FLVS limits the number of students each teacher is responsible for instructing to ensure that teachers will be able to give enough quality time to each of their students.**īecause online learning was virtually nonexistent and there was little in the way of online content and curriculum when the school began, FLVS had no choice but to integrate backward and create its own curriculum and content so that it could offer Internet-based courses. The school is able to enforce this rule by issuing annual contracts to all of its employees instead of granting them tenured positions. FLVS hires and retains teachers based on their performance. Although teachers and students have little or no face-to-face interaction with each other, the school has cultivated a “high-touch” learning environment where teachers engage students not only in one-on-one learning, but also in group sessions and tutoring. Teachers work from home and communicate with students and parents primarily by means of telephone and email. A performance-based funding system made FLVS more accountable in some respects than brick-and-mortar schools, and it also enabled the school to escape seat-time restrictions and thereby preserve the flexibility that was key to online learning. In 2003, the Florida Legislature voted to include FLVS in the state funding formula for K–12 education and approved a performance-based program in which the school would only receive per-pupil funds for those students who successfully completed and passed their courses. Because the line item was a fixed amount, however, it limited artificially the number of students that FLVS could enroll. It first funded FLVS as a line item in the state budget, which meant that the online school did not compete directly against local school districts for their per-pupil funds.
FLVS enrolled more than 70,000 middle and high school students during the 2008–09 school year.Īfter the $200,000 grant ran out, the Florida Legislature took over the funding of FLVS. Through trial and error and a focus on building an education option for students whose needs were not being met, the team established what became the Florida Virtual School (FLVS), the nation’s first statewide, Internet-based public school. The districts assembled a team, which adopted a new mindset and asked, “If we didn’t have to follow the rules that already exist, what would they be?”* In the fall of 1997, the Florida Department of Education (DOE) awarded two Florida school districts, Orange and Alachua, a $200,000 “Break the Mold” grant to co-develop an online high school to serve students throughout Florida.
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