The National Education Policy Center released its sixth annual report on full-time virtual and blended learning schools. The report was written by Gary Miron, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson of Western Michigan University.
As in the past, these schools get worse results than traditional public schools. Nevertheless, their enrollments continue to grow.
“Compared to prior years, there has been a shift in source of growth, with more school dis- tricts opening their own virtual schools. However, these district-run schools have typically been small, with limited enrollment. Thus, while large virtual schools operated by for-profit education management organizations (EMOs) have lost considerable market share, they still dominate this sector.”
“This report provides a census of full-time virtual and blended schools. It also includes stu- dent demographics, state-specific school performance ratings, and—where possible—an analysis of school performance measures.
“• In 2016-17, 429 full-time virtual schools enrolled 295,518 students, and 296 blended schools enrolled 116,716. Enrollments in virtual schools increased by 17,000 students between 2015-16 and 2016-17 and enrollments in blended learn- ing schools increased by 80,000 during this same time period.
“• Thirty-four states had full-time virtual schools and 29 states had blended schools. Four states had blended but no full-time virtual schools (Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island). Nine states had virtual schools but no full-time blended learning schools. The number of states with virtual schools in 2016-17 is the same as in 2015-16, although there was an increase of eight states with full- time blended learning schools over the past two years.
“• Virtual schools operated by for-profit EMOs were three times as large as other virtual schools. They enrolled an average of 1,288 students. In contrast, those op- erated by nonprofit EMOs enrolled an average of 407 students, and independent virtual schools (not affiliated with an EMO) enrolled an average of 411 students.
“• Although private (profit and nonprofit) EMOs operated only 35.9% of full-time virtual schools, those schools enrolled 61.8% of all virtual school students.
“• Just under half of all virtual schools in the inventory were charter schools, but to- gether they accounted for 75.7% of enrollment. While districts have been increas- ingly creating their own virtual schools, those tended to enroll far fewer students.
“• In the blended sector, nonprofit EMOs operated 30.4% and for-profit EMOs op- erated 22.6%. Nearly half (47%) of blended schools were independent. Blend- ed schools operated by nonprofits were most numerous and substantially larger than others in the sector. Rocketship Education remained the largest nonprofit operator, with 16 schools that enrolled just over 7,700 students—almost 7% of all students in blended schools.
“• Blended schools enrolled an average of 394 students, but blended schools man- aged by for-profit EMOs had a far larger average enrollment of 1,288. There were more charter blended schools (68.9%) than district blended schools (31.1%), and they had substantially larger average enrollments (456) than district blended schools (257).”
There is much more, covering student demographics, student-teacher ratios, and student performance.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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The whole virtual and blended learning movement is led by Silicon Valley and those that stand to directly benefit. The disinvestment in public education has resulted in cash strapped districts adopting some type of electronic instruction in order to cut personnel costs. Yet, the repeated evidence indicates there is no legitimate academic reason to adopt virtual or blended systems.
This report should be sent to all policymakers, PTAs, social justice groups and other stakeholders. School districts should not be forced into adopting a less effective model of instruction simply because states refuse to pay for adequate instruction for their young people. Education should start with the best interests of students, not the wishes of corporations looking to profit from selling more products.
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Well, Silicon is toxic.
Silicon:
Silicon is not known to be toxic, but if breathed in as a fine silica/silicate dust it may cause chronic respiratory problems. Silicates such as asbestos are carcinogenic.
BTW, notice the words “not known to be toxic, but if breathed in as a fine silica/silicate dust, it may cause chronic respiratory problems Notice again the use of the word “MAY.” Good grief.
Silicon Valley is sure named appropriately.
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This was just posted
@amyklobuchar
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Breaking: the U.S. Senate just voted 52-47 vote on the bill to restore #NetNeutrality and to protect a fair and open internet. Amazing victory for consumers, small businesses and rural communities. Final vote at 3. Watch on CSpan!
Whether this will pass the house is another matter. Net Neutrality and the e-rate for schools and libraries are crucially important for virtual and blended learning schemes, and more generally for well-informed uses of the instructional resources available via the Internet.
