In a phone interview with Marmy Kodras, Marketing Director and Doug Covey, CEO of Blueprint Education in Arizona, Lon Woodbury, Founder/ President, Woodbury Reports, Inc., and Kathy Nussberger, Co-Editor, discussed how this educational service provider helps private parent-choice programs provide accredited, transferable credits for students.
Marmy explained that Blueprint's introduction to the wilderness component of parent-choice programs began when they started helping the Arizona based Anasazi Wilderness Program establish an accredited academic component in 2004. She added that shortly thereafter, they worked with Three Rivers in Montana to align their content to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) standards. This past spring, they began helping Minnesota based Soltreks provide academic accreditation to its students, and will support the academic component of Utah based Pinnacle Foundation this Fall.
"Our involvement in the wilderness side began when our staff accompanied Anasazi on one of their educational referring specialist trips to fully understand and appreciate their life-changing program." CEO Doug Covey explained. "We were intrigued that students were out of a traditional system for six weeks or longer, and wanted to help them stay on track or potentially accelerate their learning. Following that experience, our curriculum team assessed their program content and aligned it to NAEP standards resulting in elective credits. We simply took their foundation, performed the content conversion, co-developed the instructional delivery through facilitation and interaction which resulted in student engagement and success. We found that private parent-choice programs are really unique with each having its own level of focus and philosophy. Our goal is to learn how to customize their curriculum in a way that works for individual therapeutic programs. We believe opening up this opportunity to students enrolled in a wilderness program allows them to stay on track academically. When they graduate from the program, they are able to transition to traditional schools seamlessly."
Doug added that because students engaged in therapeutic schools spend much of their time out in the field, the academic component typically consists of a student workbook and a staff field assessment, both of which are sent to Blueprint Education for final grading by Blueprint's teachers before official transcripts are issued to the student's school of choice.
"The unique part about our service is in believing the therapeutic and medical treatment these programs provide comes first," Doug explained. "The integrated and experiential learning these kids receive allows us to take what exists within their program and align it to national standards that fall under specific subject areas. For example, for a psychology credit, we evaluate the lessons being taught and comprehensiveness of the content to determine the facilitation and interaction between the field staff and student. If it meets our litmus test, we typically issue a half unit of credit. We repeat this process for subject areas such as Physical Education, English, Art and Science."
Blueprint began by working with Copper Canyon Academy and Blue Hills in Arizona in 1998 by supplying a traditional curriculum that helped the schools achieve their long-term goal of becoming accredited. "We can now offer both traditional and customized sets of curriculum depending on the needs of the program or school."
Blueprint is currently working with several programs on service agreements to provide the curriculum assessment necessary to issue credits. "Initially, we evaluate the history of the program, the extent of its content, how the program regards the children it serves, whether the program is licensed and/or accredited, and if therapy and medical care are provided by licensed practitioners. Next, we conduct a full assessment by reviewing their content and make recommendations for course credit based on comprehensiveness of content; amount of time spent in instructional delivery through facilitation and interaction and finally the extent of student engagement. The process typically takes one to three months depending on the program needs. We take each program through a planning process, staff orientation, program management, staff development and annual evaluations. The elective level credits issued are based on the Carnegie Unit, which was developed in 1906 as a measure of the amount of time a student has studied a subject. After assessing the program, we determine how much time students spend on specific subjects during their eight to ten hours of daily instructor contact over a six to eight week period. We then issue the credits through our accredited distance learning program."
Blueprint Education is a non-profit organization that has partnered with programs to help students since 1969, with services ranging from distance learning, to curriculum design and alternative education, meeting the standards of the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA) and Commission on International and Trans-Regional Accreditation (CITA). "Programs partner with Blueprint Education for a number of reasons including the benefit of a unique learning model, the flexibility of learning anywhere anytime, support from qualified professional educators, an individualized and self-paced learning program that adapts to students unique needs which includes a rigorous and comprehensive curriculum based on NAEP, accredited through Blueprint by NCA and CITA," Doug said.
Blueprint has over fifty certified teachers and staff that support its efforts in alternative education programs in Phoenix, write curriculum and support thousands of students enrolled in its national and international distance-learning program. Doug said: "We're committed to finding new ways to enable students to succeed."
Blueprint Education is located in Phoenix, AZ. For more information contact Marmy Kodras at 800-426-4952, via email, marmyk@blueprinteducation.org, or visit their website.
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