It’s a typical weekday, and Leah Rogers is greeting students as they arrive at school. She hasn’t seen any of these kids in a while, because they haven’t set foot in the building for a week … but that’s by design.

Rogers is acting head of the Chicago Virtual Charter School (CVCS), an innovative school that is a cross between a traditional school and a virtual one: Students work online from home four days a week and come to school for the fifth.

For the rest of the article, go to eSN Special Report: Blended learning on the rise

CHICAGO, Sept. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — District-wide results are in for the recent ACT test, and Chicago public charter schools claim six spots on the list of the top 10 highest scoring non-selective high schools in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The Noble Network of Charter Schools took four spots for the performance of the Pritzker, Noble Street, Rauner, and Rowe Clark campuses, and Chicago Virtual Charter School as well as Chicago International Charter School’s Northtown campus round out the list.

“These impressive results indicate the power of charter schools to drive student achievement gains and prepare students for college,” said Andrew Broy, President of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. “Despite the fact that charter schools in Chicago enroll 10 percent of public school students, they represent 60 percent of the highest performing schools based on high school ACT performance, one predictor of future college success. It speaks volumes about the impact our schools are having on the lives of their students when you consider that most charter students come to the charter sector performing below grade level in several key measures,” remarked Broy.

For the rest of the article, go to Chicago Charter Schools Take Top Scores on ACT

In blended-learning environments, where students learn partly online and partly in a face-to-face classroom, how do teachers work together to best support their learning?

That’s a question educators at the Chicago Virtual Charter School have spent five years answering.

“We’ve really been pioneering this path of hybrid education,” said Leah Rodgers, the academic administrator for the 600-student school. “And we’ve figured a lot of this out as we’ve gone.”

At CVCS, which is operated in partnership with K12 Inc., a Herndon, Va.-based e-learning company, each student spends two hours and 15 minutes in a classroom one day a week and spends the rest of the school week working virtually from home. The school works with students in grades K-12.

For the rest of the article, go to Schools combine virtual and face-to-face teachers to meet student needs