Some of the seeds of Florida’s virtual education system were sown more than two decades ago, at a Fort Myers elementary school, where Julie Young was running an IBM Writing to Read lab.
Students in the lab at San Carlos Park Elementary would move from one station to the next, using computers to explore concepts in different ways, tailored to different modes of learning. It was, Young said, “a blended classroom on steroids,” but years before blended learning became the hot topic it is now.
When, a few years later, the Orange County school district tapped Young to help lead the institution that became Florida Virtual School, that background had already given her an idea of what was possible.
“I had the opportunity to see the technology advancing for several years before I started to do this,” she said in an interview. “You could see a bit into the future, and know that it was coming.”
And by now, it clearly has arrived. Young said that is one reason she feels comfortable stepping down in June after 17 years at the helm of an institution that helped pave the way for online education around the country.
What started as a $200,000 grant project has grown into an award-winning juggernaut that annually serves more than 200,000 students. Students in the state are now required to take at least one of their courses online before they graduate. Last year, the full-time virtual education program bid farewell to its first graduating class, of about 275 seniors.
In other words, Florida Virtual School, like virtual education more broadly, has blossomed into maturity.
Many hands led to the creation of FLVS – from educators like Linda Hayes, a Central Florida computer science teacher who helped come up with the original concept, to state education leaders like Frank Brogan and John Winn, who helped design the policies that sustained it.
But it was Young who guided the institution that became a new model for education – one that maximizes technology to customize learning for individual students, that focuses on competency rather than “seat time,” that links funding directly to student success, and that makes more than 1,000 teachers available to students 12 hours a day.
Jeb Bush, who was governor during the school’s early growth, recently called Young the “godmother of digital learning.” Another early supporter, former Florida House Speaker and now U.S. Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Orlando, recognized her 30 years in public education with a statement for the congressional record.
“It was really a far-sighted option that they put in place. I think Julie had a lot do with making that (possible),” said Tom Vander Ark, an author and venture capitalist who serves with Young on the board of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. “It’s just, from top to bottom, inventing a new form of education,” he added. “It’s still, 17 years later, the best example in the country.”
Model for innovation
In the mid-1990s, bandwidth was increasing, making it possible to do over the Internet what Young and other educators around the country had been doing over local-area networks.
At the time, Steve Evans was vice president of IBM’s education division for North America, where he helped oversee the growth of digital learning efforts like the one Young was working on in Florida. He said she was helping develop systems that would allow students to learn at their own pace.
“She was kind of pushing the envelope as the technology was catching up with her,” he said.
At the same time, Florida’s population was growing rapidly and revenue was on the rise, which put policymakers in a position to look for innovative ways to accommodate growing enrollment.
Two school districts – Alachua County and Orange County – received a $200,000 “Break the Mold” grant from the state to attempt just that. Young, who at the time worked for Orange, was tapped to help lead the effort. She went on to become CEO.
Early on, she said, backers aimed to create a model in which students moved through coursework as they mastered the mateiral. Students who excelled in a subject could move through quickly, while students who struggled wouldn’t be limited to 90 hours of instruction a semester. If they needed to work with their teachers for 120 hours before moving on, they could.
Michael Horn, executive director for education at the Clayton Christensen Institute, said that and other FLVS policy innovations – including the funding model built around students’ successful completion of their courses – are still considered cutting-edge. In a sense, he said, accountability was built right into the institution’s finances.
He said the way the state managed the growth of its virtual school should serve as a model for policymakers everywhere who are looking to start innovative programs. State officials gave the new project seed money. They gave it time to experiment and arrive at a sustainable business model. They shielded it from direct competition with the school districts at the outset, by giving it a separate line item in the state budget. Then, once it became accepted, they began to weave it into the fabric of the education system.
“Florida was quite a leader through every single one of those steps,” Horn said. “I think it has huge lessons to teach the rest of the country about how you start one of these ventures, and incubate them, and then scale them.”
Time of transition
Young’s retirement comes at a time of transition for the state’s virtual education program.
Legislative changes passed last year put Florida Virtual School in more direct competition with school districts. They responded by growing their own virtual education programs, which often use FLVS curriculum.
For the first time in its history, the statewide school saw a decline in enrollment. It was forced to lay off hundreds of teachers.
The move came as other states made changes to their virtual education programs. Louisiana, for example, wound down its state virtual school, which had operated since 2000, in favor of growing alternatives like its new course-choice program.
Vander Ark said changes like those made by Florida, though difficult, may have been inevitable. Other states are also moving away from “double-dip” funding models in which brick-and-mortar schools are not affected by students who take virtual courses.
(Under Florida’s older model, districts only lost funding if students enrolled in virtual courses during the normal six-period school day. They were not affected by virtual courses that students took after hours or over the summer, which have typically been popular options).
Still, in a sense, the enrollment shift to local virtual programs may be the clearest sign of Florida Virtual School’s success. Virtual education, Young said, has “permeated the status quo” to the point where school districts are now comfortable running their own virtual programs.
While FLVS’ days of rapid growth may be over, she said she expects it to continue teaching thousands of students. In the coming years, it will also have a major role in research and development, leading the search for new ways to improve virtual instruction.
“I think you reach a point where there’s no turning back,” Young said, “and I think that we’re there.”
Coming tomorrow: A Q&A with Julie Young. Check out what she had to say about the early days of virtual education, the lessons she learned while it grew, and what the future holds for digital learning.
