Record: Alex Molnar, ed., Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2014: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence (Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center, 2014). Available here.
Summary: This report is the second in a projected annual series of reports published by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC). The first report was published in 2013 and can be read here.
The 2013 report chronicled the 311 full-time virtual schools enrolling around 200,000 students, 67% of whom were being taught in schools run by Education Managament Organizations, or EMOs. The largest such organization is K12. The report also found that despite serving a student population that has fewer Black, Latin@, poor, or special needs children than attend conventional public schools, academic achievement at virtual schools lagged significantly behind brick-and-mortars. The report concluded with a series of research-based recommendations for reform of online school finance and governance, instructional quality, and teacher recruitment and retention that collectively would improve performance of virtual schools and limit profiteering by the EMOs.
This 2014 report picks up where the former report left off. It contains three sections. This post will summarize section one, which concerns recent legislative activity relative to online schooling. Click here for a summary of section two, a survey of the academic research on virtual schools. Click here for a summary of section three, which provides hard data about the number and type of online schools and the students who attend them. Continue reading →
