Renegade Teacher hast taught in both public schools and charter schools in Detroit. He writes here about the highly profitable fraud of online charter schools. Among their most prominent supporters are Betsy DeVos (who invested in them, and now advocates for them) and Jeb Bush, who relentlessly promotes online learning.
From his own experience as a teacher, he saw what online learning lacks: human relationships between students and teachers and between peers. It is soul-deadening.
“Online education in the K-12 sphere is a growing trend- as of 2015, there were some 275,000 students enrolled in online charter schools. In my home state of Michigan, from 2010 to 2014, the number of students in Online Charter Schools increased from 718 students to 7,934 students (over 1000% increase).
“Private, for-profit companies (using public funds) are cashing in- the two largest online charter companies, K12 and Connections Academy, are raking in an estimated $1 billion per year (as of 2014). The motive is profit over substance: less operating costs, less teachers, and less building maintenance.
“The results have been damning: according a study from the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CREDO), students in online charters lost an average of about 72 days of learning in reading and 180 days of learning in math IN THE COURSE OF AN 180-DAY SCHOOL YEAR. They could have had equal math progress if they had spent the entire year asleep.
“In Philadelphia, a system composed of mainly poverty-stricken Black and Latinx students, online schools educated more than one-third of students as of 2014 [1]. The kicker is that, between 2011 and 2014, 100% of those students failed their state achievement tests. 100%!!! [2].”
The biggest online charter school in Ohio recently collapsed, both an academic and financial disaster.
Renegade Teacher thinks they should be banned. They are educational frauds.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree, this online world has turned out to be a place where fraudsters make their money. There’s nothing high-tech re: those SCREENS and programmed worksheets written by those far away from the classroom who do not understand that teaching is a “real-time” endeavor. Computer programs and that screen are profit makers for the few, who have NOT a CLUE. .
Charters are mostly frauds.
I’ve thought this for years. But the narrative needs to get out there. People hear school choice and think it’s a great idea, because they don’t know any different.
Why is a public school allowing Apple to hold a product launch in their school?
“On March 27, Apple’s holding a special education-focused event at Lane Tech College Prep High School in Chicago.
As always for Apple, the invite is a bit cryptic. “Let’s take a field trip,” and “join us to hear creative new ideas for teachers and students,” the invite reads.
They’re selling product to public schools. Is there some reason students have to be hijacked into providing free publicity for this multi-billion dollar corporation?
Would schools allow any other vendor to use their students as props like this?
Public school parents better start objecting to this use of their children as unpaid salespersons for tech companies. All of ed reform cheerleads this garbage. Is anyone asking students if they consented to this? Apples gets sales. What do the students get?
Online charters are an awful scam and waste of taxpayer dollars, but the CREDO studies that purport to quantify school quality with their “days of learning” metrics make subjective and contested value judgments about what is and isn’t counted as a factor.
Jersey Jazzman wrote about it here http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2017/08/credo-charter-school-studies-x-days-of.html?m=1
And NEPC wrote about it here: http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/estimated-versus-actual-days-learning
“Online Charter Schools Are a Fraud and a Scam”……well, yeah.
I’m hopeful in Ohio though, because for the first time in a long time we’re having an election where PUBLIC education is an issue.
There wasn’t any announcement, no denunciation of ed reform, politicians just quietly all started running on supporting public schools.
After 20 years of neglect of 90% of schools in the state, we may get state leaders who support public schools. Nothing in ed reform changed, and nothing in the national political landscape changed- DC is still opposed to our schools.
But it is changing at the state level.
Great news about Ohio. The pandemic helped put a spotlight on public schools, due to its disastrous effect.