Challenge

In the 2018-19 school year, Vigo County School Corporation (VCSC) in Terre Haute, Indiana, was hemorrhaging students who were exiting to take advantage of virtual learning options that the district wasn’t yet capable of offering. However, district and school leaders were seeing many of these students return, sometimes with no progress to show and no credits earned, just to wind up further behind and back in a classroom setting that wasn’t proving to be effective for them.

With the ultimate goal of helping all students succeed, no matter what their paths to graduation looked like, school leaders set out to expand learning options. 

Solution

To create Vigo Virtual Success Academy (VVSA), VCSC decided to work with Edmentum’s EdOptions Academy virtual program to provide rigorous digital courseware paired with state-certified online teachers. To round out the program, the district added its own school principal, mentors, guidance counselor, and social services. “One of the things we wanted to do from the beginning was to make sure that our virtual students had a place to go,” commented Dr. Stacy Mason, executive director of secondary education for VCSC. “If [students] need resources, need help, want to talk to a counselor, want to talk to a mentor teacher—whatever the situation is—we have this available to [them].”

As a new public option available to all students in the county, VVSA represented a critical step forward in earning back student enrollments, while still providing the accountability and resources available to students enrolled in the district’s traditional brick-and-mortar schools. The school initially served students in grades 9–12 and grow to serve middle school students as well. 

Getting VVSA off the ground “…was a very touching and poignant evening for us all,” recalled Robin Smith, VVSA principal. “We were all humbled by the fact that we’d created something where these folks are coming out to have their needs met. It’s just grown very quickly, much to all of our amazement.”

Result

VVSA feels it has developed the right program for their district’s specific needs, and in addition to core curriculum, career readiness has become an important part of the VVSA. Career exploration begins in the 6th grade and can continue on through pathways that prepare students for certification and post-secondary programs. Success Coaches work with students to assess their academic, non-academic, and social-emotional needs and identify red flags so district and family resources can provide support for students. 

Lindsay Wilhoyte, virtual liaison for Vigo Virtual Success Academy explains, “We’ve really worked to reimage and reinvent what education looks like in our district. We know that students today need choices.”

Because they were ahead of the game and already comfortable with virtual education and engaged with EdOptions, during the pandemic, VVSA enrollment grew more than 500%. At the same time, VCSC graduation rates rose, exceeding state and national rates. 

Download the Story

You need to do your research on the front end. We chose Edmentum [and EdOptions Academy] for a reason…because we felt from the get-go that the support that Edmentum could provide us was the best.

Dr. Stacy Mason

Executive Director of Secondary Education