Colorado Senator Seeks K-12 Online School Audit, Cites Poor Grades, Structure

Colorado Democratic Senate President Brandon Shaffer is seeking an emergency audit of online K-12 schools.

In a letter to lawmakers Monday, Shaffer said he had "serious concerns" about student failure rates and initiatives that seek to gain state funding through increased enrollment, the Associated Press reports.

He wants by January a report on how much online K-12 programs cost and how much funding should be allotted. Shaffer argues that over half of students in online K-12 schools are failing, and the programs are poorly organized and lack long-term planning and goal-setting.

Other politicians are criticizing Shaffer for political maneuvering in his request ahead of election season, according to the AP, as an audit would generally require nine months to complete.

More than 1 million K-12 students took online courses during the 2007-08 academic year, according to a 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Education -- the most recent data available.

Although proponents tout online learning's cost effectiveness, little research exists on how effective virtual courses actually are.

If Colorado lawmakers decide today to honor Shaffer's request for an audit, the findings may be among the first to provide more comprehensive insight into the operations and efficacy of online schooling.

Already, schools across the country are gradually taking up pieces of online learning. This month, Indiana's superintendent of public instruction proposed requiring his state's high schoolers to take at least one online course before graduating.

If lawmakers accept his proposal, Indiana would join the ranks of several other states that have recently announced moving toward mandatory online coursework. Florida's recently passed Digital Learning Now law similarly requires that high school students take at least one online course before earning their diploma, among other provisions. In Idaho, the Board of Education is considering a policy that would require high schoolers to earn at least two online credits towards a diploma.

Comments

[f2900]

12:15 AM on 10/03/2011

I teach at a school for at-risk kids. Every one of our students who has left us for an online school has either come back to us, dropped out of school, or left to go back to a brick and mortar school. Why did they leave? "Nobody watched out for me", "Nobody cared," Nobody would help me when I needed it." Wow. Guess real classrooms with real teachers aren't obsolete after all.

[LearningCommunity]

01:21 PM on 09/28/2011

As a provider of online education infrastructure, I say this is a great proposal. Verify online is effective.

Just as there are good plumbers and bad plumbers there are good online educational programs and bad online programs.

It's critical the community continually evaluate the education going on in the community to make sure the community maximizes all the educational tools available. Things are constantly changing and education needs to change with it. The community needs to work hard to take advantage of the latest tools.

Kids today are connected "online." Like it or not! Everyone is impacted by what’s online. Clearly there's good stuff online and bad stuff online. Communities that understand how to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff will thrive. Communities that understand we're all connected and can take advantage of those connections will flourish.

Communities that recognize that traditional schools are only one element in the overall learning goals of the community will do better than communities that rely on an educational system built around a 18th model of forced conformity to the status quo.

In a successful learning community, onsite education is augmented by online education. Where proximity isn't possible or advantageous - combining online learning modules can be both appropriate and advantageous.

But, as we all know, the key is the outcome. Do learners achieve the learning objectives? We need to validate the results.

So I agree with the Senator.

[EmilyDawson]

12:58 PM on 09/28/2011

Schools like COVA operate like this:
* K-8 teachers do not teach; they are secretaries, customer support, and marketing reps for the school and the school’s EMO. The parents do 98% of the teaching or the kids teach themselves. Students move through daily online lessons with no accountability (the parent grades the work), no consistent interaction with a teacher, no real feedback from a teacher on assignments, and little to no direct instruction from a certified teacher.
* COVA & EMOs like K12 care about one thing - making money for their shareholders. Enrollment by October 1st is the number one priority.
* A school like COVA hasn’t met AYP in years and never will because they can't attract the best teachers ($35000 a year) and they don’t care to.
* The Boards at schools like COVA are in the EMO’s back pocket.
* The low student achievement at schools like COVA is also affected by class size - enormous (almost criminal) class sizes. At the K-8 level, teachers have 75 "homeroom" students and support 300-350 students in their content (which is impossible, but very, very lucrative for an EMO like K12). High school is much the same. This is how K12 makes money - they load up class sizes and hire as few teachers as possible to teach as many subjects as possible (without proper endorsements). This is a violation of the highly qualified requirement in NCLB.
I work for a district online school where operations look NOTHING like

[LearningCommunity]

01:13 PM on 09/28/2011

Emily, interesting. Good point.

