Time to quit assuming.

The most dangerous thing the educated can do is assume. The educational system is comprised of educated people and for years they have assumed to know what students need to accomplish to achieve success. The path to success in education was charted to be the same as the one the educated have taken. A system not only designed by the keeper of the system but studied extensively and evaluated by the same. For hundreds of years the model used produced a percentage of students that ventured lockstep through the system until they graduated from the post-secondary school. These students were deemed successful. The unsuccessful students who fell out of step were trained by the system to take their place on the factory floors (Van Duzer, 2006).
The information age came and a society that valued education changed, yet the education system failed to keep up with the change (Hiltz & Turoff, 2005). It has almost become a cliché for many writers, politicians, and the mainstream media to portray education as an institution which does not recognize the changing world, students and technology. Fulton (1989) states that "classrooms of today resemble their ancestors of 50 and 100 years ago much more closely than do today's hospital operating rooms, business offices, manufacturing plants, or scientific labs" (p.12). Molebash (1999) further clarifies by stating "If you put a doctor of 100 years ago in today's operating room, she would be lost, yet if you placed a teacher of 100 years ago into one of today's classrooms she wouldn't skip a beat" (¶7). The educational system's lack of change has resulted in a dropout rate of 9.4% in 2005. In America, 60 % percent of minorities do not complete grade twelve (Jukes, 2008). Only 28% of grade 12 high school students believe the school work is meaningful. A mere 21% believe their courses are interesting and only 39% believe that school work will have any bearing on their success in later life (Wirt et al., 2002).
During the last three decades there have been many attempts and initiatives designed to change this situation and all but a few have experienced a low adoption rate. While governments, universities, schools, teachers and parents struggle to find the methods, pedagogy and training which will allow them to address these poor statistics they use authentic assessment, achieve excellence in education, leave no child behind, educate the whole child and make sure that they provide an education that makes a difference. Shirley & Hargreaves (2006) confirm:
Every few years in American education a new slogan is coined as the Next Big Thing. Total quality management, shared decision-making, and outcomes-based education all once marched across the educational landscape, grabbing headlines, filling copy--yet they left little improvement in pupil learning in their trail (¶ 1).
All the 'Next Big Thing' programs are expensive initiatives driven by government and education administration. Some have produced short term targeted results but do not recognize that throwing money at it will just result in a more expensive system. It will still not be meeting the needs of the students (Van Duzer, 2006). Jukes (2008) clarifies:
Despite the fact that there are more than 40 years of solid research on how learners learn best, of how the brain functions, of what instructional models are most effective, this research has not been widely accepted or integrated into most classrooms to better help today's learners and their learning and communication preferences. Nor is it reflected in many of the assumptions that are the foundations of public education today (p. 24).
The burning problem is the fact that, although governments recognize the need for change, they have not recognized that educational systems should and must reflect the societal changes that have occurred over the last decade. Levine (2006) posits that "the challenge facing education schools is not to do a better job at what they are already doing, but to do a fundamentally different job" (p.105).
Education reform is a necessity and can only be achieved by wholesale change in the approach to educating a student who is substantially different than the student for whom the traditional education was designed. These students are consumers of education and the information age allows them the opportunity to "create, consume, remix, and share material with each other" (Raine, 2006, ¶ 3). They are also bringing new expectations to the education system. Of all the system changes that have been tried over the last 100 years the only one that has experienced huge uptake is online education, which is a form of distance education. Though distance education has been around for 100 years (Moore, 2003), but with the advent of personal computers and the dawn of the information age has moved distance education into the mainstream and this alternative mode of education is beginning to influence the status quo. Heller (2005) explains that this "matrimony of education and computer - [is] truly a marriage made in heaven, because the computer has become the ultimate bridge of communication, bringing tutors and students together, no matter the time, no matter the place, no matter the distance" (¶1). Watson (2007) states that "38 states have now established state-led online learning programs, policies regulating online learning, or both. Enrolments in online courses have surged in the past year, increasing by as much as 50% in some states" (p.5).
This rapid growth has left researchers scrambling to try to fill the void of empirical research on K-12 e-learning. Much of the current research was aimed at administrators, parents and teachers (DiPietro, Ferdig, Black & Preston, 2008). These education stakeholders have assumed to know the wants and needs of the students, their clients. This assumption has not served them well because the students are beginning to act like consumers (Oliver, Osborne & Brady 2009) and are taking their educational funds elsewhere. E-learning removes the barriers of time and distance making it more accessible which has allowed interested students the ability to search for a system that better fits their needs. The brick and motor school in the past has had complete autonomy over the students, very similar to the only-game-in-town concept. Now with e-learning, students can opt for the alternative and this new game has threatened the traditional autonomy. Students, by choosing, are making a statement which the educational community can embrace as an opportunity to study these clients.
The development and growth of e-learning in the post-secondary education system has been attributed to the institutions' attempt to reach a new market using what was viewed as a cheaper method of education as well as the educators' assumption on how education should be delivered (Abrami, Bernard, Wade, Schmid, & Borokhovski, 2006). E-learning in the K-12 system started simply as a different way of handling the traditional approach to education in an altered fashion for a finite group of clients that were already in the system. So it did not increase the client numbers but rather changed the way education was delivered. It was embraced and students are seeking out e-learning in record numbers which continue to increase (Archambault & Crippen, 2009; Powell & Patrick, 2006). The growth is attributed to the benefits of online education as described by the educated. These benefits were classified by Barbour and Reeves (2009) by reviewing the literature in 5 main areas, including "expanding educational access, providing high quality learning opportunities, improving student outcomes and skills, allowing for educational choice and achieving administrative efficiency" (¶ 5). Barbour and Reeves (2009) further explains the fact "that these benefits are realized through virtual schooling remains in doubt in the minds of some critics, and the research to support these conjectures is limited" (¶ 6). These five benefits are not dissimilar to the ones that were used as motivation to create many of the government's "next big thing" yet those did not have the same uptake as e-learning has displayed. The one stakeholder of the educational system that has not been asked is the students. Is it possible that E-learning is providing something to some students that they could not find in the traditional brick and mortar school? Some of the once captive audience of the only-game-in-town has opted for the new game. Why?

References
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