Category Archives: Online Schools

Last week I pointed you to some research and analysis that put the current K-12 budget cuts and proposed education jobs bailout in perspective. Well, what are the answers then? One way is to open the doors for parents to more quality education options that aren’t as labor-intensive. One way is to let successful entrepreneurs like Rocketship Education continue to thrive at their hybrid learning model and share what they learn with others. But Colorado also is a national leader in online public schooling, though we certainly have room to improve over time both in terms of quality and quantity. Briana LeClaire of the Idaho Freedom Foundation — who appears to be closely connected with our friend and cyberschool champion Lori Cooney — has a great metaphor. In highlighting a successful district virtual school program in her state, she suggests it’s time to throw away the teachers’ union hymnal and find a new song to sing. I like it … Sing on, education reformers!

Several weeks ago I very briefly highlighted a School Reform News piece written by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow on an innovative public charter school network in California that may someday soon come to Colorado. The name? Rocketship Education. It couldn’t be more cool, makes me think about becoming an astronaut someday. Even better, the school is helping needy students in San Jose learn a lot using a unique hybrid model to divide instruction between the traditional classroom and the online “Learning Lab.” Rocketship schools are able to save money and resources for other key priorities in the process. Well, Rocketship CEO John Danner is coming to Denver this Friday to speak at the Donnell-Kay Foundation’s Hot Lunch event. Before making his trip, Mr. Danner joined Ben DeGrow for a new iVoices podcast (click the link or the play button below) to discuss what sets his schools apart, his vision for education reform and possible future plans for Rocketship Education (maybe coming to Colorado?):

One of the main ingredients that gives public charter schools the opportunity to thrive in a competitive environment is the degree of autonomy to determine its own culture, curriculum, program, budget and personnel policies. But just how much autonomy do they have? We know that because of different laws and policies, all states certainly aren’t equal. The Center for Education Reform’s annual report card on states’ charter-friendliness is the leading example. But today the Fordham Institute released a report that takes a closer look at 100 charter schools in 26 different states, rating them on a carefully-developed metric of autonomy in the areas of: Vision and Culture, Program, Staffing, and Financial and Governance. An interesting aspect of the report was not only taking into account the effect of state laws but also adding the impact of contracts signed between charter schools and their authorizers (e.g., school districts) on autonomy in these different areas.

My friends at the Education Policy Center recently ordered a couple of new books by big names in the field: Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Paul Peterson’s Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning. If you want to whet your appetite for one or both books, or just to get a flavor of what their argument is, you need to check out the authors debating on the Eduwonk blog. I’ll boil down their arguments for you with excerpted quotes (or you can read Marci Kanstoroom’s summary at Education Next):

Are great teachers just born that way, or is there a proven method to train many instructors to become much more effective? In one of the most fascinating (and longest) education articles out there, Elizabeth Green wrote in the New York Times Sunday magazine about “Building a Better Teacher.” The experts she talked to suggest that the answer may be the latter, that there are specific methods and techniques (and a new vocabulary of teaching terms) that can be used more successfully train high-quality instructors. However, over at Education Next, Harvard’s Paul Peterson says one of Green’s key conclusions is misguided: …She says we will need millions of additional teachers to cover baby boom retirements, and wonders how we can find enough good ones. The answer is that we can’t–not even with more effective education schools or elaborate merit pay programs or by ruthlessly dismissing ineffective teachers.

As Ed News Colorado reports today: The number of full-time students attending online programs across the state grew 12.5 percent to 13,128, or the equivalent of the 19th largest school district in Colorado. The remarkable point in the story is that 12.5 percent is the second-lowest rate of annual growth for Colorado public online programs in the last six years. Still, it’s gigantic compared to the state’s overall enrollment growth of 1.7 percent. Ed News Colorado points out one reason why the demand continues to grow:

A new USA Today article by education reporter Greg Toppo is featured under the banner of “Recession fuels shift from private to public schools” — more middle-class parents with less money to spend on tuition are making the switch: Private-school parents typically find that the structure of public schools takes some getting used to. In most states, funding for public schools is calculated on a per-student basis, based on average student counts during the first few weeks of the school year. If a student drops out after 40 days, the funding that student generated stays with the school — even if he or she does not return to that campus. Private schools, on the other hand, risk losing tuition payments once a student leaves. “Private schools tend to treat you more like a customer than the public schools,” [parent Angela] Allyn says. Public schools are “going to get their tax dollars whether or not you as a parent are upset. If you’re in a private school and you yank your kid out, that’s a lot of money walking out the (private school’s) door.” Many of those parents who were accustomed to selecting private education options through their own financial means […]

So with this new year of 2010, I’m really thinking all futuristic. Yesterday it was brain skills testing. But what about technological changes that promise to transform our education system? That’s what Harvard professor Clayton Christensen writes about in his 2009 book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. If you can’t afford the time or the money for the book, then you’ll at least want to check out this audio/video presentation on the topic by Dr. Scott McLeod (H/T Mike Antonucci).

Colorado is a great place to be for families seeking a free online public education. There are 18 different multi-district cyberschools in the state, in addition to single-district and other supplemental online programs. Over the past several months I’ve introduced you to insights on the transformative power of online education through a podcast interview with Dr. Terry Moe, and helped give you a better glimpse of this fast-growing type of education with local cyberschool leaders and with Colorado’s Online Elementary Teacher of the Year. Now you can hear the perspective of those who matter the most: some of the students. Sean, Shannon and Ashlyn Cooney have been enrolled in the Colorado Virtual Academy (COVA) (the state’s largest online charter school) for several years now. Click the play button below to listen to them talk about what cyberschool life is like on an iVoices podcast with my Education Policy Center friend Pam Benigno:

Learn an education policy reform idea from Ohio? Not possible, you say? Come on, it’s not as unlikely as all that. Well, my friends in the Education Policy Center ran across a new practice in the Buckeye State that could help Colorado revolutionize the way we deliver education. In the somewhat obscure Middletown Journal, Ohio state representative Bill Coley writes about the new program created by his sponsored legislation: