Florida Virtual School

In central Florida, Kaila Julia wants to be a nuclear physicist. In order to follow her dreams she needs an advance placement (AP) calculus course. When she could not fit the course into her schedule, she opted to take it online through Florida Virtual School (FLVS). David Marz, a junior in Volusia County, turned to FLVS when he was diagnosed last spring with bone cancer. By taking classes online, David can keep up with his classmates while he receives monthly chemotherapy treatments.Stories like these are becoming common among K-12 students who now enjoy online learning options through their school, district, or state—and those options are growing rapidly. Though distance education has been offered in colleges and universities for quite some time, it has been slower to catch on in the K-12 sector. Happily for students, this is no longer the case.Ten years ago, K-12 online learning options were reserved largely for remote areas, such as the Western provinces of Canada. There were very few K-12 initiatives in the United States, and funding or legislation to support distance learning was practically nonexistent.Change came in 1997 from a southern state that, until recently, did not exactly conjure ideas of bold and progressive educational initiatives. Two counties in Florida were awarded a “Break the Mold” grant from the state. Designed to encourage innovation, the grant allowed Orange and Alachua counties to explore online learning as an option for K-12 students. Such was the beginning of Florida Virtual School, now one of the country’s largest virtual and most widely lauded virtual initiatives for middle and high school students.That first year, Florida Virtual School served just 77 enrollments. In 2005-06, it served more than 55,000, and it projects to reach almost 80,000 in 2006-07. Today, the school stands as a remarkable success model on many fronts, including funding, legislative reform, professional development and, most important, student achievement. But FLVS has also provided something that educators across the nation need in order to create similar options in their area—a successful precedent.How does an organization see such growth and success in such a relatively short time frame? “The organization is constantly pressuring itself to improve and innovate,” notes Susan Patrick, president and chief exectutive officer of the National Council for Online Learning (NACOL), “It is inspiring in the sense that as FLVS realizes success, it puts effort into redevelopment, creating a constant cycle of innovation and improvement. That makes the program stand out.”Julie Young, president and chief exectutive officer of Florida Virtual School, believes that the ability to create policy rather than live within the bureaucratic structure of the school system gave FLVS the freedom to innovate. “Having the latitude to … be driven by standards and student needs” versus a textbook was the fuel for innovation. The twin demands of standards and student needs continue to fuel the self-challenging ethic that is so much a part of the organization’s cultural ethos.Indeed, FLVS has raised the bar on itself several times. “In the early years, our completion rate was about 50%, and we thought that was pretty good because it was consistent with rates we heard from universities who were, at that time, much further into the online learning game,” notes Phyllis Lentz, director of Global Services at FLVS. “The state, however, let us know that they really expected something different from us. They didn’t need an option that was just like those that already existed. They needed something better.”So Florida Virtual School did something that schools don’t often do: They asked students for input. In fact, student feedback has since become integral to the way FLVS conducts business. “What we learned from that feedback was invaluable in shaping our program,” says Lentz. Over the course of the next few years the completion rate climbed to percentages in the 1990s. The rate fluctuates from year to year, but remains steadily above 80%.Changes in expectations for teacher-student interaction came as a direct result of the student and parent surveys and eventually shaped the performance-driven funding model that now sustains the school.While a stubborn, student-centered focus is the “single direction that everything else can fall around,” according to Young, it requires an equally focused staff to maintain that heading. Young believes that one of Florida Virtual School’s biggest advantages was the ability to build rather than inherit a team. It allowed FLVS to hire teachers from the get-go who were passionate about change in order to reach students better.Bruce Friend, vice president of NACOL, agrees. “When comparing FLVS to other programs, I tell people that the real difference is the instructional model and the quality of the staff. People make the difference. You can have the best online course, but the course isn’t going to teach itself.”Finding the right people for a rapidly growing school, however, is a challenge. “We’ve provided a great deal of innovative opportunities and perks for our teachers,” notes Pam Birtolo, chief learning officer. Indeed, while administrative jobs are the usual option to the classroom, at FLVS teachers can move into online content development, training, mentoring, and more. Birtolo and Jennifer Whiting, chief academic officer, note that the next generation of e-learning will see new levels of individualized content that can actually morph depending on the interactions and learning needs of the student. These changes provide exciting opportunities for innovative teachers who love to find new ways to reach students.Teachers at FLVS also enjoy new levels of recognition for their accomplishments. Since the school itself is funded upon successful student completions, teachers who successfully reach students beyond the minimum requirement are rewarded monetarily in the form of a per-student bonus.While financial rewards are certainly appealing, the chance to grow professionally