School, virtually

Just a quick note today about another experiment in education: the growing online K-12 school movement. Louisiana just approved the first two free online charter high schools for the state, and Connections Academy received 1900 applications for 600 spots. The school is appealing to the state to be allowed to hire more staff and enroll 1200 students.

Virtual school programs provide an educational experience that is truly different from the traditional in-person schools. The option is usually marketed to students who prefer independent work, who want to get ahead in their studies, who have trouble interacting socially or experience difficulty controlling their behavior in large classes, or who feel ostracized or bullied in their traditional schools.

Online schools already operate nationwide as private alternatives to public schools, but several states (OH, UT, LA, IN, and TN among them) have begun incorporating virtual learning into their public school offerings as well. This means funding that used to go to traditional public schools now goes to virtual schools.

The trickiest situations occur in states like Utah that fund students to attend traditional schools and online schools, each part time. In that situation, costs f0r the schools are duplicated, but funding is not. Both schools have to maintain student records and process student paperwork and both schools have to adequately staff their classes, despite being only partially funded for some of their students. This is particularly challenging for traditional schools that have a few students attending online classes part time. They lose partial funding for the students, but still have to physically accommodate them in the classes they elect to take traditionally. In contrast, the school does not lose funding when students attend co-curricular college courses during high school.