{"id":254,"date":"2012-10-23T14:25:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T14:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=254"},"modified":"2014-02-12T19:36:50","modified_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:36:50","slug":"liberating-learning-virtual-public-schooling-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"LIBERATING LEARNING: Virtual Public Schooling at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0 <\/strong>Terry M. Moe and John E Chubb, Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education<\/a>\"\"<\/em>(San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2009).<\/p>\n

Summary: <\/strong>Moe and Chubb are legendary in the world of Educational Policy.\u00a0 Their 1990 book Politics, Markets and America\u2019s Schools<\/a>\"\" is perhaps the most influential book ever written on the issue of privatization of public education.\u00a0 In this new book the two scholar-activists reunite to make the case again for radical transformation of public education with private enterprise leading the way.\u00a0 In this review I will only very briefly summarize their main argument.\u00a0 My chief interest is in the portions of their book that deal directly with virtual public education, because it happens for the most part at home.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell Moe and Chubb want public education to stop being run as a government monopoly and to open itself up to market forces.\u00a0 The market force they focus on in this work is technology, which they describe in breathless terms as a force that \u201cis fast generating one of the most important transformations in all of human history\u201d (6).\u00a0 The revolution in information technology is rapidly transforming all sectors of life, but public education has been slow to adapt.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because vested interests want to maintain the status quo.\u00a0 These vested interests are mostly the teachers\u2019 unions, the clear bad guys in this book, and the Democratic legislators whose pockets the unions line.<\/p>\n

Moe and Chubb spend considerable time explaining the various tactics unions have used to block technological innovation in education but conclude that the sheer magnitude of the technological transformation currently underway will simply prove unstoppable.\u00a0 Change will come slowly and not without constant struggle, but the eventual triumph of high-tech education is inevitable.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s basically the story of the book.\u00a0 Moe and Chubb aren\u2019t especially interested in homeschooling as such, but since their technology-as-innovation thesis is illustrated most purely in the move toward virtual schooling, they devote many pages to this trend.\u00a0 The trend toward virtual schooling is not monolithic.\u00a0 Some states have created statewide virtual schools (the most prominent by far being the Florida Virtual School<\/a>).\u00a0 Some school districts have created their own virtual schools, which are often supplemental to the traditional public schools (with students taking one or two classes per semester).\u00a0 Some school districts have actually created full-fledged charter schools that often partner with private firms to provide a complete public school education online to any student in the state.\u00a0 And of course there are also entirely privately-run virtual charter schools in states that permit them.<\/p>\n

In their summary of these trends Moe and Chubb provide excellent data, some of which they have compiled themselves and is available nowhere else.\u00a0 There is, for example, a wonderful chart on pp. 116-117 that estimates enrollment in state-level virtual schools.\u00a0 As of 2009, state-level virtual schools existed in 27 states (in 1999 only 5 states had them).\u00a0 Florida Virtual School (FLVS) has by far the highest enrollment (almost 100,000 students), but every state that has a state virtual school is seeing tremendous growth.\u00a0 Utah\u2019s Electronic High School, for example, enrolled 3,124 students in 2004.\u00a0 By 2007 the enrollment was 6,763.<\/p>\n

Page 123 has an equally helpful chart listing the total enrollment as of 2008-09 for Cyber Charters in every state that has them, along with the number of virtual charters and the year the first one was founded.\u00a0 Leading the pack is Ohio, whose 48 virtual charter schools enrolled 29,965 students in 2008.\u00a0 Coming in second is Pennsylvania, whose 12 cyber charters enrolled 13,996 students in 2008.\u00a0 Nationwide, about 100,000 students were enrolled in the nation\u2019s 190 cyber charters in the 2007-08 school year.<\/p>\n

Moe and Chubb devote considerable attention to the politics of cyberschools, and again the main theme is the resistance to such initiatives by teachers\u2019 unions, who rightly see such reforms as a threat to their jobs.\u00a0 The authors describe in detail battles in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Chicago, Indiana, and California where unions have fought against such reforms at every step using every trick imaginable.\u00a0 Only rarely and obliquely however do Moe and Chubb acknowledge that a good bit of the politics has concerned the rampant corruption and financial mismanagement that has hounded this movement.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Appraisal: <\/strong>While I am deeply grateful for Moe and Chubb\u2019s hard work compiling and providing us with the most complete data available on these trends, I am less than impressed with their\u00a0 extremely one-sided presentation of the issues.\u00a0 In Moe and Chubb\u2019s world the forces of privatization are always noble and the unions are always evil.<\/p>\n

This is of course to be expected.\u00a0 Both men have long been key players in the school choice movement.\u00a0 Moe is a senior fellow at the libertarian Hoover Institution<\/a> and Chubb is Chief Development Officer of EdisonLearning<\/a>, one of the nation\u2019s largest private firms working with public schools.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for a balanced treatment of the issues of technology and educational politics, you won\u2019t find it here.\u00a0 But you will find excellent data on virtual schools, a trend that is emblematic of the ongoing transformation of homeschooling from a protest against government to a policy of government.<\/p>\n

Moe and Chubb rightly note that one of the reasons teachers\u2019 unions and school districts haven\u2019t liked virtual schools is that they have enrolled large numbers of formerly independently homeschooled kids.\u00a0 This means families who used to pay taxes but not send their kids to public schools (thus saving the district money) are now drawing on public funds.\u00a0 Moe and Chubb do not mention how this trend has been very controversial among homeschoolers themselves, with some groups (most notably HSLDA<\/a>) fearing that government-funded homeschooling is a Trojan horse designed to destroy the homeschooling movement.\u00a0 Nor do Moe and Chubb note what other scholars have<\/a>, that though cyber charters do initially attract previously homeschooled kids, after a few years most of their enrollment growth comes from transfers out of the traditional public school.\u00a0 People who a decade ago would never have considered homeschooling are now, in large numbers, opting for public school at home.<\/p>\n

Milton Gaither, Messiah College, author of Homeschool: An American History<\/a>\"\"<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/strong>:\u00a0 The views expressed in reviews are not the official views of ICHER or of its members.\u00a0 For more information about ICHER\u2019s Reviews, please see the \u00ab\u00a0About these Reviews \u00bb Section.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Record:\u00a0 Terry M. Moe and John E Chubb, Liberating Learning: Technology, Politics, and the Future of American Education(San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2009). Summary: Moe and Chubb are legendary in the world of Educational Policy.\u00a0 Their 1990 book Politics, Markets and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[13,18],"tags":[208,206,207,63,205,204],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-schools","category-technology","tag-edisonlearning","tag-florida-virtual-school","tag-hoover-institution","tag-hslda","tag-john-e-chubb","tag-terry-m-moe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1154,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/1154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icher.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}