The Post-Crescent from Appleton, Wisconsin • Page A1

SUNDAY $250 Presented by Gabriel Furniture GabrielFurniture.com BioLife PLASMA SERVICES BI0LIFEPLASMA.COM Post-Crescent FOUNDED 1853 isconsin A GANNETT COMPANY Sunday, August 26, 2012 Tfi i.iii I 1 I I 0 THINGS TO DO DEALS, COUPONS INSIDE More than $240 in grocery coupons plus $100s in savings from Office Max, Target and other great local stores Looking for fun? Plan ahead with the next month's best bets in your family guide A13 Virtual-school students trail traditional students Playing cards put light on cold cases Investigators seek help from inmates with unsolved homicides MAKING THE GRADE? By Andy Thompson EditorLocal Enterprise The man suspected of dragging an Appleton woman into Hoover Park in 1999 and stabbing her 23 times is known to state prisoners as the jack of spades. Laurie J. Depies, who vanished from a Town of Menasha parking lot 20 years ago, is the seven of diamonds. The five of spades is Bobby Joe Fritz, who was last seen playing outside his Campbellsport home with his siblings on May 14, 1983. INSIDE Audit recommendations and virtual charter schools report card A12 COMING MONDAY Wisconsin's online schools have no accountability for student attendance.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION MONDAY AT 11 A.M.: John Jacobs, director of the Wisconsin eSchool Network, a consortium of online schools, joins reporter Eric Litke for an online chat about Wisconsin's virtual schools and their accountability, structure and student performance. We'll take your questions and comments in real time at postcrescent.com. See CARDS, Page A10 By Eric Litke Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team Enrollment in Wisconsin's online schools has doubled in the past five years, but students who have chosen classes without classrooms often struggle to earn their diplomas and repeat grades four times as often as their brick-and-mortar counterparts, according to a Gannett Wisconsin Media analysis. Standardized test results also show that virtual school students trail traditional students in every subject but reading and are far less likely than their peers to take the ACT or Advanced Placement tests. But virtual schools have more than four times the turnover of traditional schools and teach students who often bring a history of academic struggles.

So are mediocre results indicative of a flawed system or flawed students? "That's really the $10,000 question, maybe the million-dollar question," said Matthew Wicks, vice president of strategy and organizational development for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. "We have an assessment system that isn't effective in general, 1 ATTEMPTED HOMICIDE SUSPECT HOOVER PARK ATTACKER On August 07, 19S9 a 23-year-olrJ female returning home was grabbed and dragged across a street and into Hoover Park fn Appleton, Wi where she was stabbed more then 20 times in t-he neck, chest, ahd back. VC described her attacker as and I think is especially ineffective in online and virtual." Virtual charter schools those that allow students around the state to enroll full time in online classes have operated in Wisconsin for 10 years, growing from four schools with 265 students in 2002-03 to 25 schools with nearly 5,000 students in 2011-12. Three more virtual schools will open for See SCHOOLS, Page A12 VIEW THE PLAYING CARDS Go to postcrescent.com and click on this story to view the decks of playing cards distributed inside Wisconsin prisons and jails of 104 unsolved crimes. MORNING TICKER EBflft Sit HOW WE DID IT Tasked with analyzing virtual schools' new approach to education, Wisconsin's Legislative Audit Bureau took a hard look and recommended in February 2010 that more data be gathered and reported annually to gauge the academic progress of the state's virtual students.

Two years later, that analysis has not been done so Gannett Wisconsin Media decided to do it. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction collects school-by-school data in numerous categories, including state assessment tests, ACT scores, graduation rates, attendance, drop-out rates and discipline. Gannett Wisconsin Media parsed and compiled the data to pull out results for virtual schools and put it alongside statewide averages, as the audit bureau had recommended. When data wasn't available as was the case for Advanced Placement tests, teacher certification, marketing costs and cost per virtual student Gannett Wisconsin Media filed open records requests with all 25 virtual charter schools and gathered the information. Headlines from around the nation and the world QUIET HERO: Neil Armstrong, 1st man on the moon, dies at 82: The astronaut who uttered one of history's most famous proclamations when he became the first man to walk on the moon in 1969, died Saturday.

Armstrong had undergone heart surgery Aug. 8, three days after his 82nd birthday. B5 GOOD MORNING, FOX VALLEY Today's Best Bets www.postcrescent.com Index Advice Books Business Careers Voices Crossword Good Neighbors Homes Horoscope 1 C2 Life! CI C4 Local A3 E1 Obituaries B6 F2 Sports D1 B1 Travel C14 C4 TV book Inside C3 Vitals A2 F3 Weather B9 C2 Wheels F6 RASSLIN': The Rummage Rumble Flea Market at Monarch Gardens in Appleton features pro wrestling. Free. 8 a.m.

3 p.m. FAIR: The Waupaca County Fair wraps up in Weyauwega with harness races at noon ($5) and a demolition derby at 6 p.m. WHO'S YOUR DADDY: "Mamma Mia!" wraps up its latest run at the Fox Cities PAC. Tickets start at $54. 1 and 6:30 p.m.

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