Should We Be Supporting Virtual Schools?

There was an excellent story in the Washington Post this weekend on the pros and cons of virtual schools.  Virtual schools are sort of a hybrid between public charter schools, online learning such as Khan Academy,  and homeschooling.  Virtual schools are K-12 educational systems run by public schools to teach children their entire education at home using technology.  These are generally treated as charter schools (and thus exempt from many school regulations), but are paid for and treated as part of the public school system, usually with significant learner support expected by the at-home learning coach (e.g., parent or other similar substitute).

It is quite an extensive article, so I recommend that you read it in full here.  But here are a few of the items that stood out for me:

Some Pros:

• Virtual schools provide a different educational choice for students who can't go to school or who have been failing in traditional school.
• For parents, virtual schools are similar to homeschooling, but without the responsibility or expense of obtaining high-quality curriculum yourself.
• Technology allows students to study at their own pace and schedule, to review what they don't understand as often as necessary and to skip through the things that they do, to use multi-media rich learning materials, and, to some extent, to adjust learning to their own learning style.
• Companies are investing lots of money into curriculum development, which presumably should translate into high-quality learning tools.

Some Cons:

• Virtual schools have a pretty terrible achievement record, both in terms of test scores and in completion/graduation rates.  One study showed that only one third of the schools managed by the largest player in the business, K12 Inc, met the federal NCLB standards last year.  And the article had an example of the Colorado Virtual Academy, also managed by K12, which has achieved only a 12% on-time graduation rate, compared to 72% of other schools statewide.
• In at least some states, the Virtual schools are "locating" in the poorest, most rural counties that received the highest levels of funding support from the state, but are enrolling students from throughout the state and counting them as students in that poor county.  So, for example, the Virginia Virtual Academy counts all its students as being from its home base in Carroll County, which the state reimburses $5,421 per student.  Therefore, the 66 students enrolled who actually live in Fairfax County, which would only receive $2,716 per student if they attended their local schools, are costing the state twice as much by being counted as Carroll County students.
• Socialization can be a big issue with these students, because unlike local homeschool organizations, which foster a variety of group social and academic experiences, virtual school students receive all of their education in their own home, even starting as early as kindergarten.  Virtual schools are trying to address that issue and find more opportunities for their students to interact with their peers.
• While these companies are paying 35% less for their teachers than traditional schools, they are putting lots of money into lobbying politicians.   According to the Post, in the past six years, K12 has contributed half a million dollars to US politicians, 3/4th of which went to Republicans (who are typically stronger supporters of the school choice movement).

This is actually a subject I know a good bit about in general, because not only do I homeschool, but I used to work in the distance education field before that.  The pros and cons above (at least the ones that don't have to do with funding and lobbying) are things that we have long known about the potential and the problems with distance education.

Education via technology is sometimes the only solution for some students, such as those that are geographically remote or isolated (students in Alaska, rural Maine, or the mountains of West Virginia, for example) or who have health problems, physical disabilities, or other issues that prohibit them from attending traditional schools.  Beyond that, distance education can be a fantastic option for disciplined, self-motivated learners.

However, while that designation applies to some percentage of students who fail in traditional schools, that description does not apply to the vast majority of struggling learners.  Particularly students in poor communities have little or no home support for their learning, since they are often in full-time employed single parent or dual working parent homes, many of who are illiterate and/or do not speak English.   They do not have access to the type of "learning coaches" that is critical for making this kind of education work, particularly for elementary-aged students.  So while it sounds good to say these programs give choice to failing learners, the reality is that having these types of students trying to learn through technology at home without any support is likely to make their educational performance be even worse, not better.  

As a homeschool mom, I can attest to the fact that showing a child the best-producing, most enthralling computer-based instruction featuring the most brilliant people on the planet does not ensure that he or she will learn anything from it.  As I have stated in an earlier post, education is so much more than just giving a child wonderful instructional content.

So while I'm not saying I don't think they have potential and shouldn't play a role in the panoply of educational options we are fortunate enough to have in our country, I, personally, am suspicious about how much at least some of the schools are really dedicated to solving our educational problems, and how much they are about making their owners a substantial profit.

But take my word for it.  Read the Post article, check into the situation in your state, and if you have any opinions, pro or con, feel free to add them below.

PS--Thanks to my father, who lives in DC, for pointing out this article for me.  Also, just to be clear, I am extremely supportive of distance education options for taking some classes, particularly among older students.  But the virtual school, which supplies the entire educational curriculum at home from literally grades K-12, is an entirely different matter.

