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Online K-12 School Leaders Discuss Policy ‘Roadmap’

January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

“Last year alone 16 states passed legislation related to online learning. We’re expecting just as many this year,” she said. “It’s about access, it’s about quality and it’s about creating new learning models.”

Patrick says right now 33 states allow full-time online learning programs. 55 percent of all public school districts offer online classes or online learning programs.

Last fall some of Colorado’s full-time online schools came under scrutiny for poor student performance, high dropout rates and inefficient use of taxpayer dollars.

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Report Finds More Virtual K-12 Students Are Falling Behind

January 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The number of private companies operating full-time online K-12 schools in Colorado and other states continues to grow. Meantime, student performance is declining. That’s according to a new report by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado.

In Colorado, online K-12 schools came under scrutiny last fall for poor student performance and millions earned by for-profit companies. Colorado Senate President Brandon Shaffer has said he plans to introduce legislation to keep a closer watch on the state’s online K-12 schools.

For the rest of the article, go to Report Finds More Virtual K-12 Students Are Falling Behind

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Guest Commentary: Online schools play essential role

December 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There are few choices parents will make that are more important than how to educate their children. That is why it is essential that they actually have a choice in the first place.

Online schools should remain a valid option in our public education system.

After my oldest struggled in a traditional school, I explored other public options for my second child. For us, having the option of a public online education has made a world of difference.

Thousands of other Colorado families make use of public online schools for a wide variety of reasons. Their children have been freed from a host of bad influences or obstacles to their ability to excel academically.

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Virtual Schools

December 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

As of 2011, all school districts serving Teller County now have online schools.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 55 percent of all school districts in the nation offered some form of distance or online learning in 2009-2010. The majority of these were in the country’s Central and Western regions and involved smaller rural districts similar to those in Teller.

In Colorado, according to a June 2011 report from the Colorado Department of Education, 45 of the state’s 178 school districts are certified to offer multi-district, full-time single-district or part-time single-district online programs. Colorado jumped on the virtual-school phenomena in 2007 when legislators created the Colorado Department of Education’s Unit of Online Learning.

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Virtual schools are booming as states consider warnings

December 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

DENVER — More schoolchildren than ever are taking their classes online, using technology to avoid long commutes to school, add courses they wouldn’t otherwise be able to take — and save their school districts money.

But as states pour money into virtual classrooms, with an estimated 200,000 virtual K-12 students in 40 states from Washington to Wisconsin, educators are raising questions about online learning. States are taking halting steps to increase oversight, but regulation isn’t moving nearly as fast as the virtual school boom.

The online school debate pits traditional education backers, often teachers’ unions, against lawmakers tempted by the promise of cheaper online schools and school-choice advocates who believe private companies will apply cutting-edge technology to education. Is online education as good as face-to-face teaching?

For the rest of the art6icle, go to Virtual schools are booming as states consider warnings

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Virtually Educated

December 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I always thought that the only kids getting their entire public schooling online were in the hospital, living in the Alaskan tundra, or pursuing a career as a singing orphan in the road company of “Annie.” Not so. There are now around 250,000 cyberschool students in kindergarten through high school and the number is growing fast.

If I had managed to envision a lot of students going to school online, I’d have imagined them being home-schooled by a diligent middle-class parent. But, lately, the target seems to be low-income families. Andy Berke, a state senator in Chattanooga, Tenn., says that when an educational company named K12 Inc. held a meeting to publicize its online taxpayer-funded academy, it chose “one of the poorest neighborhoods” in his district. In Pennsylvania, where K12 runs a statewide online charter school called Agora, you can go to the Web site and watch Head of School Sharon Williams explain about “online learning as an alternative to a violent in-school experience.”

O.K., here is my first question: Does full-time online learning really work for disadvantaged kids who may be alone at home all day?

Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado did a review of all the information available on this and, in fact, on the entire question of how well full-time online learning works for kids in elementary through high school. The answer was: nobody knows.

“The most detailed study is a couple of blog entries,” he said.

For the rest of the article, go to Virtually Educated

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Editorial: Right call on auditing online schools

November 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

We’re glad to see a nonpartisan state budget analyst take up the call for an examination of online schools. It’s a good idea that ought to be pursued.

Last week, a state audit committee killed a request to examine the efficacy and finances of the state’s online K-12 schools. The debate was bogged down by politics, since the main proponent of the audit was state Senate President Brandon Shaffer, a Democrat who is running for Congress against Republican incumbent Cory Gardner. The committee voted along party lines, and that, seemingly, was that.

This week, a staffer for the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee brought up the matter again, saying it would be appropriate to look at per-pupil funding levels as well as student achievement and retention.

Previously, media outlets including The Denver Post had pointed out problems with the system. As education funding grows ever tighter, it is the state’s duty to make sure money is spent wisely.

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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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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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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.

For the rest of the article, go to Public Schools Also Lose When Online Students Fail

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