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Report on proposed online, or virtual, school courses cites lack of regulation

November 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Cyberschools, the fastest-growing alternative to K-12 public education, are almost totally unregulated and in immediate need of oversight, according to research from the University of Colorado. More than 30 percent of the nation’s 16 million high school students have taken at least one online class — Memphis City Schools now requires it for graduation. But report authors Gene Glass and Kevin Welner say cash-strapped school districts use online education — including full-time virtual schools with little face-to-face contact with teachers — as a lower-cost alternative to traditional public schools. They say five companies dominate the online curriculum business, including Virginia-based K12 Inc., which opened a statewide virtual academy in Tennessee this year. “Private operators are gaining access to large streams of public revenue to run cyberschools,” Glass said. “But the public is not getting full information on the actual costs of these programs, so it’s not clear if taxpayer money is being used properly.” The National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado is pushing for audits of company profits, school accreditation and an authentication process to prove that the grades students get are the grades they deserve.

 

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Effort to review online schools in Colorado fails amid arguments about politics

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Some educators have called for more oversight and study of the effectiveness of online schools. A report last month by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado called for more audits of online school providers.

“The rapid growth of virtual schooling raises several immediate, critical questions for legislators regarding matters such as cost, funding and quality,” the authors wrote.

Randy DeHoff, a former Colorado school board member who now works for a nonprofit online school based in Westminter, said online schools in Colorado were already audited in 2007.

“Online schools all agree we need to be doing a better job of capturing what we’re doing well and identifying what we’re not doing well,” said DeHoff, director of strategic growth for the GOAL Academy, an online high school with 2,200 students.

DeHoff agreed that counting school enrollment on a single day to determine funding is inexact, but he argued the problem isn’t limited to online schools.

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District May Create Charter High School

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This would be a new high school, Felix said in his proposal. All classes would be “accredited, rigorous and suitable for college-bound students.”

The charter would offer both virtual and on-site learning. Most classes would be online, but students also would meet with teachers and have opportunities to join on-campus study groups.

This format allows students to “complete course work in a much more flexible, self-directed manner than in a traditional classroom,” Felix wrote of the plan.

Students will be able to choose from over 120 online courses. Teachers from the district will oversee the classwork.

Online classes have a number of advantages, the district argued, allowing students to take advanced placement work, and accelerating progress in high school, for example.

In January 2005 the Department of Education recommended that all students have the opportunity to take online classes. A report prepared by Advanced Educational Ventures cites experts who contend that e-learning helps students acquire the skills necessary to compete in digitalized world.

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Report: More oversight for online schools

November 1, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Glass and Welner found online schools are a fast-growing part of education with 40 states operating or allowing them. Many states are setting up virtual charter schools, and in Florida, districts are turning to online classes because of legal limits on class size, the report said.

There are now about 200,000 students attending virtual schools full time, while 30 percent of high school students say they have taken at least one online course.

“There’s zero high-quality research evidence that full-time virtual schooling at the K-12 level is an adequate replacement for traditional face-to-face teaching and learning,” Welner said.

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Wednesday Churn: Obama’s back

October 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Everybody gets confused by the parade of studies on whether charter schools or traditional schools produce better student achievement. A new report by the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education claims to clear up the confusion by studying the studies.

That “meta-analysis,” in the words of a news release, “reviewed the 40 existing high-quality studies of charter school achievement and scientifically combined the results.” The review concludes charters are doing somewhat better in lower grades but that charter and traditional results are similar in high school. Learn more

Another report, this one from researchers at CU-Boulder, calls for “immediate” regulation of K-12 virtual schools. The report, titled Online K-12 Schooling in the U.S.: Uncertain Private Ventures in Need of Public Regulation, was released Tuesday by the National Education Policy Center and is by CU education professors Gene V. Glass and Kevin G. Welner. An accompanying report, Model Legislation Related to Online Learning Opportunities, comes from University of Kentucky education professor and attorney Justin Bathon and offers statutory language to bring state policies in line with the research.

“There’s zero high-quality research evidence that full-time virtual schooling at the K-12 level is an adequate replacement for traditional face-to-face teaching and learning,” Welner said.

According to Glass, “Private operators are gaining access to large streams of public revenue to run cyber schools. But the public is not getting full information on the actual costs of these programs, so it’s not clear if taxpayer money is being used properly.”

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Colorado’s Crummy Policies Lead to Crummy Virtual Schools

October 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

An investigation of Colorado’s full-time virtual schools has revealed some dubious results and practices, which led the state’s Senate President to call for an emergency audit of all of Colorado’s virtual schools.

But the state shouldn’t be shocked by the report. As the truism goes, you get what you pay for.

Colorado’s policy environment incentivizes exactly what it’s getting from its full-time virtual schools—and arguably not just its virtual schools, but all of its schools statewide.

