becoming “smarter,” that we are making progress toward developing computers that are smarter than people —this is called the “singularity,”— and how increasingly smart computers will change the world  (Moursund, 2016a; 2016b; 3/5/2015).
 * 5) Help students to gain a high level of skill in posing questions and seeking answers from their brains, from computers and other information retrieval resources, and from other people.Questing asking—especially, asking questions relevant to solving a problem or accomplishing a task of personal interest or interest to others—is a very important component of a good education.

References and Resources
AIR (April, 2016). The back on track study: Using online courses for credit recovery. American Institutes for Research. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from http://www.air.org/project/back-track-study-using-online-courses-credit-recovery.

Connections Academy (2015). Growth of K-12 digital learning. Retrieved 5/7/2016 from http://www.connectionsacademy.com/Portals/4/ca/documents/pdfs/press/2015/CE_Infographic%202015_FINAL(2).pdf.

Hanover Research (September, 2011). Blended learning programs. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from http://www.hanoverresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Blended-Learning-Programs-Membership.pdf.

Kulik, J.A., Kulik, C.C., & Bangert-Drowns, R.L. (1985). Effectiveness of computer-based education. Retrieved 5/5/2016 from Retrieved 5/5/2016 from https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/25814/0000377.pdf?sequence=1.

Le, L. (6/16/2015). How effective are online credit recovery programs? Albert Shanker Institute. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/how-effective-are-online-credit-recovery-programs.

Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones., K. (September, 2010). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved 5/8/2016 from https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf.

Miron, G., & Gulosino, C. (April, 2016). Virtual schools report 2016. National Education Policy Center. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/publications/RB-Miron%20Virtual%20Schools.pdf.

Moursund, D. (2016a). What the future is bringing us. IAE-pedia. Retrieved 5/8/2016 from http://iae-pedia.org/What_the_Future_is_Bringing_Us.

Moursund, D. (2016b). Information underload and overload. IAE-pedia. Retrieved 5/8/2016 from http://iae-pedia.org/Information_Underload_and_Overload.

Moursund, D. (3/5/2015). Education for the coming singularity. IAE Blog. Retrieved 5/8/2016 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/entry/education-for-the-coming-technological-singularity.html.

Moursund, D. (2012). Distance learning. IAE-pedia. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from http://iae-pedia.org/Distance_Learning.

NCES (2015). Back to school statistics for 2015. National Center for Educational Statistics. Retrieved 5/5/2016 from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372.

NCES (May, 2015). Teachers and pupil/teacher ratios. National Center for Educational Statistics. Retrieved 5/5/2016 from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_clr.asp.

NCSL (n.d.). Charter schools. National Conference of State Legislatures. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/charter-schools-overview.aspx.

SAGE (n.d.). Semi-automatic ground environment. Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/7/2016 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-Automatic_Ground_Environment.

Schaffhauser, D. (4/13/2016). Research: Credit recovery students do worse in online algebra classes than face-to-face. Retrieved 5/4/2016 from https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/04/13/credit-recovery-students-do-worse-in-online-algebra-classes-than-face-to-face.aspx.

Stanford University (October, 1968). Brief history of computer-assisted instruction at the Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences. Retrieved 5/5/2016 from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED034420.

U.S. Department of Education (September, 1993). Using technology to support education reform. Retrieved 5/5/2016 from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED089740.pdf. https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/TechReforms/index.html.

Visich, M., & Braun, L. (January, 1974). The use of computer simulations in high school curricula. Retrieved 5/8/2016 from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED089740.pdf.