Praxis Makes Perfect

So I am currently working on a study doing some comparative case studies of cyber charter schools. Why cyber charters? Well they are interesting cases to me for several reasons. (1) They are online schools that serve K-12 students, when most of our distance learning discussions center on higher education. (2) They are charter schools, so they have their own history of policy and controversy. (3) The existence or extinction of cyber charters have important implications for issues of school choice, home-schooling, the limitations of how our public education system is currently set up, and media-based schooling. (4) They are relatively new and haven’t been studied much (which is good for a budding academic like myself).

I’ll look forward to sharing my findings and thoughts as the project progresses. But for now I want to point out that virtual, online, or cyber schools (whatever you want to call them) are concrete examples of a disruptive technology. The mere fact that using the Internet to deliver public schooling is an option now, throws many of our assumptions about education into flux as well as the policies, regulations, and funding mechanisms that are designed for brick-and-mortar schools.

The fight is happening as we speak… Check out the recent ruling in Wisconsin. Links here and here.

The teachers union sued to close down Wisconsin’s virtual academies. And for now, they have won as the courts ruled to stop sending funds to those schools. What is the issue here? Well online schools pose several problems that come into play:

• Who is responsible for paying for the education? An online school can hypothetically enroll students from anywhere. But how do those public funds (which normally get sent to a student’s resident school district) get transferred to the cyber school? Many districts get angry when they lose student funds for their kids who enroll in an online school.
• What about the quality of education? Most of the popular arguments that come from opponents center around quality of education. Certified teachers? The cyber charters I’ve spoken to hire certified teachers. Do children get the same quality schooling online versus a physically live teacher? Why wouldn’t they? The modalities of learning may be different (more text, more multimedia, more self directed) but who says physically sitting in a classroom is somehow a better experience? The cyber schools I’ve looked at so far have been able to provide a more intimate educational experience for their students, with highly independent attention… all because the use of technology.
• A thorny issue for teachers unions is the possibility that cyber schools can be more efficient with their money. Cyber charters can use curriculum and Internet based multimedia to handle basic instruction and assessments. Teachers can then play a more advisor, guidance, and coaching role. They can provide individual plans for each student, check in on each of their students efficiently via email, telephone, or other means, and make sure each student is progressing. On top of that, we might blow up the entire idea of “class size”. A teacher in a physical classroom might be overwhelmed with 30 students in a class. But the new job description of a cyber school teacher might enable them to easily handle a case-load of 30 students who they mentor, or even more! The implications are that cyber charters may spend their money in other areas, other than teachers… and I bet that is at the core of the teachers union in Wisconsin trying to kill cyber schools in their state.