The Texas-based IDEA charter chain, along with the Noble Network in Chicago and the Match charter school in Boston, is trying to boost its college graduation rates by encouraging its former students who dropped out of college to enlist in an online college program where requirements are minimal.
By partnering with Southern New Hampshire University, which enrolls tens of thousands of students from across the country in its low-cost online college programs, the charter operators are coaching students through college. The university provides the coursework and confers degrees, while an arm or affiliate of the charter networks recruits and mentors students.
The Noble charter network in Chicago launched its partnership last year, following the IDEA network in Texas and Match Charter School in Boston. Together, the three programs now enroll nearly 1,000 students, and other charter operators say they’re watching closely.
It’s a notable extension of those networks’ mission, which for years has been to send their mostly low-income students of color to college. More recently, though, it’s become harder to ignore the reality that many of their alumni are leaving higher education without degrees…
If successful, these programs will provide students another chance to earn a degree that could bolster their financial futures, while also boosting the charter networks’ college completion rates…
So far, though, students in the programs have earned only a few dozen bachelor’s degrees. And the expansion of these programs worries some observers, who question whether students are getting a high-quality college experience — and whether the degrees students do earn will pay off in the job market.
IDEA launched IDEA-U in 2017 with around 40 students, including Chapa. Now, the program has around 400 students from across Texas enrolled, about half of whom are IDEA graduates.
Around 95 students are enrolled in Noble’s program, known as Noble Forward, which launched last year. Nearly all are graduates of a Noble school in Chicago.
Match’s program, initially called Match Beyond, began in 2013 by enrolling mostly Match alumni, but was spun off as a nonprofit called Duet in 2018. It now serves around 500 students who graduated from high schools across the Boston area.
The programs differ slightly, but the academics work the same way. Students enroll in one of a handful of “competency-based” degree programs offered by Southern New Hampshire University and progress by completing projects designed to show they’ve mastered key skills.
There are no lectures, professors, or class discussions, but students are assigned readings and videos. Students work at their own pace — instead of on a set academic calendar — re-submitting projects as many times as they need, though the university says students average around two tries. Their projects are evaluated by a university “reviewer” with at least a master’s degree.
Underlying question: Is the goal of this program to provide a valuable education to students or to improve the data of the sponsors?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It remains to be seen if this venture is worthwhile. If students can get meaningful employment as a result of the degree, it is a positive outcome. When I read the article, I also thought these programs may be an attempt to gain more access to public money through Pell Grants. While the venture is currently quite small, the intention is to scale up the operation. Like many large charter chains, quality often diminishes as the schools multiply. This may just be another opportunity to monetize poor students.
Social interaction [face-to-face] is a key ingredient to growing into a mature adult.
What will happen to those young people that spend so much time in front of a tube and little time interacting with real people when they go out into the world to find a job?
“Having a high IQ is an advantage but having EQ can make all the difference to your studies and future career. Emotional intelligence determines our ability to manage our feelings and relationships. … EQ and IQ are the difference between being able to function well and being able to function well enough to succeed.”
EQ is centered on abilities such as:
“The skills that make up emotional intelligence can be learned at any time. However, it’s important to remember that there is a difference between simply learning about EQ and applying that knowledge to your life. Just because you know you should do something doesn’t mean you will—especially when you become overwhelmed by stress, which can override your best intentions. In order to permanently change behavior in ways that stand up under pressure, you need to learn how to overcome stress in the moment, and in your relationships, in order to remain emotionally aware.”
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/emotional-intelligence-eq.htm
Beware, the techies are already attempting to sell the lie that you can learn EQ from a tube and avoid all that nasty interaction face-to-face stuff that comes with socializing with real people.
I found the overall discussion offered by Chalkbeat hard to follow. It referred to three slightly different programs offered by IDEA, NOBEL. Match/Duet charter schools. It also buried the fact that students in some programs were not being offered the full array of studies offered at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) but the more limited fare in SNHU’s College for America program. This program is completely online. It is competency based and project-centered and available to “partners” including (from the website, nine other organizations including several hospitals, insurance companies, and K12, itself an online program. In the following I track references to IDEA-U only.
IDEA-U is basically a coaching/mentorship service with a few other wraparound supports. It is not a university. It does not offer college credits. It is not free. Students pay IDEA-U $5,500 per year, for the program.Here is what the student gets.
IDEA-U holds monthly events for students. It also requires students to come to its facility—open late and on Saturdays — for 12 hours each week, in addition to an hour-long meeting with their coach. This coach monitors students’ progress in completing their online courses and competency-based projects. These courses are offered by The College of America at Southern New Hampshire University. SNHU gives IDEA-U access to data about when students are logging in and how many times it takes them to master a project, so coaches can see when students are struggling. The wraparound support provided by IDEA-U to IDEA charter school graduates also includes a one-time, no-interest loan funded by donations from IDEA employees.
In addition to the $5,500 fee toIDEA-U, students pay tuition for courses offered through SNHU’s College for America program. IDEA-U gets a the tuition kickback from SNHU of about 40%. This is said to help cover the coast of coaching students. The tuition kickback is almost certain to be higher than the IDEA-U coaching and the wraparound services. This means that IDEA-U is poised to make a profit, especially if enrollments increase.
IDEA-U has one primary goal: To increase the number of IDEA charter school graduates to earn a college degree. (IDEA students can’t apply to IDEA-U until after they’ve graduated high school.)
“IDEA-U shares a brand name and some resources with the K-12 charter network, but it’s technically a separate company and a non-profit with its own employees. (I could not find an IRS 990 form for IDEA-U). According to LinkedIn, employees have job titles like these: Student Support Specialist at IDEA-U; Managing Director at IDEA-U; College Completion Advisor at IDEA-U; Idea-U San Antonio Intern.
IDEA launched IDEA-U in 2017 with around 40 students. Although this program of mentoring and additional support was designed for IDEA charter school graduates, the program now has around 400 students in several Texas locations. About half are IDEA graduates. In other words, enrollments in IDEA-U are not limited to is own charterschool graduates. These additonal students are also a bonus for marketing SNHU’s College for America programs.
See more at https://collegeforamerica.org/adult-education-degree-programs/
Diane’s question was this:
Is the goal of this program to provide a valuable education to students or to improve the data of the sponsors?
I think the goal is to improve the college graduation data of the charter school sponsors, important for marketing each of the participating K-12 franchises. The officers who run IDEA charter schools want to market the IDEA charter school franchise as preparing students for college. The metoring program probably helps in college completion but in fact any college will do if students graduate and also have a decent job, per the USDE College ScoreCard https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?183026-Southern-New-Hampshire-University
I would defer to Mike Rose on whether and how students benefit from these arrangements, especially online only, competency-based postsecondary program. See. http://mikerosebooks.blogspot.com/2019/12/who-should-go-to-college-unpacking.html
I also think that the officers who run IDEA charter schools may be looking at their mentoring program as a potential platform for jump-starting their own teacher education program, with Relay Graduate School of Education having some features to emulate.