PA Cyber showcases high-tech cyber education
PA Cyber showcases high-tech cyber education for former U.S. Education Secretary Richard W. Riley
August 17, 2009
MIDLAND, Pa. – The world has changed and America’s kids need a high-tech education.
That will be the message on Wednesday, Aug. 19, as former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley visits the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School and other innovative educational entities in Midland. Riley will be joined by elected officials from both Pennsylvania and Ohio to meet cyber teachers and see firsthand the benefits of online education.
”The world changes and education has to meet those changes and lead. Nine thousand PA Cyber students and their families understand this. We have a unique opportunity to show Secretary Riley what great things happen when schools focus on service and quality, and when families are given educational choices,” said Dr. Nick Trombetta, founder and CEO of PA Cyber.
Riley, a former governor of South Carolina, has been a force for educational innovation and reform both nationally and in his home state, said Trombetta. Charter schools have been approved in South Carolina and have become very popular in a short time. Riley is expected to tap the expertise of educational leaders here for the charter school movement there and in other Southern states.
Officials of the National Network of Digital Schools, a nonprofit management foundation, plan to show Riley their Lincoln Interactive (www.lincolninteractive.com) online curriculum, including the new Little Lincoln elementary program and Cutting Edge Science (CES) courses. A new CES course for high school juniors and seniors is Alternative Energies, developed in cooperation with scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratories. Lincoln Interactive, the online curriculum originally created for PA Cyber, is now provided by NNDS to students in 185 schools in 12 states
Trombetta said Riley will be shown how educational innovation created more than 1,000 jobs and revitalized the once-struggling steel mill town of Midland, Pa. After touring facilities of PA Cyber and NNDS in Midland, presentations are planned in the studio theater at the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center.
PA Cyber is Pennsylvania’s largest and most successful cyber charter school, graduating 917 seniors in 2009. The first statewide online school for grades K-12, it will celebrate its 10th anniversary in 2010.
Riley served as Secretary of Education in the Clinton Administration from 1993 to 2001. He was governor of South Carolina from 1979 to 1987. He is now a senior law partner of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough LLC, consulting on matters of law, education, policy and government relations. He is a distinguished professor at the University of South Carolina and Fordham University.
The Christian Science Monitor stated many Americans regard Secretary Riley as “one of the great statesmen of education in this century.”
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