Another excellent Edublogs.org weblog

GOAL student Katie Drake, shown here on a GOAL field trip to a dairy farm, has been selected as a 2009 Youth Tour Winner by Consolidated Electric.  She will attend the seven-day Electric Cooperative Youth Tour in Washington, D.C. this June.

 Congratulations, Katie!

 This spring, GOAL formed a community school leadership team to evaluate student test scores, attendance rates, graduation rates, curriculum, and assessments, and to formulate a school improvement plan following the Ohio Improvement Process.

By completing the Decision Framework, the team was able to prioritize improvements to reading and math curriculum, Reading assessments, high-quality professional development for staff in reading and math, and data-driven decision making.

This summer, efforts begin to implement the targeted improvements.  In mid-June, teachers will meet to learn about 21st century skills and to be trained in a new curriculum audit process.  They will use this process to evaluate the curriculum’s alignment to state content standards and 21st century skills development.

The following week, they will attend work sessions at GOAL’s Mansfield lab to carry out the audit and receive professional development on the curriculum tools that are available for integration into lessons.

As the work progresses over the next year, we expect to see increased student achievement in both reading and math and we will then expand our efforts to all subject areas.

This year, GOAL is opening its summer school program to other districts and MOESC-client district students are receiving a discounted tuition rate.

All core classes are offered online in a nine-week summer session as either recovery credit or additional credits to move a student ahead in his or her studies.  Math classes are going to be offered face-to-face at Mid-Ohio with individualized curriculum.  GOAL will use its NWEA MAP testing licenses to assess students’ math skills and then customize lessons to each student’s needs.  At the end of the course, students will be re-assessed to quantify their gains in the subject matter.

Guidance counselors at client districts have shown positive reactions to the program.

On May 5, 2009, the GOAL Digital Academy Board of Directors approved the graduation of thirty-five students for the 2009 ceremony.  

Graduation events begin Friday, May 15th with gown fittings and photographs at Kingwood Center and then move to Mid-Ohio Conference Center for a luncheon featuring OSU Football Coach Jeff as guest speaker.

Graduation will be held at the Mid-Ohio Conference Center at 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 5th.  Teacher, author and historian Richard Jones will be our guest speaker for graduation.  A cake reception for graduates friends and families follows the ceremony.

On Thursday, April 30, 2009, thirty teachers, students, board members and community members met to celebrate the completion of GOAL’s Learn and Serve Development Project.  This project, funded by a Learn and Serve Development grant, took a steering committee through the project development phase of a service learning project.

GOAL Students identified three main topics of community need that they would like to address in their project:  Teen Pregnancy and Parenting, the Environment, and Homelessness.  Over the next three years, the project will teach students about the topics as they participate in community service opportunities to help address the needs of others.

Spring is testing time in the education world, and community schools are no exception.   In fact, in an online community school, spring OGT and OAT testing can have even more consequences for students than in a face-to-face school.

By state law, online students who miss even one required test two spring testing periods in a row are ‘blacklisted’ from all online schools in Ohio.  Should they wish to continue to be enrolled in an online schools, their parents must pay the $5732 tuition in lieu of state funding.

This spring, GOAL Digital Academy met our goal of testing 95% of all students in both the Ohio Graduation Tests and Ohio Achievement Tests.