| California Virtual Academies | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| 2360 Shasta Way, Unit A Simi Valley, California, 93065 United States |
|
| Information | |
| Type | Virtual school |
| Opened | 2002 |
| Grades | Kindergarten - 12th grade |
| Affiliation | K12 Inc. |
| Website | www.k12.com/cava
WIVA Homepage |
California Virtual Academies (CAVA) is one of many virtual charter schools that is controlled by the curriculum provider K12 Inc. Although all public charter schools are not-for-profit, K12 is for profit. The academy, like most K12 Inc. supplied schools, loans the student textbooks, materials, and a computer so the student can access his/her online lessons.
Contents |
The K-8 course lessons are on the K12 Online School (OLS). Here parents are allowed to customize their student's school calendar and add/remove course lessons from the daily plan and add/remove vacation days. However the student must have completed each core course (Math, English, Science, and Social Studies) to 90% or higher by the first Friday of June and have had at least 180 school days. Course lessons include online reading sometimes followed by offline textbook work and then the lesson test, also called an assessment. The test consists of an online multiple choice quiz and/or a textbook quiz that has multiple choice and/or short answer questions. The offline textbook multiple choice and/or short answer questions are answered by the student, the answers are then graded with the teacher guide answer key book by the parent who enters the results into the online test. The online questions are then graded by the computer and the test grade is then displayed. At the end of the school day the parent records attendance on the OLS of what courses their student worked on that day and how much time they spent.[1] The 9-12 course lessons are also provided by K12, but there is no real flexibility on course days. Though the vast majority of students flunk at least one of their courses, CAVA high school is a good option for the very self-motivated student who also is pursuing a professional athletic career and cannot attend classes during the day. It is also a good option for the challenged student who has huge parental support. The assignments are graded either by the computer for the multiple choice questions or by the teacher for the short answer questions, the longer essays or papers, and the laboratory reports. Students can either do the word processing online or can print out the questions and answer them, scan them and submit the scans or doc files into a 'drop box.'
The California Virtual Academy is considered virtual public school, not a home-school. Instead of the parent being the sole teacher, a state certified teacher is occasionally available to administer assignments, schedule conferences, and to monitor work. The parent becomes a "Learning Coach". This is especially effective when the "learning coach" is a stay-at-home parent who is constantly involved in the learning process. In K-8, parents can sign their students up for virtual classes where students of the same grade all over the state come to the virtual class, listen to the teacher, and answer questions. These classes are run through virtual conferencing software called Elluminate Live. In 9-12, students are required to attend their math and English classes online at the assigned time. The other subjects don't have an attendance requirement, and therefore a minority of students take advantage of live instruction. [2] The teacher can set the response box so that only he or she can see the responses. Because of this, students don't have to worry about getting the answer wrong in front of the whole class; the only ones that would know that the answer was wrong would be the teacher and the student. In 9-12, most class instruction is limited to about half an hour per week with the rest of the instruction a kind of self-paced homework. Towards the end of the year, the students are required to take the same state standardized test as a typical "brick and mortar" school. CAVA's STAR scores have been dropping hundreds of points per year. CAVA is therefore "under improvement." If CAVA's scores do not improve, the school will be taken over by the state. [3]