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Wonderful
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I was a teacher (loved it), have the degrees, graduated #1 in my class, took the real Comp Lit classes rather than the classes on how to teach Comp Lit, won an award for the best student teacher they’d ever had, had teacher hiring manuals modeled on me, worked as an Education Consultant for Pearson (Senior Consultant for the United States in fact), and am now a parent with two kids in public schools in San Diego. One of my kids is ill so we’ve moved a couple of times chasing a cure. I’ve been 100% against the privatization of any public assets including Education. I will always vote Democratic because they at least pretend to be caring about Public Schools and teachers. Most of the people I’ve met who start charter schools are the worst sort of business vultures. I left many district-level meetings feeling like I needed a shower or for the Army to come out and sanitize me in a bubble.
I’ve seen plenty of great schools and districts and plenty of horrible schools. The worst schools are almost always the most resistant to change and are also the most racist. The best teaching tools I ever saw were unheard of because they are public domain so no companies like Pearson are out there selling them to Superintendents or Principals. I don’t know what most teachers are doing on their staff development days but it ain’t looking for better tools apparently.
All that said, I see the issue from the perspective of a parent now whose kids are suffering because of the pervasive low-quality management and teaching in the public schools in the areas of So Cal that we have lived. My oldest is now in a charter school. I am shocked by the improvement in her school environment and her happiness. She is living proof of an epigram I used to share with teachers who struggled to earn kids’ interest or respect; “kick in the emotions and the intellect will get dragged right along.”
Both my daughters are white kids in majority Hispanic schools. Both their public schools have White and Asian populations that score more than twice as high on the state proficiency test as their Hispanic friends. Both my daughters are mature physically for their age, top in their classes for academics (my youngest scored the highest in her elementary school for reading comprehension – all grades), and athletic. By any measure both my daughters are very attractive and have had several offers and inquiries about modeling and acting. Pictures of my oldest have won photography contests at a university with a masters in photography program. So what? Point is luck has been kind to both my kids and they have everything going in their favor including white privilege and parents with a good income. Both my daughters suffer from a variety of abusive behavior from other students and the school management did little or nothing. My oldest has had one very abusive teacher who should not be working with kids. When I worked at Pearson I visited many schools because the next sale depended on the success of the last client. I was tasked with helping the schools improve their performance so Pearson could make the sale to the next school or district. That could mean anything from staff changes to designing training and education seminars. At least half of the schools I worked with had a majority of teachers who could not articulate what an Education Objective is or how to use it and this was nationwide. So I’m particularly skilled at judging school employees and their efforts plus education processes, then learning from them and helping them improve what most desperately want to be great at doing.
To be honest, I had zero experience with charter schools until I transferred my oldest to one because she began having nightmares and mental health concerns from the unsupervised abuse at her public school. She’s a stunning redhead with a body several years more mature than 7th Grade would suggest. I don’t have to tell the women reading this what a real burden that is. She will be a lovely adult but right now I think she’d wear camouflage if I let her. Men in their 20s and 30s frequently flirt with her. It’s super creepy. The transfer was my last option and I assure you I took this all the way to the top people at the District. My options were two: a charter or homeschooling which I also strongly dislike the idea of.
At this point, I don’t care if the charter school is somewhat less academically rigorous. And I don’t think it really matters. When a kid is being so traumatized that she needs to see a therapist then what does matter? Especially in today’s environment of 13 Reasons Why. However, the charter school I transferred my oldest daughter to scores significantly higher on all measures than her public school. I just checked this at Greatschools. She is transferring to a magnet school next year that scores more than twice what her previous public school scores and every demographic does better. When my daughter began at the charter school she had a problem as the new student with a few girls who have a history of being jerks the school is all hands on deck. Everyone is called in. The parents of the girls (who have a history of this anti-social behavior) are called in to tell them the bad behavior stops or they find a new school. If my child struggles with a discipline, say Math for example, then several adults get involved to find the best way to help. At her public school a student struggling with homework or a subject were automatically sent to after-school detention where they could work on the problem. The efforts of this particular charter school management are nothing short of stunning to me. I am completely aware that my experience here is anecdotal as I’ve been reading this blog long enough to know the horror stories with charter schools are almost ubiquitous.
And here’s a secret I never saw coming. The charter school my oldest daughter attends has attracted outstanding teachers. Same for all their staff. I met most of the people who work there as it’s a smallish school. Their IPP team is the best I’ve ever seen. They have psychiatrists who come in a few days as needed to help kids who have more serious challenges. Obviously, this school attracts many kids who cannot do well in the free-for-all environment of many of the local public schools here who seem to use Lord Of The Flies more as a manual than a piece of Art.
