The moment of "the veto" is over. Teacher performance pay is a null issue. But what did it accomplish, really, this controversial veto?

The one who held the veto pen and the Republican Party are more estranged than a couple trapped in a marriage from hell.

The unions representing the teachers can chalk up a big win, of course, as can the teachers themselves and everyone else who opposed the bill. The status quo has been preserved. Three cheers!

It might even seem that the familiar old virtues and ideals of education were upheld -- virtues and ideals mostly embodied by the image of a brick-and-mortar classroom presided over by a teacher standing at a chalkboard earnestly aiming to educate little Johnnie and Jane in 45-minute intervals (whether they're ready to learn or not).

But is the ideal of education being served?

In reality, the brick-and-mortar-protected teacher is quickly becoming an anachronism. If the intent of the governor's veto was to keep things as they are, I am here to tell him now: the student has left the building.

The veto will prove to be as effective as the teacher who orders students to "turn it off" the moment they step on to school grounds.

Turn off iPods? Turn off cell phones? Stop texting? Turn off social networking applications like Twitter and Facebook? I don't think so.

My youngest child, a 14-year-old, journeys deep into virtual territory each day. She socializes, studies, and plays there. Most importantly she has found a way to use it to explore the world. She's abandoned the classroom (at least for the present year; she is thinking of returning for high school) and has happily taken leave of schools and teachers.

She sleeps late. She bops around the house listening to music and dancing like a maniac when she wants. Then, when she's ready, she'll sit down at her computer and, with sustained concentration, whip through two weeks worth of math classes or finish a batch of other assignments. And she is doing better than she did in the classroom.

Our daughter's learning style fits the virtual school environment. She did not do well being prodded along like a cow from one 45-minute period of force-feeding to the next 45-minute period.

And she's not alone. There are 100,000 children like her in Florida -- thanks to a law the Legislature approved a few years back that requires all school districts to make virtual learning available to any student who wants it.

In 2003, the Legislature also voted on a measure that "proved to be more far-sighted than anyone realized at the time," notes Michael Horn in a report prepared for The James Madison Institute titled "Virtual Schooling: Disrupting the Status Quo."

Horn is a co-founder of the Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank. He says that when the Legislature voted to include the Florida Virtual School (FLVS) in the state funding formula for K-12 education, "it gave the school a self-sustaining funding model by which FLVS could grow organically and according to student demand, as the dollars would follow the students."

 

The law included (pay attention now) "a performance-based provision by which the school would receive per-pupil funds only for those students who successfully completed and passed their courses."

This performance-based funding system has greatly spurred the growth of online learning in Florida, and the state has emerged among the nation's leaders in the rapidly growing online-learning movement. FLVS is more accountable for its output measures than bricks-and-mortar schools, says Horn, and it also enables schools to "escape" traditional "seat-time restrictions." (Remember those untold hours spent staring into space, dreaming as a teacher droned on and on?)