The Stellar Schools effort is two-pronged. Asora® Education Enterprises is the developer of the for-profit version, while the Stellar Schools Development Corporation (SSDC) is pushing the non-profit version.
Clicking on www.AsoraEducation.com will take you to the for-profit Asora Education Enterprises' website.
ASORA® is not only part of the name of the associated for-profit enterprise but it is also an acronym spelling out the key features of Stellar Schools:
- A: Asynchronous (on-demand)
- S: Self-paced learning
- O: On-line instruction
- R: Rigorous academic content
- A: Assessment integrated curriculum
Stellar Schools are designed to provide three critical benefits to students and their families:
- I: Superior instruction
- II: Lower tuition
- III: No social promotion
With respect to this last point, we put emphasis on our belief that social promotion is the essential problem or dysfunction in American K-12 education. Although it is worse in public schools, it is prevalent in nearly all private schools as well. There is also evidence that social promotion also afflicts most public education systems in the developed countries of Europe and Asia- though to a somewhat less serious degree than in the United States.
To enter the world of the Stellar Schools Development Corporation, which embodies the just mentioned ASORA principles, click here and we'll take you there.
Help Us Reform K-12 Education and be RewardedThe primary goal of SSDC is to reform K-12 education by developing and offering a more cost-effective instructional system for schools- whether they be public, charter, religious, non-profit or for-profit types. We additionally envisage SSDC taking on a major role as a research and development vehicle that will benefit not only our own schools and students but also those of other operators who adopt some or all of our methods.
To advance this kind of K-12 school reform within the non-profit sector, we apply an optimal organizational format- that of licensing- and combine that with a cost-effective Web based instructional system. Such an instructional format is part of an educational philosophy in which various forms of automation and economies of scale will enable us to provide superior instruction for lower costs in our various client institutions.
Licensing networks will permit some local control of each school as well as providing instructional services to home schooling families. Our online instructional methodologies and technologies utilize a variety of instructional formats, including distance learning, video lectures, self-pacing, student tutors, digitized texts, and a testing requirement based on mastery learning- sometimes called mastery education.
For our curriculum we plan to use a fairly rigorous program of learning that includes the study of Latin (starting in the middle school years as is the practice at the Hillsdale Academy). In the early primary years an important subset of our curricular content will be taken from the Core Knowledge Sequence of E. D. Hirsch, Jr.. From the middle school years through high school we are considering adopting the very solid academic program developed by the Advanced Math & Science Academy Charter School (of Marlborough, Massachusetts), which includes passing eight AP courses as a requirement for graduation. Participation in the International Baccaclaureate Diploma program is also being evaluated. Thus a Stellar Schools diploma will represent a level of achievement well beyond typical state graduation requirements.
Economics education is one of the weakest areas of instruction in contemporary public and private schools. Our Stellar Schools plan to integrate basic concepts of economics into its other content areas as well as require mastery of a "standalone" high school level course as part of its high school graduation requirements.
By automating routine instructional chores, teachers will be able to give more individual attention to students. In the production of our Web based courseware we plan to implement a two-person team teaching format in the production of the video lectures and their associated lecture notes- to be provided in both digital and hardcopy formats.
It is intended that these Stellar Schools will accept both full-time and part-time students. Students will receive mastery certification for courses they pass and, additionally, full-time students can work towards a high school diploma based on mastering the Stellar Schools curriculum.
Whether operated in a non-profit environment or as a for-profit enterprise, the structures, methods, and technologies remain the same. Thus all kinds of existing schools, including non-profit, for-profit, religious, parochial, charter, public, and home schools can benefit from participation in or imitation of Stellar Schools formats.
We are also motivated by the dysfunctions we see in public and private schools, including high dropout rates, inflated student test scores from achievement tests, and majorities of students performing below grade level. The inflation of state reported proficiency percentages, as compared to those reported by the NAEP, indicates a lack of integrity in public education. To deal with the inflated test results we have developed mapping methods to convert the distorted scores into ones consistent with the Nation's Report Card- as the NAEP or National Assessment of Educational Progress is also known.
Much of the insight that led us to Stellar Schools (or Steller Schools according to the afcionados of phonics) has come to us from our own experiences as students of distance education. Of particular impact was the old Television Physics course given by the late Professor Harvey White- some 50 years ago- where we could already see the two essential benefits of online education: superb quality and the potential for significantly lower labor costs.
