In lesson 2 of week 4 we looked at the legal aspects of Equity and Access in providing virtual instructional options for education. Now we will explore other legal issues faced by virtual schools and programs. Virtual Instruction is still new for Kindergarten through higher education programs. And there are few laws strictly regarding online programs. Although not specifically included in legal requirements, virtual programs still need to comply with federal and state regulations. Especially where public funding is used. In many states, the rapid growth of online education has challenged the laws and rules that were created for physical schools, and are not well adapted to education con, unconstrained by time and place. Some states have created policies that are specific for online programs, but in many states, online programs have been governed by policies that have to be creatively interpreted to make sense in an online environment. Like the common approach of public education funding based on seat time and census counts, neither of which translates easily to the online world. In the next few sections, we will look at the current regulations affecting online instruction. The information is subject to change so you may want to bookmark some resources to stay current with the legislation. Governments have sought to promote equitable access to technology in schools through th, federal programs such as E-rate and Enhancing Education Through Technology. As well as through state level school technology revolving funds. Online learning is increasingly seen as a tool of education reform and a way to provide additional opportunities and options for students to increase, both high school and college graduation rates. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 called for educational choice for parents and students, as well as for supplemental education services in failing schools. Online learning options have emerged to meet these needs. The primary focus of NCLB was improving education outcomes. Under NCLB failing schools were to provide school choice options and then supplemental educational services, SES. NCLB also required that all teachers be certified in their content area. Public schools must meet the requirements of N, NCLB and more information can be found at the ed.gov website that's on the resource page. National Educational Technology Plan. In 2005 the US Department of Education released a new National Educational Technology Plan that contained a goal for improving the use of educational technology to support e-learning and virtual schools. There were five recommendations provided in support of this goal. To provide every student access to e-learning. Enable every teacher to participate in e-learning training. Explore creative ways to fund e-learning opportunities. Encourage the use of e-learning options to meet NCLB requirements for highly qualified teachers, supplemental services and parental choice. And develop quality measures and accreditation standards for e-learning that mirrored those required for course credits. It's actually quite exciting to read this plan and learn the direction the Department of Education wants to head. And eh, the emphasis recommended to be placed on online instruction and even teacher certification. To read more about the plan that was revised in 2010, visit the ed.gov webpage that I have cited on our course resource page. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or also known as FERPA. Although the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not specifically relate to virtual t, instruction. It contains regulations that educational institutes which receive funding under a program administered by the US Department of Education must comply with. FERPA requires programs that receive federal funds to provide students with access to their education records. An opportunity to have their records amended and some control over the disclosure of information from the records. With several exceptions, schools must have a student's consent before disclosing education records, including virtual programs receiving federal funds. Examples of situations affected by FERPA include school employees divulging information to anyone other than the student about the student's grades or behavior, and schoolwork posted with a grade. Generally, schools must have written permission from the parent or eligible student in order to release any information from the student's education record. For more information v, visit the FERPA homepage, which I've also linked to on the course research page. As we discussed in Lesson Two, there are legal requirements to ensure that online programs are providing equity and access for all learners. Especially if the online program receives federal funding. The US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, OCR, is an excellent resource for in depth information. And I'll link to that on the course resource page. The primary federal laws of interest are the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, the Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. We talked about those in the previous lesson. These apply to virtual schools as fully as they do to brick and mortar schools. The law is less clear about the obligations of supplemental online programs delivered within a traditional school setting. The same is true for online programs run by a consortium of school districts and in some cases virtual schools run by a state department of education. Because these programs do not clearly fall under the federal definition of a school, they may not be legally obligated to comply with certain requirements. Some states including Minnesota, Oregon, Colorado and Kansas have worked towards creating a more comprehensive vision for online education. Many other states recognize the value in bringing together stakeholders to create the appropriate policies, procedures, and standards for management and operations of full time and supplemental online programs. Consistent with the goals of expanding access to high quality education