No More Cancelled School for Snow Days?

by Frank Shapiro
February 3, 2011

The blizzard that cut school short Tuesday and closed school Wednesday and today reminded me of a news story from last winter. In Ohio, some state lawmakers were working to make it easier for districts to make up missed days through online lessons. I tried to see if this got any traction (pun intended) and it doesn’t look like it did.  

 

The proposed bill would allow a district that cancels school to post lessons to its web site for students to download. Students without Internet access would get hard copies of the lessons when they return to school.  Students could turn in the work within two weeks. This  would let schools use the e-lessons to replace up to five days missed because of snow, ice or other unscheduled closures.

 

This would be an improvement over school interruptions and allows districts to make school closing decisions based solely on safety, and not on whether there are any allotted “calamity” days left or the added costs associated with a lost school day that has to be made up. Also, as the Ohio superintendent quoted in the article put it: Days made up at the end of the year lack educational value”.

 

A blended learning model would make this easy. In fact, a well established program could easily cancel school and not lose a day of education with a minimum of planning. Visit www.schooltown.net to learn more about blended learning and the other advantages it brings to education.

 

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