{"id":1044,"date":"2009-05-22T11:49:53","date_gmt":"2009-05-22T15:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=1044"},"modified":"2009-06-27T13:26:32","modified_gmt":"2009-06-27T17:26:32","slug":"creationism-ok-at-florida-virtual-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1044","title":{"rendered":"Creationism OK at Florida Virtual School?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Florida Virtual School <\/a>is a popular way to attend school in our state without having to step into a classroom. Students can take online courses to supplement their current traditional school workload, or students can take pretty much all of their courses online in the homeschooling tradition. According to this St. Petersburg Times story about Florida Virtual School<\/a> from a year ago, the system is even considered its own school district. The classes are free to Florida kids. My teenage daughter is going to take a stab at an online Algebra class over the summer.<\/p>\n

Sounds pretty cool, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Sure it does. The newspaper story even relates how Virtual School teachers can tailor instruction to individual students, which is something that can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always happen in the traditional classroom. But what if such individualization goes a bit too far? Take a moment to review this previous post of mine<\/a> about a concerned teacher (in a Florida public school)\u00c2\u00a0wanting to know what the rules are for parents wanting to shield their students from lessons on evolution. Can the students opt out and complete an alternate lesson? The answer turned out to be a resounding no. Such opting out is not allowed.<\/p>\n

However, it looks like some parents may be turning to Florida Virtual School just so that they can keep their kids away from instruction they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry to have to do this, but I need to direct your attention to the WorldNetDaily. A story is posted there <\/a>about a family that decided their daughter shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be subjected to an evolution assignment. Read what happened:<\/p>\n

When the subject of evolution was addressed in Kristin Lockhart’s marine science course, she was given an assignment to create a marine life that would evolve and adapt to its environment over time.<\/p>\n

“I spoke to the teacher and told her we don’t believe in evolution. We believe in creation,” Lockhart explained. “I told her my daughter was going to do this assignment in terms of creationism, which she did. The teacher had no problem with it, and she got an ‘A.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She got an A. Anyone care to join me in complaining to the Florida Virtual School management<\/a>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Florida Virtual School is a popular way to attend school in our state without having to step into a classroom. Students can take online courses to supplement their current traditional school workload, or students can take pretty much all of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-gQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1342,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1342","url_meta":{"origin":1044,"position":0},"title":"Dissections","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"June 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Cottle wrote on his blog about an ABC news report focused on a push to reduce dissections in schools, replacing them with virtual dissections. There is a Florida connection here. A company is working hard to get its particular dissection program into schools and hooked at least one Florida\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1342#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":74,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=74","url_meta":{"origin":1044,"position":1},"title":"The look, and the feel and the smell","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"October 20, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a good article weighing the merits of virtual learning labs on the Internet. Should a student earn credit for mixing chemicals online rather than in a real lab? This article shows that there are no simple answers. It might be better to be in the lab, but what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":142,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=142","url_meta":{"origin":1044,"position":2},"title":"Middle schools; Curriculum standards","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I was wondering when the New York Times would finally add to their series about middle schools. (Post about first story is here.)\u00c2\u00a0A second story finally appeared today and focuses on whether middle schools should be eliminated. (Here's a link to a Florida paper running the story\u00c2\u00a0if you have problems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "In the Classroom"","block_context":{"text":"In the Classroom","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=2"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":875,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=875","url_meta":{"origin":1044,"position":3},"title":"Florida science news dump","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I see an interesting science tidbit in the news I post it in Twitter as a way to bookmark it until I get a chance to post it all here. Here's the latest news dump for y'all! An adopt-a-school program results in a new science lab for Trafalgar Elementary.\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=875#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1045,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1045","url_meta":{"origin":1044,"position":4},"title":"Followup on FL Virtual School and evolution assignment","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The St. Petersburg Times education blog The Gradebook asked the folks at Florida Virtual School about the issue of students using the online school to opt out of course material they or their families don't like. Unfortunately, I'm still just a bit confused. The blog posts says: In response to\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 10 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 10 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=1045#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":146,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=146","url_meta":{"origin":1044,"position":5},"title":"Science FCAT … all for nothing?","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"January 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This story about the science FCAT is a mixed bag. It's sad kids have to be essentially bribed in order to give schools any hope of not nosediving in scores. Ipods, prom tickets, limo rides -- the prizes offered at American one morning last week are meant to motivate 11th-graders\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "FCAT"","block_context":{"text":"FCAT","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=22"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}