The National Education Policy Center released its sixth annual report on “virtual education,” including both online schools and blended learning. The overall funding: neither is as effective as traditional schools with human-to-human interaction.
BOULDER, CO (May 1, 2018) – NEPC’s Sixth Annual Report on Virtual Education, Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance, provides a detailed overview and inventory of full-time virtual schools and of blended learning schools, including student demographics, state-specific school performance ratings, and—where possible—an analysis of school performance measures.
School performance measures for both virtual and blended schools indicate that they are not as successful as traditional public schools. Nevertheless, enrollment growth has continued.
Full-time virtual schools deliver all curriculum and instruction via the Internet and electronic communication, usually asynchronously with students at home and teachers at a remote location. Blended, or hybrid, schools combine virtual instruction with traditional face-to-face instruction in classrooms.
The report, beyond adding to the overwhelming evidence of poor outcomes for online schools, documents an interesting trend in the sector. Compared to prior years, there has been a shift in the type of schools with the most growth. We are now seeing more school districts opening their own virtual schools. These district-run schools have typically been small, with relatively small levels of enrollment. But the trend is nonetheless evident. While large virtual schools operated by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) still dominate this sector, they have lost considerable market share.
Find Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance, by Gary Miron, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson, on the web at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/virtual-schools-annual-2018
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Someone in ed reform finally did a study to find out if running two or three different school systems costs more, and which group of students bears the burden of that increased cost.
If you guessed “public school students lose in ed reform privatization schemes” you were right:
Policy debates about the net effects of charter schools on students and on the delivery of K-12 education are ongoing and remain highly contentious. In a recent paper, we contribute to the policy discussion by drawing attention to the fiscal externalities of charter schools, a finance topic that deserves more attention in the overall discussion. Fiscal externalities are the additional burden that charter schools place on the budgets of traditional school districts, and we find evidence that they are consequential in North Carolina.”
It turns out that running 3 different systems costs more than running one system – which should have been obvious to everyone involved in this from the start. Turns out the magical ed reform fairy never arrived and there are COSTS and RISKS involved in privatizing public systems.
Guess which group of students are bearing all the increased cost and all the downside risk? Public school students. Because they don’t have any elected advocates in government and no one represents their interests.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2018/05/01/charter-school-growth-puts-fiscal-pressure-on-traditional-public-schools/
LikeLike
Public schools cannot afford lobbyists or advocates, and as a public institution, it was never intended to be in competition for dollars. The teacher walk-outs have helped to shed some light on this serious under funding issue. The charter lobby buys our so-called representatives, and they keep transferring public funds into private schemes. Public education has no overt defenders. It becomes a host of a bunch charter/voucher parasites. What did they think would happen? Parents need to start marching with the teachers.
LikeLike
The 74 has been compiling records of disciplinary reports on public school teachers.
“In April 2016, The 74 asked the DOE for decisions in teacher disciplinary hearings dating back to the start of 2015. A new teachers contract negotiated in 2014 was more detailed than past agreements in defining misconduct.
Investigators substantiated 59 misconduct charges of an undisclosed nature against pre-K staff in 2015 and 2016, according to the Special Commissioner of Investigation. Across all grades, investigators substantiated 131 misconduct charges that included “a sexual component” between 2014 and 2016.
The outcomes of these cases, which The 74 was seeking and which have not been made public, could range from termination to little or no punishment. It was unclear whether some of the sexual allegations involved pre-K students and whether the 2014 contract revisions affected how cases were decided.”
Are there any records anywhere on whether and when charter school were accused of misconduct?
It’s just odd that The 74 such fans of transparency and they’re completely ignoring that they don’t have any information of any kind on employees hired by the private contractors who run charter schools.
what are the stats on charter school teachers? Anyone know? Is there anywhere to find out? Shouldn’t that bother The 74? They’re comparing something (records that are kept on public school teachers) with nothing (no records of any kind kept on charter school teachers). This occurs to no one in ed reform?
LikeLike
How many Success Academy teachers have been accused of “misconduct”? Where would one find that record? Does it even exist?
LikeLike
Success is not at all transparent. I don’t think that information is available.
LikeLike
Given the hype about tech in education, this is a great resource. I intend to cite it in my comments on other websites that speak all too casually about the benefits of tech in education.
LikeLike
“. . . neither is as effective as traditional schools with human-to-human interaction.”
