Mineola High School will offer district students an online course in AP psychology this fall in what could be the first of several online courses offered by the district in future years.
Mineola Superintendent of Schools Michael Nagler told school board trustees at last Thursday night’s board meeting that the online program will be administered by BOCES and be made available to students from several school districts
The psychology class, Nagler said, will be a test to determine the effectiveness of online courses.
“When you do it virtually and you can get students from other places, it becomes doable,” he said.
Mineola would not have enough students interested for the high school to offer the course, but several school districts with four or five students taking the course remotely makes it viable for BOCES to offer, he said.
Nagler said the results of students taking the AP psychology course would determine the potential for expanding future high school course offerings. AP art history, he said, is another course with limited appeal that could be offered by BOCES if several school districts participate.
“It’s not for every kid. It’s really for highly motivated students,” Nagler said of the online option. “I look at is a chance to give students course work they wouldn’t otherwise get.”
Nagler said online courses are now common in colleges, which he said report mixed results among students taking them.
“You can really open up your course offerings,” Mineola school board President Artie Barnett said. “We’re not afraid of technology anyway. So we’re willing to take the plunge.”
He said online coursework requires a focused approach and offering an online course is the only way to project results that other online courses might produce.
“There’s accountability in it. How it’s going to play out in the high school as an AP course, until you do it you don’t know,” Barnett said.
Board Vice President Christine Napolitano agreed.
“I think it’s a worthwhile option and only time will tell if it’s doable,” Napolitano said.
Board Trustee Patricia Navarra said the AP psychology course is a challenging college-level elective that offers the district a chance to test distance learning.
“It’s a way to offer additional curricula at a low cost, but will no way substitute for classroom courses,” Navarra said.
Nagler said Mineola High School principal Ed Escobar will be sending letters to parents of seniors and juniors to alert them of the availability of the psychology course.
John Fretz, Mineola social studies teacher, will teach the psychology course for BOCES, Nagler said.
The prospect of students taking their third year of Latin language studies online was recently an issue the board discussed with the possibility of the high school losing its current Latin teacher to retirement two years hence.
In other developments at the board meeting:
• Nagler said a group of 15-year-old students in the district recently took the Program for International Student Assessment test in reading, mathematics and science. He said the annually administered test challenges students to apply knowledge they have of different subjects to solve real world problems.
“Basically we’re putting our toe in to see how we compare to the rest of the world and the rest of the nation,” he said.
Nagler said the Mineola students didn’t make a strong showing in the district’s second year of participating in the test. The 15-year-old students who take the test are selected at random in each school district.
“We didn’t do too well,” he said.
But, Nagler said, the objective of the PISA tests mirrors the new Common Core academic standards in New York and he expects Mineola students to be better prepared in three years when he suggested the school district participate in the PISA test again.
He said other Nassau County school districts participating in PISA this year included Herricks, Roslyn, Plainview and Bethpage.