Online schools are losing support, creating divisions in the national charter school movement
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Poor test results at online schools are creating divisions in the charter school community in Ohio and nationally, leading some national leaders to question whether e-schools should even be part of the charter school movement anymore.
At the top of the list is Nina Rees, head of the nation's largest charter school organization, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, who is distancing herself from online schools and the damage they are causing to the public perception of charters overall.
After a visit to Ohio earlier this month, Rees said e-schools - schools where kids take all their classes by computer at home, instead of in classrooms - are dragging down the overall performance of charter schools in Ohio and other states.
"If you were to eliminate the (test scores of) online schools, the performance of the state would dramatically improve," Rees said.
And she questioned whether online schools make sense as charters – privately-run public schools that are open to any student that wants to enroll in them. Taking classes online, instead of in classrooms, doesn't work well for all students she said, but public schools have to accept kids that are not a good fit.
"I don't know if these online schools are the right fit in the charter model," Rees told The Plain Dealer.
Meanwhile, others are questioning whether states should change how they fund online schools with tax dollars and whether the agencies overseeing online schools are doing what they should to make the schools better.
Oversight a major issue
The latest issue is a big one for Ohio, where Gov. John Kasich and the state have made new ratings of those oversight agencies, known as "sponsors" or "authorizers," the cornerstone of their charter school improvement efforts.
Those ratings are also the source of major controversy in Ohio this year after former school choice chief David Hansen left F grades of online schools out of the first few ratings, in violation of state law.
Much like Rees, Hansen believed the poor grades of online schools would "mask" the stronger performance of other charter schools.
Susan Patrick, the head of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), the main organization representing online schools, disagrees with Rees about whether e-schools should be charter schools. They just need better quality control, she said.
"The problem is not that the online schools are getting authorized as charters," Patrick said. "The problem is that the authorizers are not demanding adequate transparency, evidence of quality of work at a college-ready level and are not shutting down or intervening in poor performers."
She added: "It is up to the schools to do everything in their power to ensure students can succeed."
A new way of calculating sponsor/authorizer ratings for Ohio that includes online schools will be presented to the state school board Dec. 14 or 15.
Click here for our early look at how that would work.
E-schools fight back
In Ohio three statewide e-schools, each run by for-profit companies, dominate the market with 30,000 students between them. Combined, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), Ohio Connections Academy and Ohio Virtual Academy account for 76 percent of all online students in the state.
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