Dear Commons Community,

According to a national study by the University of Colorado’s National Education Policy Center (NEPC), there are serious and systemic problems with the nation’s full-time cyber schools.

Released May 2, 2013, the Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence report reviews the 311 virtual schools operating in the United States. According to University of Colorado, Boulder Professor Alex Molnar, who edited the report, there are “outsized claims, lagging performance, intense conflicts, lots of taxpayer money at stake, and very little solid evidence to justify the rapid expansion of virtual schools.”

As reviewed by the Center for Digital Education:

“When it comes to both academic and non-academic performance indicators, such as attendance and percentage of students taking a state exam, virtual schools lag significantly behind traditional brick-and-mortar schools, according to Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) metrics.

In the 2010-2011 school year, for instance, 52 percent of brick-and-mortar district and charter schools met AYP, compared to 23.6 percent of virtual schools – a 28 percentage-point gap, according to an NEPC press release, which also stated that virtual schools enroll a far smaller percentage of low-income students, special education students and English language learners than their brick-and-mortar counterparts.

Despite this track record, however, states and districts continue to expand virtual schools and online offerings to students: Between 2008 and 2012, 157 bills categorized by the National Council of State Legislatures as related to “distance/online/virtual/learning” took effect across the United States and its territories.”

The report’s conclusion:

“Although virtual education may hold promise, the NEPC report asserts that the consistently poor performance of full-time virtual schools deserves more attention.

“The current climate of elementary and secondary school reform that promotes uncritical acceptance of any and all virtual education innovations is not supported by educational research,” said Stanford University Professor Emeritus Larry Cuban, who contributed a review of current research knowledge on virtual education to the NEPC report.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Joe Nocera’s column today focuses on Holden Thorp, the departing chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  U.N.C. has long been regarded as one of the top universities in the country and on all academic counts advanced well during Thorp’s five-year tenure.  The university went from 19th to 9th in federal research grants. Undergraduate applications rose 43 percent. And, at a time when university budgets are under extreme pressure, Thorp helped keep U.N.C. an affordable public university.   However, as Nocera points out, a scandal in the athletics program has forced Thorp to resign, some would say in disgrace.

“But you won’t find a lot of people giving Thorp, 48, a pat on the back. For the last three years, North Carolina was mired in an athletic scandal. And the fact that it took place on Thorp’s watch overshadows everything else he did.

Though it started out as an N.C.A.A. rules-violation investigation, it morphed into an academic scandal when it was discovered that the chairman of the African and Afro-American Studies Department had long allowed students — athletes very much included — to take no-show classes.

For a university that had long held itself out as one of the “good schools” athletically, the scandal has been humiliating. The N.C.A.A. meted out penalties to the football team. The football coach, Butch Davis, was fired. The athletic director resigned. Even the college accrediting agency got involved.

By his own admission, Thorp was shell-shocked by the experience of dealing with the scandal. As a lifelong North Carolina partisan, he had bought into the myth of the university as a place that harvested genuine student-athletes. The scandal showed him a reality he never before had to face.

It also engulfed him. If you are a college chancellor or president, you can’t delegate when there is a problem in the athletic department. “The governing board, the newspaper, the fans, the faculty, they all expect you to sort it out,” he said. He was spending, literally, half his time dealing with the football team. Yet he had no real experience with the business of college athletics — nor, for that matter, do most college presidents.

He found himself buffeted this way and that. At first, he supported his coach, but then he finally felt he had to fire him. He did so at the worst possible moment: on the eve of a new season. His press conferences dealing with the scandal were, by his own admission, “terrible.” He was, to be blunt, in over his head.”

Sadly, as Thorp departs, his message is that virtually all college presidents are in over their heads when it comes to their athletic departments. They have no background, no experience, that would prepare them for overseeing the $6 billion entertainment complex that big-time college sports has become. In the early 1990s, the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics issued a series of reports saying that college presidents needed to regain control of their athletic departments and restore “integrity.” Unfortunately for Thorp, he did not and paid the price.

Tony