In my experience, most of the schools I worked with (about a 1,000) at Pearson were lucky to have one great teacher per grade. Many kids and parents go through a school without ever knowing what truly great teaching is like.
What does all this mean? Well, my feelings and thoughts about teachers and public schools broadened from the young scholar I was when at university. I volunteered for the lowest performing schools in Los Angeles because I wanted to help those who needed the help most. I suffered intense racism at every school I worked at that was a minority school. Once working in public schools I saw a great many teachers were simply not bright people and had no social skills to make them a good teacher. I saw incompetent teachers promoted into management to get them out of the classroom. I saw nepotism and worse. I resisted transferring my child out of a public school to a charter and my child suffered for it.
I should mention that the great schools when I worked for Pearson didn’t really buy Pearson’s stuff. Pearson’s market then was schools that were failing. I don’t know how it is now for Pearson but I suspect that has changed with all these Dot Com Vultures attacking governments to get our taxes. But I can tell you I doubt the personnel problems at schools have gone away.
Your great work in this blog would be much more useful and you would find a much larger more sympathetic audience if you were honest about all the problems in Education. I frequently post your blog posts to my Facebook account and I don’t much sympathy for teachers despite nearly all of my friends on there being Liberal and Progressive. Here is my starter list based on what I’ve seen in my 59 years.
Standards to become a public school teacher are a bad joke. I knew a graduate of UC Berkeley with a degree in Comparative Literature who attended a teacehr college in here in California (The State Colleges are the teaching colleges here) and the Eduation Department refused to accept his Literature classes as a replacement for theirs which were taught my moonlighting high school teachers. Let that sink in for a minute!
Standards need to be raised significantly and the whole process of creating competent teachers needs to be taken away from Education Departments at universities. Teacher pay is low because nearly all Americans remember their schools days by the number of bad teachers they had and the abuse they suffered because adults were too busy to maintain order. If instead, they remembered teachers they didn’t like but also respected their mastery of a discipline and the safe schoolenvironment then the public would be much more friendly toward higher compensation and much less friendly to the dismantling and privatization of Public Education and much more likely to see this for what it is; a Russian style theiving of public assets being gifted to oligarchs.
Teachers need to police their own. Teachers unions have the same PR disaster with the public that police unions have. And no one in the public seems to have a clue what Tenure is and I never see anyone from Education trying to educate the public on this to correct the lie that Tenure means ‘can never be fired’. Everyone at every school knows who the bad teachers are. If I sat long enough with a teacher doing low-quality work they eventually admitted their failures and misery. It was heartbraking for me to witness someone being honest with themselves. They were often really good people either mismatched with the unwirrtten qualifications for great teaching or stupendously underserved by their teaching college. Most high school teachers also know who are the teachers having relationships with students. I saw schools where male teachers had married women who were their students in middle school! I saw a school where the Librarian had a decade of relationships with the football players. Why is it that when these scandals show up the perp is never turned in by another teacher? Just like cops, teachers rarely police their own.
Public schools have bloated management salaries and staffing. The great teachers who leave Public Education do so because of the low quality work environment. The people who stay in Public Education have a significant subgroup within who simply have no other options.
Continuing Education is a joke that companies like Pearson laugh at regarding how easy it is to control. Nothing unique here as Continuing Legal Education is also a joke. This needs to be a more serious process that actually improves teachers’ performance and enjoyment in the classroom.
You need to go to year-round schools. You will never win the public’s sympathy when you have 8-10 week vacations in the summer plus almost another month during the school year. We are no longer an agrarian country and in these conservative times when our last liberal President was Richard Nixon your huge time off is a PR nightmare.
When you take a staff development day you need to send a note to parents explaining what you did, what you learned, and how their child will benefit. Otherwise, it appears you are doing what many parents are doing when they “Call in well” for a mental health day, or a surf day when it’s not crowded, or a snow day in So Cal…
The teaching profession is dominated by women excessively given to caretaking. The joke I always tell is that teachers are people excessively given to care-taking but not bright enough to be nurses or doctors. If you want to improve schools then balance the staff by attracting more high-quality men to the profession. Children need to learn from both sexes.
Teachers need to master at least two years studying Information Design. And I mean at a university level with real professors, not a seminar or a university extension course taught by some other high school teacher. I have yet to meet one teacher who can even explain the basics of Information Design or has ever heard of it.