Does Khan Academy Represent the Future of Education, Part 2

Last month, I wrote a blog post about the free, online Khan Academy and whether or not that represents the future of education.  My friend Maria of Natural Math has just written an interesting post on her blog on Metaphors explaining Khan Academy that encouraged me to think a bit more about this matter.  So this is the metaphor I would offer about Khan Academy:

Forrest Gump taught us that life is like a box of chocolates.  I would say that Khan Academy is like a can of soup.  Education, however, is like a family dinner.

To explain this metaphor, I have to go back, wow, like 20 years ago, when I visited the National Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (which does the same sort of thing for the Air Force that its more famous cousins in West Point and Annapolis does for the Army and the Navy).  Our guide, who was one of the instructors at the Academy, told me something that really stuck with me.  He claimed that only about 25% of his job as an instructor was to teach the content in his classes.  The vast majority of his job--75%--was to be a role model who exemplified by his character and his behavior what it is to be an exemplary Air Force officer.

And while that ratio may be off compared to traditional schools, given the special nature of those military academies, I think that there are some similar roles for all teachers.  So much of education is all about the kind of person that student is becoming, not the academic subjects at all.  We send children to classes to learn math, indeed, but also to learn to be responsible, to be punctual, to get work done by deadlines, to get along with other people, to continue to struggle with something you don't understand until you do, to work collaboratively, to be creative, to be a problem-solver....tons of things besides math (or science or English or whatever).

So, for example, if it were just about the content, you would think homeschoolers would be all over Khan Academy.  We could set our children up on the computer and tell them to work their way through the videos until they are all done.

But nobody I know homeschools like that.  When people uninformed about homeschooling talk to us, their first question is always, "But what about socialization?"  And it is all we can do not to gaffaw in their face, because at least in an area like the Triangle NC, our kids are the most socialized kids on the planet.  My son had some kind of group learning situation almost every day last year.  He went to Math Clubs and Math Treks, did group nature explorations, participated in an history coop and a large, multi-age and multi-disciplinary coop, had art classes, wrote group stories for the homeschool newspaper, read and discussed over 100 books in several different book clubs, played on a homeschool baseball team, and studied world religions in Sunday School.

If it were just about the content, why would I do that to myself?  The answer is, of course, that what I want for my son's education is so much more than just the academic content of his classes.

So, to return to my can of soup....Khan may be a master teacher (maybe...there are certainly lots of master teachers), and the Internet is a vehicle by which he can can himself (or other master teachers) and make it easily available.  And canned soup is certainly handy to have.  You can get canned soup from Master Chefs--for example, Wolfgang Puck sells canned soup--that probably tastes pretty good and that is pretty healthy (although I don't think it can match the homemade chicken, barley, and vegetable soup that I make weekly for my son's lunch and that takes a minimum of about 30 hours, since I use my friend Laura's recipe for making super-healthy 24 hour bone broth as the base for the soup).

But canned soup does not a family dinner make.  The family dinner is about the other people, and the relationships, and tablecloths and silverware and candlesticks, and the conversations, and all of that, even if the family is eating canned soup for dinner.

So, Maria, there is my analogy.  Khan Academy is like a can of soup.  I might occasionally give my son a can opener and tell him to go heat one up, but I would never confuse it with a meal.

A Different Approach to Undergraduate Education

Tonight I listened to a webinar entitled "Harvard or Heaven with Voddie Baucham," a Christian minister who is a leader in the contemporary Family Integrated Church movement.  During this talk, Baucham attacked the current higher education system as being worthless, rediculously expensive, unnecessarily long, and antagonistic towards Christianity and Christian values.   Rather than send his children to a traditional college, Baucham's children are enrolled in a program called College Plus (http:www.collegeplus.org), which the website describes as "a revolutionary Christian based distance learning program helping students earn their fully accredited bachelor’s degree in a fraction of the time and cost of the traditional university system."

What College Plus does is assign each student a coach, who works with them in acquiring the skills and content knowledge to pass the CLEP or other subject-matter exam that will assure them college credit in that area.  Because the program is so individualized, it varies from student to student, but the website suggests that the typical student graduates with a baccalaurete degree in two-three years for a total cost of $10,000-$15,000.

Now, my worldview and belief system is very different from Reverend Baucham preaches.  I also value some of the things he rejects as "worthless," just as I don't care about some aspects of education that are most important to him.  However,  I found this to be an interesting illustration of an alternative approach to college that doesn't end up bankrupting the student and/or the parents.

And that is, I think, one of the most precious things about the American higher education system--the wide number of alternate paths and approaches that are available to our students.  If nothing else, I'm grateful to College Plus for reminding me of that gift of our system.