On Thursday, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a report outlining reforms states should make to improve the struggling online public charter school sector. The alliance generally supports charter schools, so it’s made plenty of allies with other nonprofit groups that support school choice. Some of those allies pushed back on the report for suggesting, among other reforms, that authorizers should close chronically low-performing virtual charter schools.
“This research lacks the depth and integrity that we need in educational analysis, and ignores the fact that the voluntary choices of parents — when they have them — may not represent others’ conceptions of what works best for their kids,” Jeanne Allen, CEO and founder of the Center for Education Reform, wrote in a press release. “Researchers agree that this view of the data is superficial and ignores who and what is gained by a particular kind of schooling approach… This report is troubling in that it suggests that the measure of a school’s effectiveness is an average of who gets tested, not who gets served and the conditions under which they enter or leave.”
The push back from PublicSchoolOptions.org was even harsher. “[The report] contains no new information and only rehashes previously released flawed, one-sided data,” the group said in a press release. “The proposal fails to address several key factors calling into question the credibility of its sources and the motives of the authors, organizations that claim to be dedicated to expanding school choice for parents and students.”
According to one study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, 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.
Todd Ziebarth, the lead author of the alliance’s report, told the Washington Examiner that Allen’s and PublicSchoolOptions.org’s critiques of the data “defy logic.” He said the data have been well-vetted over the last seven to eight years, and noted that Allen’s Center for Education Reform uses other studies from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes to show how successful public charter schools are.
“It’s not gold standard research, but it does have student-based data comparing students with similar characteristics against one another,” Ziebarth said. “If you’re going to use data, you have to celebrate gains when you have them but also own up to the shortcomings when you see problems and figure out how to do better.”
“Some of the folks in the movement have sort of become the excuse-making machines that school districts they’ve criticized are being. So when data shows poor performance, instead of honing it and trying to figure out and how to do better, they sort of excuse the results away,” Ziebarth said.
His critics seem to support letting any virtual charter school stay open, as long as it has enough parents choosing it to remain viable.
“Many students who enroll in virtual charter schools do so because of extenuating circumstances or because they simply are not served well in a brick-and-mortar learning environment,” Allen said.
“There are many reasons why parents of public virtual school students choose these schools,” the PublicSchoolOptions.org release said. “Families in rural areas may choose virtual school because the closest public school is hours away. For others, a child may have suffered at the hands of bullies and can now learn in a safe, loving and confidence-building environment. For another family a child may be fighting cancer and unable to be near other children due to the risk of germs.”
Ziebarth responded by saying “It’s a very complicated decision about whether or not to close a school for poor academic performance.” He repeated the data on struggling virtual schools, adding, “If that isn’t a wakeup call, I’m not sure what will be.” He said it was important to note that the report didn’t call for closing all cyber charter schools. “We’re not saying don’t do it. We see it as vital, but want to acknowledge shortcomings and make it successful.”
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.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