The biggest problem is this: It pays a school all of its funds on a “count day” on October 1 based on the number of students enrolled on that day. If students leave afterward, the original school keeps the funds. If students enroll elsewhere, the new school receives no funds.

This incentivizes providers to enroll students, but there are few incentives in place to focus on what happens after that. As a result, a significant number of online providers seem to have followed these incentives and done exactly what Colorado paid them to do. The end result isn’t pretty for students, as a great number of them allegedly leave soon after the count day and enroll back in district schools if they enroll elsewhere at all.

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OUR VIEW: State’s money must follow students (poll)

October 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The expose showed that an alarming number of students achieve lower test scores after enrolling in online schools. Turnover has become a problem, as students who try online educations often end up going back to classrooms.

When a student abandons an online school, the online school often keeps the state tuition cash. Colorado bases school funding on a single enrollment count. Once the count has been taken, the money is allocated and belongs to the school even if students soon thereafter.

That means another school ends up with former online students, but not the tuition.
The administration of Colorado’s largest online public school, Colorado Virtual Academy, agrees that online schools should not keep the money.

“Colorado should move away form a school-funding model based on a single-count date to a better model, such as an average daily membership,” said Jeff Kwitowski in a statement to The Gazette’s editorial board. He’s the vice president for public affairs for K12, the curriculum provider for Colorado Virtual Academy.

Under K12’s proposal, Colorado would allocate tuition based on the average number of school days that students are enrolled during the year. That’s how a lot of other states do it, eliminating the problem of schools taking full tuition for students who leave.

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Public Schools Also Lose When Online Students Fail

October 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Colorado taxpayers will spend $100 million this year on online schools that are largely failing their elementary and high school students, state education records and interviews with school officials show.

The money includes millions in tax dollars that are going to K-12 online schools for students who are no longer there.

The result: While online students fall further behind academically—their counterparts in the state’s traditional public schools are suffering, too, because those schools must absorb former online students, while the virtual schools and their parent companies get to keep the state funding.

Take the experience of high school senior Laura Johnson.

In the tiny Florence School District outside Pueblo, Johnson was one of 39 students who left Florence High School last year to sign up for online classes with GOAL Academy, one of the largest online charter schools in Colorado.

By January, she was back at Florence, disillusioned by the online experience and trying to make up for her lost time in class. She was joined by a dozen of her former online classmates.

Those 39 students who left Florence High School for GOAL represented one of every 10 students in the school. When they left, so did nearly a quarter million dollars in state funding—the equivalent of four to five teachers’ salaries. When a dozen of the students returned to Florence High mid-year, the funding to educate them did not come with them. GOAL got to keep it.

The I-News Network, a Colorado-based in-depth news consortium, and the nonprofit Education News Colorado, spent 10 months investigating what’s really happening with thousands of Colorado K-12 students who try an online school each year.

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Online schools need oversight

October 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Internet offers great opportunities in education. Online schools provide flexible schedules, expanded class offerings and an alternative for students who struggle in traditional school settings.

But there are pitfalls, as a recent investigative report by Education News Colorado and the I-News Network has revealed.

The system of online K-12 schools in Colorado — offered by GOAL Academy, Hope Online, Insight School of Colorado and other such programs — has become big business, but it’s failing many of the thousands of students who have signed up. The report shows that for every online student who graduates, three drop out. Half of the students who enter online programs in Colorado return to a brick-and-mortar school within a year, though the taxpayer money that follows them to online schools stays there. The online schools are expected to get $100 million in taxpayer money this year.

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Test Scores Raise Questions About Colo. Virtual Schools

October 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Students attending Colorado’s full-time online education programs have typically lagged their peers on virtually every academic indicator, from state test scores to student growth measures to high school graduation rates.

But an independent analysis of previously unreleased online school data by the I-News Network and Education News Colorado reveals key new findings and an achievement gap that alarmed education officials:

• Online students are losing ground. Students who transfer to online programs from brick-and-mortar schools posted lower scores on annual state reading exams after entering their virtual classrooms.

• Academic performance declined after students enrolled in online programs. Students who stayed in online programs long enough to take two years’ worth of state reading exams actually saw their test results decline over time.

• Wide gaps persist. Double-digit gaps in achievement on state exams between online students and their peers in traditional schools persist in nearly every grade and subject—and they’re widest among more affluent students.

A top state education official called the findings “very concerning.”

“We’ve got to ask some questions here and we’ve got to see what’s going on,” said Diana Sirko, deputy commissioner of learning and results for the Colorado Department of Education.

Sirko said the CDE will launch a “comprehensive review” of online standards and accountability under the guidance of a newly hired choice and innovation chief, Amy Anderson, who began work Aug. 29.

Poor achievement has done little to stem the popularity of virtual programs, with online enrollment growing last year at a pace seven times faster than that of traditional schools. Online schools in Colorado are now a $100 million a year industry.

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