for all. The details of many policy issues vary by state. But the issues tend to fall into general categories that are common across states. Let's look at the legislation that affects California's public virtual programs. And recommended state policy provided by the leading organization for online learning. I chose to look at California since this course regarding, regarding that Foundations of Virtual Instruction is part of University of California's Irvine Extension program. Though I realize students may be taking this course from all over the world in the country. So you can reside in other states, in other countries. If you're in the United States, you can famil yourself, familiarize yourself with your own state's legislation regarding virtual school programs with the link to the iNACOL website on the resource page. And click your state from the map to read more. The iNACOL website will be a good one to bookmark to refer back to and stay current as online instruction continues to grow. If you're out of the United States, I hope you'll share resources you've found to be helpful for international online learning in our discussion forums. In part one, we discussed school funding and touched on some of the state regulations California has for virtual programs. Online programs in California are governed by one or two sets of laws. Independent study regulations for all non-classroom based instruction. And charter school laws, some of which are specific to online programs and others that are not. Online charter schools are governed by charter school law and independent study provisions. In 2005, new regulations were created that allowed students to avoid the student teacher ratio provisions of the law. If the school quote has and maintaines an eight or above academic performance index, API rank, and either its statewide or similar schools ranking and has no less a six in the other of the two rankings. In this case the school must spend at least 85% on but, of it's budget on instruction but it's free from other expenditure requirements. Other elements of the law according to Watson, Merr, Varsha and Rap published in 2010 include, instruction must include quote standards based gui, guided lessons. Lesson plans, initial testing of students, and periodic assessment of student achievement. Each student must have an individualized learning plan, all students must be given access to a computer, internet service, printer, monitor, and standard to line materials. All students eligible for special education services must receive these services. And the charter school must recruit a student population with ethnic and racial representations similar to the county served by the program. SB 740 was passed in 2001, and requires online charter schools to spend 80% or more of total revenues on instruction. And spend 40% or more of public revenues on certificated staff salaries and benefits. Online charter schools are required under this law to have a pupil-teacher ratio equal or lower than 25 to 1. Are equal to or lower than people teacher ratio in the largest unified school district in the county or counties in which the school operates. Virtual school programs that use public funds in California are subject to public schooling regulations. And the laws regarding charter schools or independent study. Public school teachers are required to be credentialed in the state and considered highly qualified. Non-public virtual school programs may still want to incorporate some of these requirements, if not for funding, to stay competitive with other programs. There's also recommended state policy. Virtual instruction is still new as an option and for standalone or supplemental programs that receive state funding. The leading organization on research and policy for online learning, iNACOL, has published some recommendations for states to make into policy as online learning continues to grow. Recommendations include the following. Guiding principles by Watson 2007. Public education should include a variety of high quality educational options for students, including online learning. And students across the state should have equal access to these opportunities. Online programs should include both full-time and supplemental opportunities for students. Ongoing innovation requires that states and oversight agencies not stifle innovation by becoming overly prescriptive in re, regulating online programs. The rapid pace at which online education is developing requires that oversight systems, rules and regulations be continually evaluated. Teachers are an integral part of online learning. The involvement of a parent or other responsible adult in the education of a student is to be encouraged. Online programs must use highly, high quality curricula assigned with state and applicable district standards. Some statewide education policies and requirements and oversite do not fit online programs. New online education policies should address these inconsistencies directly. Discussion of policy challenges raised by online learning should acknowledge that many of the issues being discussed exist across all modes of education delivery. Online programs offer the opportunity to transcend time and place, so long as they can demonstrate quality and successful student outcomes. They should not be subject to state education policies that impose barriers of time and place such as requiring face to face meetings or on, other onset requirements. Resources to support online programs must be sufficient to ensure quality, opportunities for innovation and meeting the needs of a broad range of students. It's also recommended that states develop methods of collecting data and reporting for online programs. Watson published in 2007 recommends states have policies that allow for flexibility and innovation. Rather than a prescriptive approach for online instructing. The report recommends that states should develop policies to ensure online programs demonstrate quality in curriculum and assessment. Supervising, evaluating and training teachers, attendance and