Virtual schooling a viable alternative? Thank woke teachers, school closures, and AI

There is a revolution under way in American education that has prompted pearl-clutching on the part of establishmentarians and excitement among families frustrated with the status quo.

The Trump administration’s shake-up at the Education Department, the president’s war on DEI, and recent successes on the school-choice front certainly have changed the game, particularly where brick-and-mortar schooling is concerned. The revolution, however, is also being waged online, where disruptors are challenging expectations regarding what is possible for at-home instruction.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education announced on Tuesday that it is partnering with the American Virtual Academy, a fully online K-12 preparatory school that is now in the approval process for tuition to be paid for by the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program and apparently already has approval for school choice scholarships in several other states.

“Left-wing indoctrination in schools poses a serious threat to our students, and parents deserve more options for their kids,” OSDE Superintendent Ryan Walters said in a statement. “We are proud to be one of the first states in the country to do this.”

The school’s president, Damian Creamer, recently spoke to Blaze News about his academy and about the environment that made this alternative both viable and desirable for some families.

Creamer noted that the pandemic was “very much an eye-opener for a lot of people — getting an inside peek into what is actually going on in the public school system.”

RELATED: America’s largest teachers’ union declares war on the Trump administration, will use kids as foot soldiers

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

When the classrooms were shuttered and schooling temporarily went online, largely at the urging of teachers’ unions, parents across the country were afforded a glimpse into the kinds of leftist propaganda being fed to their kids. It is hard to overstate how much this drove the popular backlash in recent years over DEI, critical race theory, and other forms of wokeness.

“The families are saying, ‘Hey, that’s not what we signed up for, and that’s not what we expect. We want our kids to be taught how to think critically. We want them to learn how to read. We want them to learn how to write. We want them to learn arithmetic,'” said Creamer. “Yes, education is where minds are shaped — and if you’re going to shape our child’s mind, you better make sure that you’re not going against our values as a family.”

These concerns have prompted many Americans to turn to at-home instruction, which is reportedly America’s fastest-growing form of education.

According to the National Home Education Research Institute, there were 3.1 million homeschooled K-12 students in the 2021-2022 school year, up from 2.5 million in spring 2019. Forbes indicated last year that estimates put the number of American homeschooled students at nearly 4 million kids nationwide. As multiple states do not require notification when parents decide to educate their children at home, the number might be much higher.

‘We had to get moderation in there quickly.’

The National Center for Education Statistics revealed in a September 2023 publication that the top reasons parents gave in a 2019 survey for homeschooling were: concerns about the school environment; to provide religious instruction; to provide moral instruction; to emphasize family life together; dissatisfaction with schools’ academic instruction; to provide a nontraditional approach to education; and/or to help with their child’s special needs.

The spike in recent years also appears to have been driven by ruinous school closures, sporadic teachers’ union strikes, and the politicization of the classroom.

The AVA started off as the Bridge School, which Creamer indicated had initially catered to athletes and child actors, providing those with roving lifestyles individualized, remote learning solutions. The AVA, however, has a distinctly conservative orientation.

Creamer noted that the idea behind the AVA was not only to provide kids with a high-quality education based on a research-based curriculum and to jettison the customary leftist gobbledygook but to help prepare a generation of productive citizens: “Let’s teach them how to be great Americans. Let’s teach them to love their country. Let’s teach them about the founding principles of our country.”

While there are many options when it comes to at-home instruction, Creamer, whose online charter school Primavera is presently in hot water over student test scores, suggested that the unstructured “nomad” style — where parents effectively ad-lib instruction on the go — isn’t for everyone.

Some of the families exploring the educational landscape where “there really is no rhyme or reason” may alternatively “choose a virtual school like American Virtual Academy where it’s a fully accredited school; it’s got a curriculum that’s going to lead to a diploma” qualifying them to get into college, he said.

When asked about whether AVA has any plans to get students engaged socially, especially given the risk of isolation when leaving in-person learning, Creamer told Blaze News, “We do, and they socialize every day in the school.”

Utilizing AVA’s proprietary platform, students and parents alike form pods and clubs, and all of the academy’s teachers have their own homerooms. However, just like in the physical classroom, there are rules online.

“Everything is moderated — has to be moderated. Just trust me, we’ve done it where it wasn’t moderated, and that was bad. We had to get moderation in there quickly,” said Creamer.

In addition to online social engagements, AVA is planning get-togethers in the real world, including a family, faith, and freedom day event in Arizona, and field trips to the nation’s capital as well as to places of civic and historical consequence.

While providing opportunities for student and parent interaction, Creamer noted that “a lot of parents are putting their kids into virtual school because of the socialization” at school — because they don’t want their kids getting “into things they don’t want their kids to be involved with.”

Creamer, who is also the CEO of the e-learning company StrongMind, noted that digital learning is particularly viable now on account of artificial intelligence.

“When the student sets up their profile, that profile — we’re learning about the student,” said Creamer. “We know where they’re at academically. We’re benchmark-testing the students so we can see, academically, what they know and what they don’t know and where they’re at grade level.”

Extra to calibrating the learning experience on the basis of an individual student’s academic strengths and weaknesses, AI agents can take into account the student’s like, dislikes, and career aspirations and offer them a bespoke experience with the aim of maximizing engagement.

“Education like this is where we can start to really move the needle now,” said Creamer.

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