New NEPC Report: While Online K-12 Schools Expand, Their Academic Performance Lags!

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

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