CREDO of Stanford University and the conservative Hoover Institution report that students in virtual charter schools lose 180 days of instruction in math. There are usually 180 days of schools. They learn nothing.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform

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Marian Cruz says:

November 1, 2015 at 11:18 am

This should convince some that Charter Schools are not the answer.

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Jack says:

November 1, 2015 at 11:30 am

My favorite line was from CREDO’s Margaret Raymond regarding data on students who attend cyber-charters.

Margarget “Mackie” Raymond:

“It is literally as if the kid did not go to school for an entire year.”

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- Threatened Out West says:
  
  November 1, 2015 at 11:42 am
  
  Well, they don’t. It’s pretty much up to the parents if the students are doing any work.
  
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Chiara says:

November 1, 2015 at 11:37 am

Ohio plans to redouble their efforts to bolster the quality of these schools

“Given the challenges that many of the students attending a virtual charter school face, we must redouble our efforts to bolster the quality of these schools,” said Chad L. Aldis, vice president for Ohio policy and advocacy for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which sponsors 11 traditional charter schools.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2015/10/30/1-upgrade-the-e-schools.html

Ohio state government has a whole division of public employees devoted to promoting charter schools. I am baffled why none of these people are ever contacted or named regarding charter schools. Are the Fordham people the spokespersons for the publicly-funded charter sector? Why? Where are the sponsors of these schools and where are the specific state employees who are paid to regulate them?

When there’s a problem at my son’s public school the newspaper contacts the superintendent and she has to explain. They don’t contact a private, national group to issue a statement on public schools in general. Since these schools are run at the state level, can we at least get a response from someone who is at least remotely responsible and accountable to the public?

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Threatened Out West says:

November 1, 2015 at 11:49 am

They didn’t need to do any studies to learn this information. Just ask teachers. I know, asking the people actually doing the work isn’t fashionable, but we could have told them this. The students I receive every year from online “schools” are woefully behind and unprepared for the work we do in my Title 1 school. If the kids have been in online “schools” for a while, they often cannot even write complete, coherent sentences. These are students in 8th and 9th grade. They have no idea how to write a paragraph, let alone an essay. They often have special needs. I had a student that was probably dyslexic, and while she supposedly had an IEP from the online “school,” it didn’t appear than any actual interventions had been used.

It’s really sad. Those young people may never catch up. It breaks my heart.

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- Chiara says:
  
  November 1, 2015 at 11:57 am
  
  It’s bigger than charter schools because they’re pushing online learning into public schools, with the usual ed reform reckless disregard for unintended consequences, corruption and self-dealing.
  
  It’s bad enough that they’re expanding the “cybercharter sector” because at least children can opt out or return to public schools if the experiment fails- if they get their way they’ll turn public schools INTO the cybercharter sector and then we’ll all be stuck with it.
  
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- KrazyTA says:
  
  November 1, 2015 at 1:20 pm
  
  Threatened Out West: apparently you haven’t got your NCTQ [National Council on Teacher Quality] certification in rheephorm math.
  
  According to the old and rather useless math taught by lazy LIFO teachers with that dreadful teaching training behind them and years of experience and sometimes extensive related qualifications in STEM fields that involve numbers & figures & stats and such, 180 – 180 = 0.
  
  They foolishly think it’s just so gosh darn simple.
  
  Well, let me set you straight: this is where you, and so many others that grandly call for a “better education for all,” make your most fundamental mistake.
  
  There’s something much bigger and better and important at stake here. We need to creatively disrupt the old math and replace it with something more amenable to the cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century.
  
  180 – 180 = $tudent $ucce$$.
  
  😳
  
  And yes, you are correct, your firsthand knowledge of what real live students get out of their virtual charter “education” is just anecdotal and does count for 0 aka nada aka nil aka nothing.
  
  The only time anecdotes are acceptable is when they are used for such exemplars of fiscal transparency and obeying the rules governing everyone else as the $ucce$$ Academies of Saint Eva Moskowitz who selflessly works for a little less than $600,000@year and a little less than $60@student@year for maybe 10,000 students while that Mammon-lover Carmen Fariña makes a little more than a third of that@year and a little less than 25¢@student@year for over a million students.
  
  😱
  
  I am sorry for the length of my blistering rheephormista-style reply to your comments but someone has to remind you that if you can’t get your math in order, then you are probably the kind of person that thinks that Diane Ravitch and Bobby Jindal are not practically one and the same. *See this blog, today.*
  
  😏
  
  Look, if you need a math refresher, I refer you to the not-very-lamented until-recently-departed Supt. of LAUSD, John Deasy. He claimed shortly before leaving that he got graduation rates up to 12% but that was because he left out all those pesky students that are known in the ed biz as “graduation rate suppressors”; if you include those “non-strivers” [thank you, Mr. Michael J Petrilli!] then the graduation rate only went up 2%. *And don’t include fudging definitions and time lines to get that 2% either, bud!*
  
  Perhaps there is a lesson here for you and many others. Unlike you, the heavyweights and enforcers and enablers of the “education reform” movement are big fans of Homer and honor this admonition whenever they can get away with it:
  
  “I didn’t lie, I was writing fiction with my mouth.”
  
