Virtual charter schools have serious financial and academic questions
Published January 2, 2015
by Matt Ellinwood, NC Policy Watch, January 2, 2014.
Despite major concerns and numerous unanswered questions, a special committee appointed by the State Board of Education recently recommended approval of both applicants seeking to create virtual charter schools in North Carolina. While the concept of introducing more technology into classrooms is almost universally lauded, virtual charter schools are a relatively new concept in which children take courses online on a computer at home and spend no time in a brick-and-mortar classroom.
The committee’s members may have been unsure if they were authorized to block either applicant even if they felt the school would fail students. A provision slipped into the General Assembly’s budget this past summer directed the State Board of Education to open two virtual charter school pilot programs and at present there are only two applicants.
Committee members were clearly uneasy about how these schools could ensure children, particularly in the early grades, receive a quality education without any in-person interactions with teachers, peers, counselors, and other support personnel that occur in traditional public, charter, and private schools. The committee was especially concerned about the North Carolina Virtual Academy’s proposal given the school’s affiliation with the embattled for-profit virtual school management company, K12 Inc.
The K12-backed application proposed staggering student-teacher ratios of 150:1 in high school and 50:1 in the early grades. These ratios stand in stark contrast to the North Carolina Connections Academy’s proposal, which calls for an average ratio of 38:1 across all grades, and the 16:1 ratio that is considered the best practice for traditional schools. Both schools promised a great deal of individualized and small group instruction, but it is hard to imagine how K12 and its North Carolina affiliate can deliver on that promise. There simply are not enough hours in a week for a teacher to provide one-on-one instruction to 150 children.
Results from other states where K12 has already established virtual charter schools suggest that its model is not working. The NCAA announced in April that it would no longer accept credits from 24 schools affiliated with K12 because they fail to comply with NCAA course requirements. A Stanford University study in Pennsylvania found that K12’s largest school, Agora Cyber Charter School, produced learning gains that were significantly smaller than traditional public and charter schools for all subgroups of children. Agora plans to sever its relationship with K12 at the expiration of their contract this year.
In Tennessee, Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman ordered K12’s Tennessee Virtual Academy to close at the end of the 2014-15 school year, citing three straight years of poor academic performance and almost complete lack of growth in student achievement. Huffman did say that he might relent if “the school manages to defy the odds of its past performance and get adequate results,” but added “there is nothing to indicate to me they are going to be able to achieve that level of performance.”
K12’s own investors have even sued the company for overestimating its growth prospects and student performance and the Securities Exchange Commission has asked for more public disclosure of test scores and attrition rates.
There has been essentially no opportunity for public input on the wisdom of opening these schools in North Carolina since the statute directing their creation was never discussed or debated in any legislative committee. There is no way of knowing why legislators felt North Carolina should go in this new direction or, indeed, which legislators stand behind the decision.
The State Board’s special committee repeatedly heard the argument that the K12 proposal is a “pilot program” so there is it not much risk. Yet the program will serve more students than 22 school districts in the first year, and by the fourth year the program will serve over 5,000 students. North Carolina will spend more per year on virtual charter schools than it currently does on textbooks for the state’s 1.5 million schoolchildren at a time when available funds are dwindling.
Finally, it was also argued that we cannot know how virtual charter schools will work in North Carolina until we try. But, of course, we do know about K12’s failures in other states and there is no reason to think North Carolina’s experience will be different.
The bottom line: Educational investments should be targeted to programs with proven track records of improving student outcomes. Our children are not guinea pigs – we owe it to them to ensure that any program they are exposed to receives the highest level of scrutiny before being implemented. The full State Board of Education should examine these recommendations with great skepticism when it gets its chance in January.
Matt Ellinwood is a Policy Analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education and Law Project
January 2, 2015 at 9:42 am
Richard Bunce says:
NC Policy Watch is so in the bag for the government education industrial complex. The student's PARENTS are selecting the virtual charter school. NC Policy Watch wonks, government education panels, bureaucrats, administrators, and teachers DO NOT know what is best for a parent's child.
January 3, 2015 at 10:53 am
Rip Arrowood says:
So much for education....Then maybe doctors DO NOT know what's best for a parent's child - or dieticians or behavioral therapists or pharmacists.
Maybe video game designers are the only ones who really know what's best.
January 4, 2015 at 1:37 pm
Richard Bunce says:
Parents never change their child's doctor? Parents do not have their child's doctor assigned by a government healthcare bureaucrat. Parents do not pay for a doctor their child is no longer seeing. I could go on...
January 5, 2015 at 9:59 am
Rip Arrowood says:
Just because one doesn't get the answers they want to hear doesn't necessarily mean the answer is wrong...But shopping around until one finds someone who will give the answers they want to hear does seem to be a trait of those who won't accept responsibility....a characterisitic shared by the current NC leaders and their supporters.
January 6, 2015 at 11:31 am
Richard Bunce says:
A doctor who has not helped a patient and denies the patient access to another doctor that might help the patient is the correct analogy.
