North Carolina Virtual Public School
North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) is the nation’s second largest state virtual school with over 100,000 enrollments in SY 2013-14 from all 115 school districts and many charter schools. It is a supplemental program to any public secondary and middle school including charter schools. NCVPS offer over 150 courses, including standard courses, honors, credit recovery, Advanced Placement, occupational course of study, STEM, core courses, electives, CTE, test prep, and world languages. Each course is lead by a highly qualified North Carolina certified teacher who makes regular and meaningful contact with students and parents.
Projects and highlights:
- NCVPS is developing middle school courses, including a pilot of Middle School Success 101 in the fall of 2014. Art and a music courses for middle schools will be piloted in the spring of 2015.
- NCVPS has an ongoing partnership with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Exceptional Children’s division to provide co-teaching courses for students who need inclusion classes for core subjects. Additionally, NCVPS is partnering with NC DPI’s English Language Learner experts to determine how NCVPS could best meet the needs of these learners.
- NCVPS is piloting this fall ways to do mastery learning for first-time credit as an intervention strategy for students who need enrollment options beyond regular start and end semester dates.
- NCVPS is offering its first professional learning course for educators this year, “Shattering the Myths of Online and Blended Learning.” This course is open to educators for continuing education units (CEU) credit.
- In the past, we have had 3 Pillars of Instruction for our teachers. Those were Meaningful Feedback, Communication, and Daily Announcements (that inform, celebrate, and instruct). This year we have added a fourth pillar: Individualized Learning. Our teachers will grow into this pillar during the year as we individualization part of our teaching and learning process.
