EOL's, K12 and WVL

The term EOL has come up. First, what is it? It is an Evidence of Learning. To the best of my knowledge (and if I am wrong here, I will really need someone from one of the other schools to correct me) An EOL is strictly a K12 idea. Because the K12 curriculum in the primary grades is based upon "mastery" not grades, the teachers need something that can be tangible that they can use to point to the Wisconsin Department of Instruction and say, "see? We really are the teachers of this child." As a mastery based program, the focus is on a child fully synthesizing a concept, not whether or not the child competes any given assignment.

The number of EOL's required to be submitted changes depending on grade and subject and is this a year that is a multiple of four? (slight joke. Although, it does seem to change yearly and randomly. I have wondered if the school increased EOL's just because it was an election year and the politics involved in education -- as always, check out the Coalition for Virtual Families)

An example of an EOL could be a unit exam in math, or a lab report in science. There are scads of different types of assignments that are required. You cannot pick the BEST assignment your child did during that unit. It is always (now) a specific assignment. It can be mailed, or faxed, or scanned and emailed to a teacher. (or at WIVA, they use "K-mail ... possibly THE most god-awful excuse for an email client since Mosaic became Netscape)

WVL also has children in the primary grades. They have "scanned based documents." Parents are required to scan in a number of assignments throughout the year. They use Lincoln (which is, I believe another of the former KC Distance Learning acquisitions.) in the primary grades, and Aventa, Apex, and FLVS in the higher grades. All of these curriculum are fine. They present the same material and they all try to be engaging for the students. The Lincoln curriculum tries to take an entertaining approach to learning. They have interactive games and teacher video segments. They try to take a very short attention span into consideration. Both K12 and Lincoln do a great job at primary education. I personally prefer K12., but that is because it fits ME.

As always, these schools are all great schools. Which is best? The one that fits YOUR child.