Serving Every Student Requires a Different Approach to Education
Every weekday, more than 50 million kids attend classes at nearly 100,000 public schools across the country. Providing these students with a free, high-quality education is a titanic challenge, one public educators face with both tenacity and selflessness. While our public schools do many things well, they simply cannot meet the individual needs of so many students. As a result, kids who don’t thrive in a traditional classroom setting are often left behind. This is the problem National School Choice Week aims to address.
Increasing Education Options
Until recently, parents typically had only two options for their children’s education. They could either choose between traditional public instruction or enroll their students in a private school, often backed by churches or other religious organizations. That began changing in the 1970s, as the charter school movement brought a more entrepreneurial approach to education.
Over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has made education even more challenging and confusing by interrupting in-person learning. In the early days of the pandemic, many school districts responded by hastily pivoting to online instruction without clear plans for how they would help students succeed in that new environment. While many schools have since returned to the classroom, some continue employing a hybrid model as a way of mitigating COVID infections.
In response to all this uncertainty, a growing number of parents have turned towards homeschooling, evidenced by census data showing that the number of homeschool households doubled during the 2020-2021 school year.
Today, parents have more education options than ever before, which is both a reflection of our present challenging circumstances and a recognition that a one-size-fits-all approach to learning is no longer sufficient. However, selecting the best option isn’t always so clear. But when parents understand their children’s strengths and weaknesses and how they learn best, they can make choices that will set their students up for greater educational success.
Students Have Very Different Needs
The public education system has traditionally prioritized reading, writing and lecturing when delivering lessons. However, this approach doesn’t cater to everyone. Educators now understand that students learn in four primary ways:
Visual learners respond best by observing things like pictures, diagrams and written instructions.
Auditory learners benefit when new subjects are reinforced by lectures or by repeating information aloud.
Kinesthetic learners thrive by using their hands or experiencing new things firsthand.
Reading/writing learners excel when they can read books, research information on the internet and write reports.
Auditory and reading/writing learners tend to do well in a traditional educational setting. But most classrooms don’t have the flexibility to adapt their curriculum to benefit visual or kinesthetic learners. This lack of flexibility also impacts students with physical or mental health concerns who need additional accommodations to thrive. There’s also a cadre of students who need flexible education options that public schools can’t provide.
While public, private, online and home education can all meet a few of these requirements, what’s missing from this picture is a school with standards-based curriculum that encourages students to learn in a way that fits them best. Oregon Charter Academy (ORCA) was designed to fill this gap.
Pursuing Educational Excellence
ORCA is an online, tuition-free charter school serving grades K-12. Our students use communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking skills to prepare for rapidly changing 21st-century economies. This unique model allows our educators to meet students' individual needs, especially regarding learning styles.
While we offer students plenty of opportunities for synchronous learning through live class time, we also use a flipped classroom model where kids use online tools to collaborate on projects, have group discussions and give each other feedback. Rather than focusing on tests, we provide our students with the tools and flexibility they need to learn asynchronously. Then they can each decide how to complete their project and demonstrate what they've learned in their own ways. Our model distributes the teacher-directed focus toward the students, who, in turn, are more engaged with each other and what they're learning.
This unique approach has helped thousands of students rediscover their joy of learning, particularly those that are at-risk or underserved, and our data backs that up.
Our graduation rate continues to improve, and we anticipate an increase of 5% over the previous school year, despite the challenges of COVID-19.
Since 2009, our four-year cohort graduation rate has improved by almost 40%.
Over 700 students have earned college credit through our College Now partnerships.
On average, 90% of students who attend ORCA for their entire senior year will graduate, regardless of their credit deficiency rate.
These efforts are getting noticed. In a May 2021 evaluation, Cognia™, a global education nonprofit, presented us with its inaugural international School of Distinction award. Only 59 schools and 20 systems internationally were recognized, with ORCA being the only school on the West Coast to receive the honor.
Cognia's team also awarded us with a five-year accreditation for its model of educational excellence and gave us a score of 377.5 out of 400. The average score for all Cognia accredited schools across the United States and internationally is 278.34 - 283.33.
Attend a Public Information Session
If you're interested in discovering more about our unique educational environment, we're offering two virtual public information sessions in January.
Scheduled Sessions:
Tuesday, January 18, 2022 // 6:30 - 7:30 p.m., RSVP here.
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 // 6:30 - 7:30 p.m., RSVP here.
During these sessions, staff will preview our user-friendly online platform, explain our curriculum and offer more information about our programs and special services. Each session will also include a question and answer session and information about enrolling.
Building a Bridge to the Future
In a rapidly changing world, kids need a solid educational foundation more than ever. Fortunately, efforts like National School Choice Week help parents advocate for their child's education and find options, like ORCA, that offer more than traditional classrooms can.
We hope you'll join one of our public information sessions. Together, we can build a brighter future for our kids and instill the lifelong love of learning that will serve them so well on their journey to adulthood.