Education should not be a profit center. The goal is the improvement of the community, not the improvement of one corporate entity - particularly corporate entities that remove cash from the community, which weakens the community.

I teach online for a profit based school and I cannot give the attention nessary to help at risk students. Nor can I provide the appropriate feedback on an individual basis that is necessary to help each learning thrive and discover the joy of learning.

[J R M]

06:09 PM on 09/28/2011

It works well for smart highly motivated students who can teach themselves. My daughter did middle school science and history (3 years worth) through K12. She thought it was criminally easy. I don't think she ever contacted her teacher.

She did Geometry and Pre-Calculus through Northwestern's Gifted Learning Links. That was more a correspondence course. She only asked the teacher one question, a strange geometry proof I couldn't figure out. Otherwise, I handled her few math questions.

She is now doing on-line AP Biology. She seems to be doing OK. I can't really help her now, as my knowledge base is on the physical side.

I am more dubious about how well students who are not interested or engaged will do though.

[lovbuton]

06:21 PM on 09/27/2011

They just went to online classes here in Idaho. We tried to get a recall election for the head of public instruction Mr. Tom Luna or lunatic, but failed to get the signatures. One thing that did come out was that he and Gov. Otter both got campaign contributions from the online school. Just something fishy here.

[J R M]

05:52 PM on 09/27/2011

Simple enough - use the same subject mastery tests for in-class and on-line classes to determine if the students have learned the material. My daughter is taking AP Biology on-line. She will be taking the same AP exams that the students taking in-class AP Biology take. Her college credit associated with the course will be determined by how she does on the exam.

High stakes exam.

[am10]

11:04 AM on 09/30/2011

What does she do for lab?

[J R M]

12:10 PM on 09/30/2011

I don't know yet. When she did on-line science with K12 in middle school they sent her lab material and equipment for her labs.

Actually, I am not worried about it this year - she did biology and physics last year (with labs) and this year she is doing IB Physics and IB Chemistry with labs. She is simply preparing for the AP Biology exam at this point.

[P Alan Greene]

05:40 PM on 09/27/2011

About damn time. Public schools are subjected to a mountain of measurements and evaluation, while cyber-schools don't have to offer an iota of proof that they're actually teaching anybody anything.

[lexsird]

05:37 PM on 09/27/2011

Online classes for k-12? Could we shove kids down the toilet in education a bit harder? Kids that age need teachers, classrooms, other students. There are things one learns from being around peers. It's bad enough we let parents get away with "home schooling". Yeah, I know your precious kid gets As being home schooled, I have heard the drivel. But you socially retard them by keeping them at home hiding in the house with mommy and daddy. Whatever, at this point, I don't think there is any turning any of it around.

[gdalpert]

06:12 PM on 09/27/2011

It's like any other institution...it's not a one size fits all solution. My sixteen year old son attended brick and mortar schools until halfway through 10th grade. He struggled through middle and high school. We put him in an online environment for the second half of 10th grade and so far in 11th. He gets plenty of social life with his friends after school. He doesn't need the power struggles, drama, and distractions of a physical school environment.

In brick and mortar school, he was failing math...badly. I didn't think he had learned anything. Online, he is operating at grade level, and making As and Bs. I monitor his work and mentor his progress, and I know what he's learning. He wants to get to the point where he can go back to brick and mortar next year. If he can motivate himself to do that, it's a success story.

I have no doubt that without online school, he would be a dropout from school the day he turns seventeen. It's been a Godsend for us.