CURMUDGUCATION: GA: Cyber Schools Failing Here, Too

CURMUDGUCATION: GA: Cyber Schools Failing Here, Too

GA: Cyber Schools Failing Here, Too

In what could be news only to someone who has not been paying any attention to cyberschooling in the US, a report from Georgia's Department of Audits and Accounts found that the state's cyber schools "underperformed."

Mind you, I'll argue that the state's College and Career Ready Performance Index is a lousy way to measure the performance of schools. But those are the rules that reformsters want to play by, so that's the yardstick we're stuck with. And by that yardstick, Georgia's virtual schools are failing.\

This is not a shock. The CREDO study in 2015 found that cyber charters have an "overwhelming negative impact," with student falling a full year behind their regular classroom peers. This matches the anecdotal information one can capture from classroom teachers to whom many cyber-students return. The cyber situation has been so bad that the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools issued a report calling for cybers to shape the hell up. In Pennsylvania, a magical cyber school playground, not a single one of the states cyber charters has ever scored a "passing" grade on the state's evaluation. And Indiana is just now coming to grips with a cyber charter sector that is both failing and corrupt.

So Georgia is just one more guest at the failing cyber charter party.

While the audit's findings are bad, they aren't exactly news. In July of 2016, the Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a piece looking at the Georgia Cyber Academy, a huge cyber with over 14,000students:

Georgia Cyber Academy students log onto online classes from home, where they talk to and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: GA: Cyber Schools Failing Here, Too