By John Norton

Heather Kouba grew up on Pueblo’s South Side, attended local schools and spent eight years teaching language arts at Freed Middle School.

 But it wasn’t until she took a new job with the online GOAL Academy that she felt she was doing the job she really wanted.

 Looking back, she recalls, “I’d see 30 kids come in and go out every hour. Your heart breaks for them.”

 She could never give them the individual attention she thought they needed. That’s why she remembers fondly her early experiences as a GOAL teacher. On the way to the home of a student, who herself was caring for an infant, Kouba stopped to buy balloons and raisins as a gift. Another time, she showed up at the front door of the home of twin girls, was let in by their mother and told to go ahead and wake them up. Kouba had brought along a box of pancake mix, and after the mom left for work, she and her students set about making breakfast, straightening up the kitchen and then getting down to school work.

 That kind of teaching is why GOAL founder Ken Crowell calls the school’s technique “high-tech and high-touch.”  This year, the school’s enrollment totals 597 full-time equivalent students, and even more actual students since some are part-time or shared with other districts that can’t meet all their needs. That compares with a full-time equivalent of 273 students last year.

 Crowell is convinced that the school’s intense approach to tutoring and guidance are responsible for its growth around the state.

 GOAL is not the only online school growing, state officials say.

 There have been some hiccups, such as the crackdown on relationships between the Hope Online Learning Academy and some churches and some weak state test scores from the pioneer Colorado online school based in Branson.

 But online enrollment is growing steadily, up by 12.5 percent from the October count date in 2008 to the 2009 count, a total of 1,452 more students this year.

 Pam Ice, online support director for the Colorado Department of Education, said recently, “Students in Colorado continue to see the value of online learning. The 2008-09 school year brought improvements in student success in many of Colorado’s online programs. Graduation rates and completion rates increased, more programs employ guidance counselors and credentialed staff for special education and English Language Learners. These efforts are paying off for the programs.”

 The Colorado Department of Education monitors 18 online programs around the state, ranging in size from the six-student Crowley County Online Academy to the Colorado Virtual Academy with more than 5,000 students.

 It was in 2006 that Crowell, then a business teacher at the Keating Education Center, and counselor Joe DeVita formed what became Pueblo City Schools’ Rigorous Individually Designed Guided Education, or RIDGE Academy. DeVita retired from the district and works as a counselor at GOAL now. The idea then was to make the credit-recovery offerings at Keating even more flexible for working students and especially for older students who did not feel comfortable coming back to a classroom full of much younger folk.

 Crowell’s hopes to expand the program statewide were stymied when district officials chose to keep it in-house and limit online classes to district students.

 That could change. Tammy Clementi-Watson, chief academic officer for the district, said, “We know that we need to do some marketing of our own RIDGE program. The number of students accessing online is increasing.”

 Brenda Krage, director of secondary education for the district, said that more than 1,500 credits were recovered online last year and that there currently are 42 students enrolled in RIDGE, which is still listed as being under Keating in the enrollment figures filed with the state, even though Keating closed this year. She said that the district will have to apply to the state to offer RIDGE outside its boundaries.

 After the decision to keep RIDGE within the district was made, Crowell found a more willing sponsor at Dolores Huerta Preparatory High, where he worked on the Guided Online Academic Learning program as part of the DHPH program. Last year, it was spun off as a freestanding school, chartered by the Colorado State Charter School Institute and managed by the Cesar Chavez School Network.

 Over the summer, institute officials became suspicious of where the state per-pupil revenue was going after disclosures about high salaries paid to network executives and demanded that all the schools it chartered have independent boards.

 According to the state education department, 32 percent, or $647,000 of GOAL’s more than $2 million budget, went to “other services” last year, which included management fees paid to the Cesar Chavez Network.

 Network Chief Executive Lawrence Hernandez unsuccessfully tried to block formation of the independent board, even firing Crowell and his loyal staffers when they put themselves under the new entity. That board reinstated the staff and terminated its relationship with the network, which since has faded away after Hernandez’s own charter school board fired him.

  “We did experience a heck of a lot of growth this year,” Crowell said, attributing that to the willingness of teachers to make themselves available at any time. “They’ll meet students at Starbucks or McDonald’s,” he said.

 With offices in Westminster, Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo, teachers for the most part can meet quickly with students in learning centers, the students’ homes, other locations or even chat online when some youngster coming off a swing-shift needs help with homework.

 “I’ll pop online, and I’ll see a conversation going on at 3 a.m. sometimes,” Crowell said.

 He said there are a lot of misconceptions about online learning.

 Kris Enright is a GOAL administrator who previously worked in the Branson program, which also hires teachers around the state and organizes local enrichment programs to its far-flung enrollment. Enright said that too many online schools offer little more than computer-based learning.

 For parents and students, leaving the brick-and-mortar school, he said, “can be very scary. Many if not most teachers are far removed. A lot of online schools think it’s all about online, but the computer is just a tool.”

 “We know you can’t take the teacher out of education,” said Crowell. In addition to all the GOAL faculty members being licensed and “highly qualified,” the state’s term for having a degree in their subject, the school maintains a ratio of one teacher to every 25 students, better than most traditional schools can do.

 Those small ratios are essential for teachers to give the kind of individual attention their students need. “Sometimes you’re the parent, sometimes you’re the life coach, the mentor,” said Crowell.

 DeVita adds, “When I was a counselor, I always believed the front line of counseling was in the classroom, not my office.”

 A reason those relationships are important is because so many of the students not only have a history of academic failure and real-life complications. There also are some who wrongly think that taking classes online will be easy.

 Most of the GOAL curriculum comes from Pearson Education, the same company that has long provided credit-recovery programs for the city district’s math labs and RIDGE program.

 While teachers are flexible when it comes to meeting with students, the computers are strict taskmasters and won’t allow a student to move on until they’re competent. No amount of perfect attendance, effort or charm can earn a promotion from a computer.

 That rigor means teachers have to work more intensely to keep their students in the program.

 Online schools have their own challenges battling dropout rates, but GOAL last year actually saw its enrollment grow from the beginning of school in 2008 to the end of the term in 2009.

 “Students that enroll with us tend to re-enroll with us,” Crowell said.

 About 80 percent of the students who enroll in GOAL are in their junior or senior year of high school, albeit they have been away for a while, and their reasons vary, Crowell said. Many are only short a credit or two to graduate and get their diploma. DeVita said that some have dropped out of high school and then realized that a GED is not going to be enough to get into the military or find the job they want.

 There are teen parents, some who have had to go to work to help support their families.

 “They may be raising a family, and coming to school at 7:30 a.m. can’t work for them.” Crowell said.

 There also is a selection of high-achievers who want to move through high school faster than the school calendars say they can.

 Crowell said there are even children of traveling families who maintain a residence in Colorado and qualify for school here but spend much of their time on the road, such as truck drivers, along with some youngsters who are professionals in their own right, musicians who have to juggle performance schedules with schoolwork.

 Last year, DeVita said, of the 45 who graduated, about 60 percent indicated they planned to go to college. But he and others stress to the students, “the idea is not simply to graduate from high school but to graduate with a future plan.”

 One more misconception is that online education, without the heating bills, building maintenance, school buses and other overhead, is cheap.

 Online programs receive state money equal to the lowest-funded district in the state, and the chartering authority gets 5 percent of that, leaving the rest for the school to pay salaries, software licensing fees and a lot of mileage for teachers to meet with students. Most of the computers and furniture are donated, Crowell said. “I would not advise anybody getting into this because they want to make money.”

http://www.chieftain.com/articles/2010/02/28/news/local/doc4b89f837bcca4649709536.txt