  That is, Homer SIMPSON. Not the old dead Greek guy. Sorry for the confusion…
  
  Let me conclude by saying that I hope I am not being presumptuous by saying that I think you would agree with me—
  
  That your comments are spot on. I never miss reading something that starts with “Threatened Out West.”
  
  ¿Why?
  
  Because usually the only thing being threatened, when it comes to the business plan that masquerades as an education model, is ignorance.
  
  Go figure…
  
  😎
  
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- Threatened Out West says:
  
  November 1, 2015 at 4:50 pm
  
  Thank you for my education, Krazy. I didn’t know I had erred… (:
  
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Chiara says:

November 1, 2015 at 11:50 am

With a diligent 30 second search I found a website for one of the schools. Maybe someone who runs the place could be contacted and named in a newspaper since they’re paid entirely through public funding?

https://www.ecotohio.org/WhoWeAre/About

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Laura H. Chapman says:

November 1, 2015 at 1:15 pm

CREDO says its methodology is largely unchanged from a previous report on urban charter schools. CREDO studies are methodologically complex and they are not peer reviewed prior to publication. The study reports on reading and math only, and I found it impossible to determine what grade levels produced the scores that were used in various calculations. There was insufficient data on several fronts to do all of the calculations they had hoped for.
The conclusions indicate: (a) After enrolling in online charter schools, these students tend to become more mobile changing schools at a rate 2 to 3 times higher than their peers. (b) Twenty-two percent of online charter students eventually return to traditional public schools with two years the average time in an online charter school. (c) Placing more instructional responsibilities on parents was strongly correlated with weaker growth across most settings.

Bottom line is “Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule.”
Here is the link to the whole study. You can be sure the pushback on these results will be HUGE, apart from MANY methodological issues. Online Charter School Study 2015 – CREDO – Stanford University

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Raj says:

November 1, 2015 at 1:22 pm

Then, why do we have on line charter schools?

Is it a solution for the home schooling parents who are against public schools (religion based, germ-a-phobia or other silly reasoning) and do not want to teach or do not have the capability to teach their own children? Signing up with these online charters, they can claim that their children are actually getting some form of schooling and avoid criminal consequences.

This is clearly
1. criminal conduct on the part of the parents,
2. criminal conduct of on line charter operators and
3. criminal conduct on the part of authorizing agencies, who make it possible. The children are the only losers.

Some one needs to find out, because these kids for no fault of their own are being left behind and their future is jeopardized.

I do not believe it is possible to boost the quality of on line education for minors, without the involvement of the parents which is almost impossible and is a non-starter.

On line education can only be a supplement to real schooling, for example, Khan Academy, but they are nor subsidized by the public school system.

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- Chiara says:
  
  November 2, 2015 at 7:40 am
  
  You know the answer to this question, Raj. We have online charter schools because the state adopted a market theory for publicly-funded schools. The idea was they would subsidize privately-owned and operated schools and parents would choose.
  
  The “bad” schools would fail and the “good” schools would expand.
  
  All the state had to do was provide subsidies to contractors and the market would take care of the rest. Ohio politicians promote these online schools. John Kasich has attended graduation ceremonies and so has Jeb Bush. They’re not just subsidizing the schools- they’re actively promoting them over public schools.
  
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stiegem says:

November 1, 2015 at 5:04 pm

Raj, please, define specifically to all of us here on this site (thank you Diane), what EXACTLY is your (your very own, learned by your very own education), WHAT IS “REAL SCHOOLING”?

Because, what we are learning on Diane’s blog here, IS “supplemental learning”. It is “On line education”.. which (you say) can ONLY (caps mine) be a supplement to “real schooling”.

Please define “real schooling” in your own terms.

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- Raj says:
  
  November 1, 2015 at 7:20 pm
  
  Real schooling is the one provided by brick and mortar public schools with a teachers and class rooms. All I say is that if parents want they can supplement this with on-line learning like Khan Academy, not paid for using public school dollars.
  
  Sending your child to an on-line schools only, takes resources away from public schools and CREDO study says that the child does not learn much.
  
  Khan Academy is not a school, it is an additional on-line learning experience for those who want to add to the traditional school learning.
  
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  - Beth says:
    
    November 2, 2015 at 8:07 am
    
    Real schooling is different than real education.
    
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John says:

November 1, 2015 at 8:37 pm

I wonder what Al Franken would say?

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Judi says:

November 2, 2015 at 11:48 am

My granddaughter goes to Basis Charter School in Phoenix and is very smart. They learn subjects earlier than in public schools and don’t do the Common Core which is Dumbing Down. (Google Deliberately Dumbing Down and you will see what is behind the common core).

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