is perhaps equally attractive. An extensive professional development and teacher support program has even veteran classroom teachers cheering. Veteran AP instructor Dianna Miller notes, “I find the support offered by the full-time mentoring staff invaluable to my ongoing growth as a virtual teacher.” A “just in time” mentoring program that trains new staff for a full year provides new hires one-on-one daily support as they ramp up to the online environment. Thereafter, a combination of teacher-specific data feedback, teaming, and ongoing training keeps teachers at the top of their game. Teachers are very much in a fish bowl at FLVS in that instructional supervisors can view everything from when the last paper was graded to when the last call to a student was made. The idea, though, is to support teachers who may be struggling in order to ultimately help students succeed.Interestingly, teachers seem to welcome the challenge. “Teachers are willing to give up tenure, go to an annual contract and be evaluated on performance,” says Young, noting that this and a turnover rate of less than 3% is the greatest testimony to a fully committed staff that has jumped into the deep end and is actually enjoying it.Another factor in Florida Virtual School’s success: political savvy. “Julie [Young] had the foresight to see that you not only have to manage your staff, but you have to manage up,” notes Todd Hitchcock, vice president of FLVS Global Services. He notes that Young’s remarkable ability to “navigate the political waters” was foundational to the school’s success.Indeed, funding and legislation are often noted as the top two barriers to the growth of online learning. It is particularly difficult to realize the benefits of online learning without stepping on sacred beliefs about local control. When the time came to move from line-item to a per-pupil funding model, Young and other FLVS leaders lobbied to be the first school ever to be funded strictly on performance. If the students don’t succeed, the school isn’t paid. Young’s ability to meet challenges like this head-on has likely paved the way for other programs across the nation.As Director of Global Services, Lentz works with many virtual programs across the country. “When I talk to other initiatives, there are two main factors that prevent success: lack of funding and no legislation that prevents schools from denying access to students.” Lentz notes that the State’s decision to provide free and guaranteed access to FLVS to all Florida students was a critical success factor.Another component of success for FLVS was the adoption of a business management model. Equally important were partnerships created to nurture the model. FLVS has seen three notably successful partnerships: with IBM, Jones Education, and UCompass. Young believes the key to those successes was mutual dependence. “I always looked for partners with a shared vision, not just someone interested in selling us something, but also looking at moving our industry forward.”In the IBM partnership, the two organizations were aligned in a mission to take a leadership role and make a significant contribution to the industry. FLVS contracted with IBM at varying levels for the first 4 years and, according to Young “they were giving back to us the same amount in soft services. Each [side] had an equal voice into where we were going.” The IBM partnership provided FLVS with business expertise, a critical need for an organization filled with educators. The same was true with Jones Knowledge, who owned the e-education platform that FLVS used at the time. Jones also provided business insights, marketing guidance, and sales support as FLVS made inroads into the national e-learning arena.For UCompass, the company that owns and provides the current learning management platform, Educator, for Florida Virtual School, the win-win is in smarter product development. “FLVS provided intellectual capital and product feedback from practitioners in the K-12 e-learning field to Ed [Mansouri, owner of UCompass],” says Young. In return, Mansouri created a platform replete with customizations for FLVS.When considering a business partner, Young looks for leadership within the partner organization, a shared vision for student-centeredness, and an opportunity for give-give and win-win for both sides. “At the end of the day, we need to have an asset if we are going to develop something with someone.” That asset could be tangible—as in a product or service to be sold—or intangible, such as market insights or increased reputation.Hitchcock, vice president for global services adds that a “long haul” focus is critical. “If [both parties] know it’s a long-term relationship, you’ll both be more likely to respond to one another.” He also recommends looking for partners with “a track record for being innovative in their products or their people.”FLVS thrived in the early days on the zeal of passionate educators. But as the organization grew, these same educators recognized the need for business partners to maintain the market-driven approach that has made the school successful. Young’s advice to schools looking at similar partnerships? “Do your homework on the business you intend to partner with. Do not assume anything. Have a significant dating period prior to the engagement. Use an attorney no matter how much you like each other.”Being hailed as a top leader has its challenges. When you reach the summit, it’s naturally tempting to sit down and simply enjoy the view. It becomes imperative to adopt a set of performance indicators that can be measured and tracked. That input, along with solid business instincts, will provide for strong decision making.FLVS uses a slew of data measurements to track grading turnover, teacher-student contact, or overall progress. Progress is tracked by students, courses, and teachers. Of course, the most important performance indicator for Young is always successful completions. But “soft” data are also collected and considered in the decision-making process. Young pays particular attention to