And in further headline news “Whales Live in the Ocean” while “Birds Fly Through the Air”.
LikeLike
Just ask PA taxpayers how successful corporate cyber charters are.
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2012/05/pa-charter-schools-4-billion-taxpayer.html
LikeLike
from the New York Times:
A 2016 Pew study showed that, or the first time since 1940, men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four are more likely to live at home with a parent than with a partner or spouse. Many lack college degrees. “So what are they doing with their time?” the University of Chicago economist Eric Hurst has asked. “The hours that they are not working have been replaced almost one for one with leisure time. Seventy-five percent of this new leisure time falls into one category: video games.”
So much for the revolution that standardized testing and the Common Core was supposed to bring about. We have failed an entire generation of our children.
LikeLike
More than half of our young men are living in their parents’ basements and spending their time playing video games. This is freaking serious.
LikeLike
This is not accurate. There are more young men living with parents than there are who are partnered. That’s what the study says. About 34 percent of young American men, 18 to 34. Still, a very large number.
LikeLike
Part of the reason fewer men are going to college might be the decreased emphasis on standardized test scores in college admission. ACT scores appear to be gender neutral over all, with male students scoring higher in the math and science sub-tests, female students scoring higher in the English and social science sub-tests. Female students, however, get higher grades across all subjects. (see http://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info-Brief-2014-12.pdf)
Hunter College in NYC is 35% male, NYU is 43% male, and UNC Chapel Hill is 40% male.
LikeLiked by 1 person
TE,
Did you ever learn the difference between a correlation and causation?
You should read Sara Goldrick-Raab’s award-winning book about higher education: “Paying the Price.”
LikeLike
I read recently that 61 percent of US undergrads were now female, and that 3 out of 5 Master’s students were female. Very interesting, this massive societal shift.
LikeLiked by 1 person
most interesting to me is that we are graduating so many more female lawyers…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bob,
Part of the story is that female students are more likely to graduate from high school than male students in all states. The interaction of gender and race results in a 25% difference in male and female graduation rates in Washington DC, a 17% difference in male and female graduation rates in Mississippi, but only a 1% difference in male and female graduation rates in Vermont. See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-ostapchuk/breakdown-of-us-high-scho_b_9265724.html
The issues start much earlier. Boys make up 54% of the preschool population, but are 79% of preschool students suspended once and 82% of the preschool students suspended more than once. The interaction between race and gender continuous all through K-12 education. Boys are sanctioned more than girls within each racial category, African Americans are sanctioned the most and whites the least across gender. Overall, boys make up 51% of the student population, 67% of the in school suspensions, 68% of the single out of school suspensions, 72% of the multiple out of school suspensions, and 74% of the expulsions. See https://ocrdata.ed.gov/downloads/crdc-school-discipline-snapshot.pdf
Interestingly, despite having lower grades on average across the school disciplines, males are more likely to take AP exams and more likely to pass the exams. Just as with the ACT scores, AP exams signal that male and female academic achievement is more equal than high school grades. See https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/gender-equity-in-education.pdf
LikeLike
ELA instruction in the US, thanks to the Common Core, has become mostly extraordinarily narrowly focused test prep. English textbooks have become dumbed down to the level of these mediocre, almost completely content-free “standards” foisted on the country by Mr. Gates, and the testing continues in force despite the fact that, in ELA, the “standards” are so vague and abstract that they cannot be rationally operationalized sufficiently to be validly and reliably tested. In other words, the tests are purest snake-oil, and even by those “measures,” the standards-and-testing regime has produced no statistically significant increase in outcomes or closing of achievement gaps. Thanks, Mr. Gates. You destroyed ELA instruction in the US. And we have a generation of young men living in their parents’ basements with no freaking prospects in the world to show for your experimentation on our youth.
LikeLike
I think I read that New Jersey had the highest rates of millennials living at home with parents.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Full-time virtual schools deliver all curriculum and instruction via the Internet and electronic communication, usually asynchronously with students at home and teachers at a remote location.”
Common sense says that extremely few kids have the motivation to do this work day after day after day while at home with no human person or peers. I can see why they’d log in occasionally and figure they’re done for the day. Why not?
Computers can be a source of porn, video games or really lousy angry political sites. Uneducated kids probably would gobble up these worthless sites to the detriment of the whole country.
LikeLike