activity tracking and of course, communication and teacher response times, student support. Awarding credit, funding, participation in state assessments, accessibility, and provision of special education services. Finally, Watson recommends improving data systems for traditional programs. To measure some of the same things, online programs can already easily measure, to enhance accountability and allow for valid comparisons between programs and environments. The suggested data that should be collected are as follows. Student data, attendance participation, which is the completion of lessons, response to teacher communications and engagement, performance, which is course assessments, portfolio assignments, NCLB state tests, withdrawl, and withdraw. And teacher data, highly qualified status under NCLB. Teacher training, meeting instructional expectations, such as response time. Program data, student and parent satisfaction surveys, staff instructor satisfaction surveys. Learning effectiveness based on outcome measures such as standardized tests, AP tests and of course testing and or high school exit exams. Cost effectiveness, financial budgetary and market based, access is measured by student demographic data including at risk categories, retention rates, attrition, both the physical schools and out of public education. Course quality evaluations, teacher evaluations, accreditation and external evaluation, course completion rates, enrollment growth, course or credit recoveries rates, course credit recovery rates. Lots of data for you. Other important issues to consider regarding legal requirements are copyright, fair use and intellectual property. While educators have additional freedoms to share for educational purposes. This freedom is limited when it involves recording and posting the information within the school system unless there is explicit con, permission. It's important for participants in online education to know what material can be used, and under what circumstances. Teachers may make use of materials that they do not own as long as they do not make them freely available for distribution, and the amount used does not exceed certain fixed limits. And that's from Ko and Rossen that book that's published in 2010. The Fair Use guidelines for educational multimedia have been collected, but are not legal code as no formal amendment has been made to the basic copyright law yet. Adhering to the guidelines though, can help educators from involvement in a lawsuit. Four overall determining factors for Fair Use criteria are. One, what is the character of the use? Two, what is the nature of the work to be used? Three, how much of the work will you use? And four, what effect would the use have on the market for original work? The specific guidelines for student, for student use and instructor use can be found in Teaching Online, a Practical Guide by Ko and Rossen. And the document in your reading for this week, published by Blackboard Inc. While educators have additional freedoms to share for educational purposes, this freedom is limited when it involves recording and posting the information within the school's system, unless there is explicit permission. In 2002, the Teach Act addresses distance learning. Instructors can upload photos, maps, and videos that would have been used in the classroom so students can access it from home. The following limitations are in place though. It must be through an accredited non-profit school, legally acquired material, it's not bootlegged. Citations must be provided. Material must be accessible only to the students, m, meaning it's password protected. You have to login to the course site to get to the material. It has to be actual instructional material, not just extra reading or extra credit. It cannot be archived and it cannot be material that a student would have previously purchased. Also, then, Institutions should have a copyright policy in place, and be teaching it to the students and instructors. So, material that is openly available content on the internet, is useable by a virtual class, as long as you do not need a password to access it, and cite your source. So, even for this class, if I wanted to send you to an article to read, I couldn't just download the article and, and upload it to our course page for you to download, I have to send you to the link to, to find the actual source. It's not something that, that I can own and put in our course. So if you want to use material that is commercially intended for schools you probably need to pay for it. Privacy is an important area to consider in virtual schooling also. It may be arguable that nothing on the web is truly private as computers make records automatically. And students may share passwords. Password access to classrooms and discussion forums brings some measure of privacy, but it's hard to ensure complete privacy. Additional security measures can be added beyond those provided by software and hardware. Teachers can be careful in distributing student work, discussion transcripts and emails outside of the classroom or virtual classroom. Without explicit permission. Student names and ID numbers should be removed from anything shared and any printed student information should be shredded rather than just tossed in the trash or recyclable bins. Student, worker photos should not be posted on websites or even worse, social networking sites like Facebook unless there is a clear reason for it and permission was granted. Similarly, online instructors may worry about their own information being shared beyond the classroom. Instructors should be careful of sharing too many personal details with the classroom. And may want to explicitly state that instructional materials are for class use only, not to be distributed. Ko and Rossen even recommend online instructors do not give out a phone number unless it's an office number. But try to keep all communication written in the online classroom or email so that there's a record of the communication and to allow students the time to reflect on the words. [BLANK_AUDIO]
