Online Schools Score Better On Wall Street Than In Classrooms

The New York Times:

By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing.

Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.

By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[J R M]

01:46 AM on 12/15/2011

Online classes can work well for disciplined and motivated students.

My daughter had a good personal experience with K12. She was bored in 7th grade science and history. The principal suggested she move some of her classes online. She did. In one semester she covered 3 years of material in both. She would knock off a year of material in 5 to 6 weeks, and they would send us the next course. That summer I had her take honors high school geometry from Northwestern's Gifted Learning Links - which was really a correspondence class rather than an on-line class. My daughter skipped 8th grade and jumped to the honors program in high school.

She is in 10th grade now taking calculus, a full load of IB classes, and an on-line AP Biology class (as there were no seats open for IB Biology). The on-line AP Biology class has problems, but is quite demanding. She would prefer a solid in-class class, but on-line is better than nothing.

Next year she is off to college - and online and correspondence classes have allowed her to move at closer to her own pace.

[gallo48]

06:59 PM on 12/13/2011

As Cyndi Lauper sings, "Money changes everything."

[daughterusmc]

04:46 PM on 12/13/2011

That's exactly what they are supposed to do.

[Patriot86]

12:29 PM on 12/13/2011

No kidding like all for profit privatization of important government functions...it fails but Wall Street get the money....these things are bad.