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Virtual Charter Schools Realities and Unknowns

Virtual Charter Schools Realities and Unknowns. Daniela Torre UCEA Graduate Student Summit November 14, 2012. What is a Virtual Charter School?.

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Virtual Charter Schools Realities and Unknowns

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  1. Virtual Charter Schools Realities and Unknowns Daniela Torre UCEA Graduate Student Summit November 14, 2012

  2. What is a Virtual Charter School? “…wholly public educational organization that offers full-time instruction at the K-12 level at least partially through Internet-based methods, with time and/or distance separating the teacher and learner (Rhim & Kowal, 2010, p.4). • Enhancement vs. replacement vs. blended (Means et al., 2010) • Location: home, school, third place • Instructor: parent, computer program, other adults • Asynchronous vs. Synchronous

  3. VCS Landscape • Privatization & School Choice • Provides incentives for providers to innovate • Supports pluralism and parent choice • Weakens government monopoly (Minow, 2003) • Homeschooling movement • Most extreme form of school choice • Rapid growth since the 1990s • Relationship to for-profit companies • 75% of students enrolled in VCS attend school managed by a for profit company

  4. VCS Growth • Difficult to measure • Failure to disaggregate online programs by authorizer type or distinguish between replacement and supplemental programs.

  5. Who Enrolls in VCS? • Students who were previously home-schooled • Minorities may be underrepresented (Guarino, et al., 2005). • High concentration of special needs students in some schools (Baker, Bouras, Hartwig & McNair, 2005).

  6. Equitable Access • Digital divide • Race/ethnicity gap • Urban/rural gap • SES gap • Home Support

  7. Why VCS? • Students and Families • Individualized instruction • Expand community of learners • For former homeschooled children, less financial burden • Part of a movement (Means et al., 2009) • States or Districts • Expand access to students • Reduce geographic barriers of teacher labor force • Expand choices for constituents • Reduce costs and increase efficiency

  8. Instruction • Teacher • Work load • Student teacher ratio • Level of support • Parent • Level of support • Role within program • Computer • Variability in programs • Ongoing assessment

  9. The Costs of VCS • Fixed costs • Curriculum development • $4,500 to more than $1,000,000 • Server access and set up • Variable costs • Phones and phone service for teachers • Computers • Internet access • Teacher compensation • Student funding • How much? • Who pays?

  10. VCS and Accountability • Instructional hours and Enrollment • Should be calculated over a longer span of time • Alabama: Clock hours • Florida: courses completed • Quality of instruction • Teacher certification mirrors that for charter schools • Parent qualifications? • Quality of student work • Academic dishonesty • Quality of assessments • Constraints due to format • Data collection • Monitoring • Contact between parents and students

  11. VCS Outcomes • Few empirical studies “Those making policy should be clear on this key point: there exists no evidence from research that full-time virtual schooling at the K-12 level is an adequate replacement for traditional face-to-face teaching and learning” (2011, p.5). • Positive findings • Blended learning • Programs that explicitly teach time management • Asynchronous learning • Negative findings • Student experiences • High turnover and drop out rates • Lower achievement on standardized assessments

  12. Future Research • Quantitative study of student achievement outcomes controlling for selection bias and other factors • Qualitative study about the experiences of students and teachers within VCS • The differential experiences of students in VCS depending on age. • Study access to VCS by breaking down enrollment data according to race/ethnicity, gender, El status, special needs status.

  13. Thank You Daniela Torre Vanderbilt University daniela.torre@vanderbilt.edu

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