East Oregon News

A Baker City educator said Acellus is really working for the school, especially during COVID-19 when the school can't meet normally in person.

Acellus works with multiple organizations that validate and recognize quality in educational programs. Acellus courses adhere to high standards for learning and are in use by over 10,000 accredited schools throughout the United States, and in over 42 countries.

Thomas Joseph, the director of specific secondary programs for Baker High School, said Acellus has been in use since before he began in the district six years ago.

"And it was in place, but varying degrees of usage," Joseph said in an interview with East Oregon News. "We're offering a complete online option now to our students that are still hesitant about coming back to campus with COVID issues and that has caused an explosion in our alternative school's enrollment because we were tasked with offering the complete online option for parents and that's caused a significant increase."

Joseph said that prior to this year, it was primarily used as alternative education, credit recovery stopgap measure for kids that were at risk. He said now they're seeing kids that are accelerating and taking advantage of some of the things they can do with Acellus that they can't get at regular school.

Joseph said there are about 100 students in his district that are using Acellus for everything and another 40 are using it along with CTE or other traditional elective courses.

"Right now they kind of beam in with asynchronous online experience with the hopes that if we hit our numbers someday those kids might be able to go in and have an actual hands-on experience in their electives courses at least two days a week, providing we can safely keep our cohorts distance properly," Joseph said.

Joseph said their long-term vision is to see 50% Acellus as core curriculum and 50% activating partly the Acellus special lessons feature combined with their teachers uploading their own assessments.

Joseph said he would also like to get to student-driven inquiry projects to add in.

"Like I said, I'd like to see a 50/50 shift over five years and that other 50% being more teacher-driven," Joseph said.

Joseph said choices families are making have caused schools to up their game.

"In the end, I think it's going to be a positive thing," Joseph said. "In a strange way, education could have used that a little bit. You know, it's forcing us out of our comfort zone to learn some new things and it took some of that competition to get us to rise to it. And I think we are here and Acellus has been key to that."