Cincinnati's Virtual High School dropped 410 students, more than half its first-year enrollment, because the students did little or no work.

        The Cincinnati public school was touted as an innovative, non-traditional learning program when it opened in September. But it had no way of tracking how often students logged into the school's computer system, and until mid-year did not have a policy for ousting students who weren't doing work.

        The school plans major changes this year.

        “To be successful, a student must be self-disciplined enough to come to the school or to do work online regularly,” Principal Steven Hawley said. “For the most part, that did not happen.”

        Some students who were dropped said the school should cater mostly to students who are extremely self-motivated.

        Donte Dukes, 20, a Roselawn student who was enrolled last school year, said he was told he could work at his own pace.

        “Some people can be disciplined enough to come. Not me,” he said. Mr. Dukes has enrolled at Life Skills Center High School, a charter school in Walnut Hills.

        District records show nearly a fourth who were dropped transferred to other schools. The others count as dropouts. None of the students who were kicked out received failing grades or incompletes.

        The school was designed to reach 9th-graders to 22-year-old students, most of whom failed elsewhere, by offering a learning environment where students set the pace. When they enrolled in the virtual school, the students did not have to report to the school building in Queensgate. Instead, they could work online on home computers or wherever they could find Internet access.

        Teachers said enrollment grew quickly, became unwieldy and prevented them from tracking students and helping them achieve.

        “Raising student achievement among teen-agers who have serious academic deficits is very possible given in-depth and detailed planning,” said Sue Taylor, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers. “Unfortunately, such planning did not occur prior to the opening of the Virtual High School.”

        The school, one of a few virtual high schools in the state, started off with 299 students enrolled in October. That ballooned to 724 students enrolled during the year. About 255 students are enrolled now, but the number is expected to increase after school opens Aug. 26.

        The school received $2.1 million in state and local funds last year based on 448 students, according to district treasurer Michael Geoghegan. This school year's budget is based on a projection of 400 students.

        Mr. Hawley said the school will require weekly face-to-face meetings with teachers. The district is also planning to implement a new districtwide instructional management system, estimated at $1 million, that Mr. Hawley said will help track students and their grades.

        Enrollment in virtual courses for elementary and high school students has spiked nationally in the past two years, according to Kevin Bushweller, project editor for Technology Counts 2002, an annual publication on educational technology for the journal Education Week.

        About 40,000 to 50,000 K-12 students were enrolled in online courses last school year, according to October 2001 estimates by WestEd, a research, development and educational services organization headquartered in San Francisco.

        Online education is considered a revolutionary teaching tool because it allows students to take a range of courses by computer. Students often have little or no required time with teachers. Some students take classes that aren't offered in their schools, such as Arabic language or advanced placement calculus.

        Mr. Hawley said Cincinnati's virtual school, which is housed in an office building with about 80 computers, caters mostly to at-risk students who had failed or had attendance trouble in other schools.

        The students reported to the school when they wanted help from the teachers. School officials found out mid-year that didn't work in many cases.

        “The VHS is a wonderful opportunity for some of the students in (Cincinnati Public Schools),” Virtual High School science teacher Jason Barkeloo said. “However, the skills and motivation required for success indicates a self-starting type of student who is motivated to complete school. It requires a level of maturity and independence that, unfortunately, a vast majority of students in today's public schools lack.”

        Other virtual schools in Ohio have also had trouble tracking online learners.

        A Columbus-based online charter school, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, was penalized this year for not tracking students. The school was ordered to repay the state $1.6 million for unverifiable enrollments during the 2000-01 school year. For example, though the school had enrolled 2,270 students in September 2000, an audit found only seven students logged into the school's computers during that time.

        The Cincinnati Federation of Teachers said the unchecked influx of students into Cincinnati's virtual school hampered overall student achievement. The union filed a grievance in June, saying there weren't enough teachers. The school opened with four teachers and increased to eight.

        Ms. Taylor said the teachers could not be expected to hold so many students accountable. Teachers also said they often enrolled several students daily, never to hear from many again.

        The union contract stipulates that in grades 7-12, no more than 150 students per day shall be assigned to a teacher.

        The grievance said one English teacher had 396 students enrolled for the first quarter.

        Gene Maeroff, executive director of The Hechinger Institute On Education and The Media at Columbia University in New York, said virtual schools can be effective for at-risk kids. However, Mr. Maeroff, whose book A Classroom of One: How Online Courses Are Changing Schools and Colleges is expected to be published in February, said virtual schools have to be diligent about serving students who failed in regular schools.

        “Unless (the school is) really doing an awful lot to engage and motivate these kids and take advantage of the new setting that's different from the setting in which (the students) failed, then they're probably not going to do any better and maybe will do somewhat worse,” he said.

        Some virtual schools use e-mail discussions among students and teachers to facilitate a classroom connection, he said.

        Such changes are planned for Cincinnati's virtual school.

        Mr. Hawley said the school plans to use more e-mail discussions and move away from having most courses seem like online textbooks. The school also will require new students to take a two-week to month-long computer literacy course. This year, the school will employ 11 teachers.

        Most students will be required to attend the school for 90 minutes once a week. And most will take just two courses at a time instead of six, which was a full roster last school year.

        “It has been a growing year, and we're going to work to revise it,” said spokeswoman Jan Leslie. “I think our goal here is a good goal, to try to meet the needs of kids that we have not been successful with in other ways.”

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