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Principals are grappling with the implications of a state policy change that allows them to award credit for shorter courses that students take online.

A regulation passed in June by the Board of Regents allows city high schools to award credit in online courses or blended learning courses, where the class is conducted partly online and partly in a traditional classroom setting, regardless of how much time students actually spend in the classes. City Department of Education officials lobbied the Regents in support of the change.

A dozen principals discussed the new regulations today at the meeting of a monthly panel led by Alisa Berger and Sarah Scrogin, two principals who have spearheaded activities within the Innovation Zone, the DOE’s subset of technology-centered schools. (Notably, Berger’s high school, the iSchool, and Scrogin’s, East Bronx Academy for the Future, have worked together in the past on intra-city distance learning classes.)

As members of the Innovation Zone’s selective iLearn cohort, which numbered 40 last year but is jumping to 127 this fall, the principals who attend the monthly meetings have used technology to reshaped their schedules, supplies, and teachers’ workloads. When it comes to using technology to change teaching and learning, the principals usually have a lot to say.

But when Scroggin asked them how they were thinking about responding to the change in seat time rules, they were quiet. (more…)