Distance learning coming to all Ala. high schools

MONTGOMERY - All Alabama high schools will soon be outfitted with technology that enables a student in one end of the state to take classes being taught in the other end.

Beginning in the 2009-10 school year it won’t matter as much whether a high school is in a rural Alabama district struggling to employ enough teachers or if it’s in a bustling metropolis — the playing field will be a bit more level all around.

State Superintendent of Education Joe Morton and Gov. Bob Riley announced the updated expansion plan for the ACCESS Distance Learning program on Tuesday, noting that the move comes a year ahead of schedule.

The speedup was made possible by $11 million the state education department received from last year’s $1 billion bond issue.

The program, which allows students to take classes online and through video conferencing, removes boundaries of economics and distance by providing the chance to take classes beyond students’ physical schools — classes like Advanced Placement Macroeconomics and Mandarin Chinese II that can be taught on the Web.

“You can go to the smallest high school in Alabama, the most rural part in Alabama and you can take the highest level courses offered in any high school in Alabama,“ Morton said.

About half of the state’s high schools have advanced placement courses now but once ACCESS is fully implemented, each high school will be able to offer eight AP classes, Riley said.

Along with providing students with classes that aren’t offered at their schools, distance learning has also helped fill the gap for schools that couldn’t find teachers for basic courses, technology initiative director Melinda Maddox said.

The program has grown from serving 5,000 students in fiscal 2006 and 7,000 in fiscal 2007 to 18,000 in the current fiscal year that ends in October. Maddox said about 30,000 students will be served in fiscal 2009.

The development is especially good news for Winston County High School Principal Jeff Coal, whose school is located in a rural area of north Alabama and began using ACCESS on a limited basis earlier this year.

Before ACCESS, students who failed a course were forced to take a correspondence course in its place because the classes were often too full for them to repeat, Coal said.

Now students have the opportunity to redo the class through ACCESS, which is much faster than correspondence courses and produces better results, he said.