The Rio Grande Foundation has been New Mexico’s leading proponent of virtual education. Notably, New Mexico is a state that has done fairly well in the area of promoting virtual schooling, but like nearly all states, we have a ways to go before we are really maximizing the potential of these new technologies.
The group “Digital Learning Now” has been started by former Gov’s Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Bob Wise (D-WV) to push state policymakers to move forward on digital education and virtual schooling. To this end, they have issued a report card for each of the 50 states. The report card allows users to pair various states, so I have paired New Mexico and Florida (one of the nationwide leaders in virtual education) here.
Higher numbers indicate that the state is achieving a greater number of goals associated with virtual schooling. New Mexico certainly doesn’t perform at the level of Florida and Arizona, but we do okay in the report.
Read the full explanation of the 10 elements of high quality digital learning and how policymakers can work to improve them.
In business, those who recognize the opportunities and applications of leveraging new and emerging technologies achieve competitive market advantage and greater efficiencies of effort towards greater returns on investment (e.g. Bill Gates-Microsoft, Steve Jobs-Apple, Elon Musk-PayPal, Fred Smith-FedEx, etc., etc.)…AND THEY CHANGED THE ENTIRE WORLD IN THE PROCESS OF DOING SO.
Virtual learning is the competitive future of Education.
Those who recognize its potential, and develop the best systems in order to harness and direct that potential, will reap tremendous rewards over those who do not…and that includes schools, school districts, states, and whole nations.
There will continue to be those who fear and toss up road blocks to the opportunities and change, for various reasons. They will continue to site a lack of proven data, program rigor and the potential for cheating within the virtual learning environment. However, these arguments are both misleading and shortsighted, and there are counter arguments and current and developing data to address each of these potential criticisms, which should be sited on the front-end of any debate.
The real question that New Mexico’s leaders should be asking themselves is whether the State will be an educational technology innovator, or an educational technology follower, and who will most effectively leverage the highest success gains from the inevitable shift.
Hopefully virtual education is coming. My son is in a great online program. It is free in every southwestern state except New Mexico; but of course this state is always 10 years behind the rest of the country in absolutely everything. Don’t worry, we will modernize “manana”.
Tim,
Where is your son doing his online schooling?