Local company offers Internet courses for grades 7-12
by Kelley Chambers
The Journal Record
5/15/2007
OKLAHOMA CITY – Students in grades seven through 12 are completing their school coursework and even earning their high school degrees through an online instruction program based in Oklahoma City.
Advanced Academics Inc., on the second floor of a building on the Bricktown canal, began in 2000 in Ponca City before moving to Edmond briefly and finally settling in Oklahoma City in 2002. The company partners with schools districts around the country to offer students the opportunity to supplement or complete their middle school and high school education online.
Jeffrey A. Elliott, president and chief executive officer of Advanced Academics, has been with the company since 2002.
Elliott said many of the students who enroll have jobs or family obligations, such as caring for relatives, which don’t allow them time to attend school during regular hours.
When the program began, it offered four courses and had two teachers. Now the program has more than 100 courses available online and more than 20 teachers available for one-of-one instruction in cyberspace.
The program is also far from a fly-by-night online education program. All of the teachers are certified in Oklahoma and the other primary states where they offer instruction, and the program is certified just like any other public school in the markets where it is offered. One of the major certifications comes from the accrediting body the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges
Elliott said the program has students in 27 states.
Locally, however, Oklahoma students have the benefit of the online interactive learning program Oklahoma Virtual High School, a partnership between the Oklahoma City Public Schools and the Aztec Charter School.
The program also does not cost students a cent to participate.
Elliott said the program is funded like public education in that the money for the students comes from their home school district, and that Advanced Academics fees are less than the state and federal money designated for each student.
Likewise, if a student leaves the online program and returns to the classroom, their dollars return to their home school with them.
Although the program can be beneficial to many, Elliott said the intent is not to get students to drop out of school and log on to Advanced Academics.
“What we don’t want to do is encourage students to leave a traditional environment for this,” he said. “Online learning is not for every kid. There are some students that really thrive in an online
environment. Others really need that traditional classroom experience. Online will never replace the traditional classroom, but it’s always good as a supplement.”
Elliott said the program has educated about 15,000 students around the nation since its inception, and at any time, the program has an enrollment of several thousand.
With the success and popularity of the program, Elliott said the number of students is constantly growing, and he said he expects between 5,000 and 6,000 students to enroll this fall.
If the numbers continue to increase, the program may also have to look at expanding its office space and hiring more teachers to keep up with the demand.
And while the school may be nontraditional in many ways, the staff is made up of former classroom teachers and a principal.
Roberta McKerlie, the principal at Advanced Academics, taught in the program for about five years and became principal about a year ago.
She said the differences between being in a traditional school and the online program is not as great as people might think.
“There are a lot of similarities,” she said. “You have teachers, you have students (and) we monitor a student’s progress, interact with students and parents and I send out awards.”
Elliott said he does not know for sure how many students were saved from dropping out by having access to the program, but he said that since 2000 at least 300 students who would otherwise have dropped out continued their class work online.
Access and availability of technology was also a hurdle in reaching more students. Increased accessibility to computers at home, schools and in public places such as libraries, however, almost every student, no matter where they live, has access to the technology to do their coursework online.
“When we first started out, access to technology was a big issue,” Elliott said. “But today it’s become an insignificant issue.”
Pam Beverage at Advanced Academics in Bricktown teaches a teenager in Pennsylvania Algebra via the Internet on Thursday. Her morning courses are for students who live on the East Coast and her afternoon classes are for the West Coast.