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e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-K.

e-schools eat shit, especially on the primary and secondary school level. Make a pledge to dedicate one half-second of your brain power as to why and you’ll get there.

University Diaries, of course, spends most of its time on the nation’s wretched online universities; but we need to keep reminding ourselves of the grand experiment going on at the pre-college level with our children.

Ohio, for instance, has been particularly excited about online schools, and the results are now coming in.

From the Plain-Dealer:

Ohio’s publicly funded online schools are a disastrous alternative to public schools that should be under more scrutiny, according to a study released Thursday by a left-leaning think tank.

Turns out their graduation rates are pathetic. Dedicate two seconds of your brain power to the online experience as experienced by a fifteen-year-old and you’ll get there.

The Columbus Dispatch:

With five of the state’s seven largest e-schools posting graduation rates lower than that of the state’s worst traditional public school district, and six of seven rated less than “effective,” a liberal policy group said yesterday that the state is wasting money on the poorly performing online schools.

Good old Treca Digital Academy has a 24.1 percent graduation rate. (Here’s their website, with Frequently Asked Questions. Turns out no one asks – even frequently – what their graduation rates are.)

A high-ranking politician, asked if his crucial legislative support for e-schools has anything to do with really big campaign contributions from e-school entrepreneurs, says that’s a “damn lie.”

Kind of strong language, huh? I think he’s e-nnoyed.

Truly lurid details here.

******************************

Think about it for a moment. Think of the life of an Ohio schoolchild, her high school career entirely online, and then her college career also entirely via distance technology. Ain’t it wonderful – to imagine that? That’s why hard-working, concerned parents throughout the state are fighting to make this their children’s educational destiny.

**********************************

Gail Collins weighs in.

Margaret Soltan, May 13, 2011 8:45AM
Posted in: CLICK-THRU U.

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One Response to “e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-K.”

  1. Online education charlatans assume that all students are self-motivated. « More or Less Bunk Says:

    […] being in the Air Force has made him self-motivated. Still, reading him say that jogged my memory of a UD post from earlier this week which explained that Ohio is also at the forefront of a national push for […]

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UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
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It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
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There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
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You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
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University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
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Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
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