About Evergreen Consulting
Evergreen Consulting Associates is a private consulting and advisory firm headquartered in Evergreen, Colorado that specializes in helping clients in the education, education technology and education publishing industries. Founded in 2000, professionals representing our firm have served as operating managers and executives, organizational advisors, education publishers, and board members for a variety of K-12 and postsecondary education institutions, as well as private and public companies.

Selected clients our principals have advised include Monterey Institute for Technology and Education, Connections Academy, North American Council for Online Learning, Florida Virtual School, Colorado Department of Education, University of California, University of Southern California, Idaho Digital Learning Academy, Learning Point Associates, Texas Education Agency, Wyoming Department of Education, Clark County School District, eCollege, North Central Regional Education Lab, PLATO Learning, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, NCS, and Pearson.

In addition to publishing Keeping Pace every year, we have also developed reports for specific states and organizations, such as A National Primer on K12 Online Education for the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL), The State of eLearning in California, and The State of Online Learning in Michigan. Evergreen is partnering with NACOL in 2008 to publish Promising Practices in Online Learning, a six-part white paper series that explores some of the approaches being taken by practitioners and policymakers in response to key issues in online learning.

 

Keeping Pace has several goals. First, it strives to add to the body of knowledge about online education policy and make recommendations for advances. Second, it is a reference source of current information about programs, policies and trends for policymakers and practitioners across the country. Finally, the report attempts to identify new activity in K-12 online learning, to capture a picture of the state of online learning in the current academic year as well as a sense of the rate and type of changes being implemented.

The Keeping Pace 2008 report:

• Provides a national “snapshot” of the state of online learning as of fall 2008.
• Discusses original data categorized by key issues such as funding, teaching, and accountability, including analysis and recommendations.
• Presents program profiles from a cross-section of program types, including state-led and district-led, supplemental and full-time, charter schools, and both synchronous and asynchronous programs.
• Provides state profiles of K-12 online learning for most states, divided into southeastern, northeastern, central, and western regions.
• Identifies key issues in online learning, building on the data gathered through the development of the program and state profiles.
• Features a new Notes from the Field section with in-depth examination of important new issues in online learning from national experts.

The information found in Keeping Pace 2008 comes from two primary data-gathering efforts: the first a web-based program survey, and the second a combination of Internet research and phone interviews with state education agency personnel.

The survey was designed to gather information from as many K-12 online programs as possible, including state-led programs, full-time and supplemental programs, charter schools, and district-level programs. The survey contained extensive questions about the type of program, number of students, teachers and teaching practices, and student demographics. The survey also identified whether programs track student demographics and if so, how the data is collected.

The sponsoring organizations for Keeping Pace provided extensive expertise and knowledge regarding the state of online learning across the country. Their familiarity with existing research and significant developments in online learning nationwide was a key source of information for the report.

In a field that is growing and changing as rapidly as online education, timeliness of information is imperative. Research for the 2008 report was conducted from May through August of 2008, and every effort has been made to ensure currency of information in the printed report as of September 1, 2008.