The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a report Thursday outlining reforms states should make to improve online public charter schools. The alliance generally supports charter schools, but doesn’t hesitate to call for reforms that ensure low-performing charters close.
“The well-documented, disturbingly low performance by too many full-time virtual charter public schools should serve as a call to action to state leaders and authorizers across the country,” the report said. “It is time for state leaders to make the tough policy changes necessary to ensure that this model works more effectively than it currently does for the students it serves. It is also time for authorizers to close chronically low-performing virtual charter schools.”
All public charter schools have authorizers — sometimes the state government, local school district, or a university will authorize a charter school. The alliance report says school districts shouldn’t authorize virtual schools that would serve students outside their district. But a state or regional authorizer should still be allowed to authorize a virtual school that would take students from more than one school district.
The report also suggested that cyberschools have their yearly enrollment capped, with increases or decreases based on their performance.
“We recommend that states require authorizers and schools to jointly determine additional, virtual-specific goals regarding student enrollment, attendance, engagement, achievement, truancy, attrition, finances, and operations and to include these goals in the schools’ charter contracts,” the report says.
According to one study, the average student in a virtual charter school learned nothing in math and learned half as much in reading as the average traditional public school student.
There are 180,000 students in 135 full-time online charter schools across 23 states, as well as Washington, D.C. About 70 percent of full-time virtual charter schools are run by for-profit organizations, compared to only 15 percent of all public charter schools. Compared to traditional public schools, the online student population is more white and less Hispanic.
The report was co-published with the 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