daily e-mails from parents filled with “passionate gratitude,” but even negative e-mails provide input for future decisions.One question on the annual customer satisfaction surveys that Young likes to track is where students respond negatively or positively to the statement: “My teacher cares about me.” Young also looks at things like feedback from students who drop courses. She wants to know why and would they recommend an FLVS course to a friend anyway?In an organization where “change” is almost a mantra, knowing where to focus energy and resources becomes critical. Data management measures like these allow leadership at FLVS to keep the student as their focal point while making the areas needing change more obvious.Change is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is critical to an organization that desires to morph itself to student needs. On the other hand, a growing organization needs to establish policies and procedures, often the death-knell to innovation, to support growth and scalability.“There’s a big risk in a large organization that the organization will begin to create policies for employees rather than for front-line customers,” notes Birtolo. Hitchcock agrees, saying he hopes FLVS will maintain a “dating without getting married” approach to policy. “Schools get so mired in policy.… We need to never write another policy. Write plans, procedures—guidelines that we can modify and adapt at any time, so if it doesn’t work eight weeks from now, we can change.”Lentz adds that it is important to stress that change is a given. “Having the mental set is part of the battle. Then when things happen, you can just accept it for what it is. You just know it, and expect it.” Young concurs, adding that the staff must understand that FLVS is a technology organization as well as an educational one. “We have to change to remain at the forefront. No one can get too comfortable, and they have to be okay with that.”Florida Virtual School expects to quadruple enrollments over the next few years, so it is indeed a juggling act to calm fears of change, create stable and scalable models, while at the same time working like mad to fan the flames of innovation. Whiting argues that being such a large organization can also be a curse to innovation, “We see ourselves in the press as being the biggest and first, but I want to be known as being the most innovative. And we’re going to have to constantly reexamine what it will take to be the leader.”For Young, the challenge is to keep pushing everyone to reach higher. “I really do believe that good is the enemy to great. No matter how good you are—if something is working well, how can you make it better?”So if these leaders are not afraid of change, what does scare them? Internally, a loss of progressive thinking is a concern. Due to FLVS’s tremendous growth and need to hire so many teachers so quickly, Whiting worries about bringing old ways of thinking into the FLVS culture. Birtolo concurs, “When you import hundreds of new teachers every year, you are importing all those practices that we wanted to get away from in the classroom.”And it is the disenfranchisement in America’s classrooms that worries Young. “Many students indicate that they are tolerating [going to school] as a means to an end. In a recent student panel of what I would consider very successful students, they agreed that they are only engaged about 20% of the time and that they have to ‘power down’ to go to school.”Susan Patrick, whose role at NACOL provides an international viewpoint, is haunted by drop-out statistics. “We need to help people understand that it’s not ok to have a third of our kids drop out. It’s not okay to use tax dollars to support schools that are not providing quality learning. There are twenty-first century models of education, powered by e-learning, that are accelerating education in places like Singapore, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Singapore has 100% of its high schools online. It’s not just about distance learning. It’s about improving all of education. While we debate change—other countries are just moving forward.”Friend also worries about global competition. “I’m concerned when parents talk about online courses being ‘too rigorous.’ We know they are rigorous, and that’s kind of the point. How do you take the fact that jobs are going to China, India, and Ireland from just being a news story to students seeing the reality of what that is?”On the flip side, the leadership at FLVS is passionate about the promise that online learning affords. Young believes Florida Virtual School’s role is to be an advocate for all students and for the entire online learning industry. “We were so supported in Florida. We were appropriately funded to do the research; we had the ability to take time to make mistakes and adjust. I’ve always felt that we have a responsibility to … to make this a quality industry, to be at the policy table, to be an example.”The impact of online learning on individual students is also a powerful motivator for the staff at FLVS. “Students can go for a lifetime through school believing they aren’t competent or capable,” notes Lentz, “but for them to be able to work at their own pace and then realize that they are competent—how that changes their concept of themselves and their abilities—that really jazzes me when I hear a student make a comment like that.”Friend echoes this sentiment, noting the power of choice afforded by online learning—choices independent of having more money or moving to a better neighborhood. “I think that’s awfully powerful for parents.” In the broader scope, Friend argues that online learning meets every twenty-first century skills requirement “probably better than any educational in the right Virtual schools have the ability to change the way we education and what it means to go to If you really believe that learning is all you … having the ability to reach students at any time, I don’t think that can do this like online and certainly FLVS is a

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