Virtual Schools on the Horizon in DeKalb? The Answer is Yes, if State Legislators Have Their Way!

(click headline for full story)

Virtual schools and real profits: Industry shapes state policies

2:44 am September 5, 2012, by Maureen Downey

 

Will DeKalb's future classrooms look more like this?  Look out
for the upstart of more online charter schools, funded with the same
tax dollar allocations but without all that pesky overhead!  More money
for top level administrators, less money to actually help children learn.

The AJC "Get Schooled" blog (excepts in article below) shows a disturbing trend
 toward a school type that does not appear to be supported by any true results.

 

The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram published an impressive investigation on a trend that we are seeing in Georgia:  For-profit online k-12 schools “aiding” legislators in writing laws that create a demand and favorable climate for their product.

One of the changes pushed by the for-profit online sector: Statewide requirements that all students take at least one online course. We saw that effort here in Georgia.   Senate Bill 289 initially mandated that all Georgia high school students complete at least one online course starting in 2014.

But as passed and signed by the governor, the law says districts have to make online courses available to their students and increase options for online learning.

The law states:

The State Board of Education shall establish rules and regulations to maximize the number of students, beginning with students entering ninth grade in the 2014-2015 school year, who complete prior to graduation at least one course containing online learning.

(some text here omitted ... if interested, you can read the complete story here)

The Portland newspaper probe also looked at the performance of students taking online courses:

In Pennsylvania, where some 30,000 students are enrolled in virtual schools at an average cost of $10,000 per student, pupils scored 13 percent worse in reading and 24 percent worse in math than students at ordinary public schools, according to a 2011 study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes. The researchers broke out the data for separate student groups — those poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunch, those still learning to speak English, grade repeaters, blacks and Hispanics — and compared them to their counterparts at ordinary charter schools. “In every subgroup with significant effects,” they reported, “cyber charter performance is lower than the brick-and-mortar performance.”

The Stanford study may have helped prompt The New York Times to conduct an investigation of K12 Inc.’s virtual charter schools later that year, which concluded that the company “tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.”

At the K12-managed Agora Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania — which reportedly generated $72 million in revenues — the Times found: 

• 60 percent of students were behind grade level in math,
• nearly 50 percent were behind in reading and
•  a third were not graduating on time:

“Hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.”

The company spent $681,000 lobbying in the state between 2007 and the end of last year.

Whenever posters here (AJC's Get Schooled blog) question online education, industry folks complain that they are resisting innovation and defending the status quo.  But lobbyists writing laws that promote and protect the interests and profits of their industries over the well-being and welfare of taxpayers should be resisted.

The investigations by the Portland papers and The New York Times will be followed by similar exposés across the country. And the reason is simple:  For-profit education, whether k-12 or college, has two goals that can end up at odds. One is to educate students and the other is to make money. When the latter lags, the former suffers.


Online learning certainly has a growing role in education, but that role can’t be defined by the industry. It has to serve the education needs of students rather than the profit margins of providers.

–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog