In Arkansas, and in many other states with large rural populations, policymakers struggle to develop appropriate strategies to deliver high quality courses with high quality teachers to students in sparsely populated rural schools and districts.  And of course, the state mandates that each of these districts deliver the full array of curricular options to students each year.

Recently, our policymakers have chosen consolidation as the preferred strategy to ensure high quality for all students.  In doing that, we have reduced the number of school districts in the state by about 60 to about 250 and we have eliminated most districts with total enrollments of under 350.    Nevertheless, Arkansas still is populated with many tiny schools in many small districts throughout the rural areas of the state.  How can these schools afford to hire a high quality high school math teacher, for example , for upper-level math classes with only a handful of students enrolled?

The short answer is: they can’t.  And this brings us to a recent seminar at the UA Fayetteville earlier this month in which a Harvard Prof stopped by to tout the achievements of a virtual cyber- school in Florida and argue that the improvements in technology will help improve school coursework — whether we like it or not!

As reported in the local paper, the Harvard Prof argued for a mix of virtual coursework with traditional coursework.  And in Florida, this works as schools can purchase individual courses for their students from the Florida Virtual Academy.  In this case, the traditional schools do not have an interest in battling the virtual school as a competitor.  If the students want to take one class from the Florida Virtual School,  so be it; the brick and mortar school in the neighborhood still delivers the bulk of the curriculum and, importantly, receives the bulk of the per-pupil funding.

Unfortunately, in Arkansas, we can’t adopt such a model.  We do have an Arkansas Virtual Academy (serving K-8) and an Arkansas Virtual High School, but these are not as flexible as the Florida model.  The K-8 school is an all-or-nothing proposition — that is, students must be enrolled in all classes in this school or not at all.  And the virtual high school is a pilot program aimed at providing options for struggling students in need of an alternative learning environment.

State Policymakers — let’s step up and make technology our friend.  Let’s loosen the rules and allow school districts or students to take some coursework from the virtual schools while remaining enrolled in the local smaller schools.  If nothing else, this seems like an ideal model for upper-level math and science courses.  Teachers skilled in these disciplines are in such high demand that it is impossible to think that we will find them for all of our 250 or so districts.  Let’s instead, find several excellent teachers in these areas, and have them build and teach online versions of these courses from our virtual school site so that districts throughout the state can all have access to such skilled teaching.

And I think that math is the way to try this out.  Universities and community colleges are already employing technology to teach college algebra and college calculus to thousands of students across the country.  Why?  Perhaps because interactive technology lends itself perfectly to courses focused on learning mathematical formulae and problem solving and the need for constant practice.  Some might worry that students need teachers to interact with while learning challenging math.  However, it may be true (and I have observed some college-level cyber-classes that support this) that interactive computer-based programs may be better able to interact with students in a 1-to-1 way than are teachers in traditional classrooms with 20-or-so students.  With each student performing at his or her own pace, it is not clear how teachers can efficiently work; however, interactive math programs can easily pay attention to each student’s pace, move her own to the next skill after she has mastered the earlier skill or provide additional explanation or practice when it is needed.

Sure, cyber-classes are not as tailored for a seminar discussing Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, or a Separate Peace, but they may be just what the Professor ordered for isolated schools in rural Arkansas who cannot find qualified math or science teachers.   We are at the point in Arkansas where two small school districts named Weiner and Delight have recently proposed a district merger, despite the fact that they are more than 200 miles apart! The Arkansas State Board of Education said no to this peculiar proposal.  Perhaps our policymakers — with the help of technology — can offer a better way for these small districts to stay in business and offer quality curricula to our state’s rural students.