Close the Teacher’s Lounge. You know all that great work you do on citizenship, character, integrity, honor and the rest? Well, it all goes in one ear and out the other when your scholars go out into recess, lunch and other free-for-all times and there are two barely paid bottom-of-the-pyramid employees or volunteers supervising hundreds of kids.
Put more staff on busses. How ridiculous is it that parents cannot safely put their kids on a bus and instead have to line up with hundreds of other cars to drop off and pick up? Parents hate it. And it’s a monumental waste of gasoline and time. And why? Simply because teachers and management refuse to create and properly run a safe bus.
Forget any aspirations of being like Norway or Finland in Education. They are simply better people who care more for their fellow man and woman and child. America is simply the place where every aspect of being alive is a business opportunity to turn our brothers and sisters suffering, needs, and success into our personal profit.
I can go on and on but the main point is your defense of Teachers and Public Education must be balanced with your public examination of the flaws plus solutions. Those flaws are serious and right now you are losing the battle and the war. If you don’t change soon then like Global warming it will be far too late if it’s not already.
I’m writing this from my phone while at a doctor’s office so I’m certain my writing and grammer (LOL) are not perfect.
Warmest regards,
P
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No creo nada de eso.
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Hit a little lost to home?
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Me quedo con lo que he escrito.
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Many astute observations here.
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Than you!
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These virtual and blended learning schools are legal escape hatches for many of the children that hate learning … for whatever reason.
And they are legal escape hatches for families living in poverty. The children, instead of doing what it takes to learn, end up working at poverty wage paying jobs making money that is contributed to the family’s survival.
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Do you have a source to cite for that sweeping generalization? Because the blended learning charter my oldest attends is the highest performing middle school in this city of nearly 200,000. They also seem to have the best teachers because they create the best learning environment for those teachers to work in and then give those best and brightest the room to teach their own way. I’d suggest the opposite is true and that the more wealthy families are seeking out these schools because they are less ethnically diverse. But you need to learn that there are two groups seeking out these alternatives. There is one group that are extremist christians who don’t want their kids in school with blacks/heathens/muslims/et.al., and there are the rest who are simply seeking a sounder educational process for their children.
The primary obstacle to Public Education’s long-term survival is the obstinance of the people in the teaching profession who got in when the standards were low and are absolutely not gonna survive if the standards are raised.
This isn’t a secret. Schools are nothing more than a group of people. The best are gonna work with the best generally. That is why the smart kids generally leave the small towns for places like California or Seattle or Japan. Same for the best teachers. They are not gonna work with the dregs. Like everything else in humanity, there is a small group who are really effective. Whether we are talking about great doctors, great people, great writers, or great athletes, the percentage that is their presences is very small. If this doesn’t ring true to you then look at your students. What percentage of them are really getting the subject(s) you teach and then doing something with that information? Maybe 1 or 2 kids per class? It’s the same for teachers except for the cream of the teacher pool has already been skimmed off for other more challenging disciplines.
I’m not here to defend charters or ding people who teach. I am here for the facts. And if the facts are uncomfortable or bruise a few egos then so be it.
If you don’t have at least one parent a year coming in with tears to thank you for the changes in their child you’re probably one of the dregs.
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“But money doesn’t buy completion. The report quoted the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), which found the graduation rates for 2015 in virtual schools to be just half the size of the national average: 43 percent vs. 82 percent.
“While virtual charters often argue that they’re enrolling kids at greater risk of dropping out or who are already behind, which would bode poorly for performance, the report’s authors said demographic data for those schools tells “a different story.” Annual reports from the NEPC find that students in virtual schools “are more likely to be white and less likely to be poor, have disabilities and/or be English language learners than students attending brick and mortar schools.”
https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/03/20/report-profit-motive-pervades-online-charter-schools-and-blended-programs.aspx
While no one has investigated the exact reason the 57 students out of every 100 students attending online charter schools that do not graduate are doing or not doing, it is easy to conclude that the reason they are not graduating, the same reason for nongraduates in traditional brick and mortar public school classrooms, is that they are not doing the work or even logging in to participate leading to a further conclusion that the reason they left the brick and mortar classroom for the virtual one was to actually escape so they could do whatever they want and not be hounded.
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The biggest issue with online learning, especially at home, is motivation
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