Tag Archives: Cascade Virtual Academy

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Is An Oregon School District Exploiting The State’s Charter School Law To Enrich Itself?

It looks like the really tiny town of Mitchell (pop. approx. 137) in a rugged Eastern Oregon canyon has figured out how to bring in big bucks – sponsor public virtual schools. 

Mitchell, Oregon

Since Oregon enacted a charter school law in 1999, virtual charters in the state have spread like a rash, with 20 now offering online courses to some or all grades of K-12 students. Enrollment at the virtual charters in 2022-2023 was 15,711, representing 37.79% of total charter school enrollment.

Charter schools in Oregon, including virtual charters, are publicly funded, so parents don’t pay tuition. Instead, the Oregon Department of Education distributes money from the State School Fund to each school district that sponsors a charter school based upon that school’s enrollment. 

Oregon law provides that a sponsoring district must pass on to its charter school at least 80 percent of its per-pupil grant for K-8 students and 95 percent of its per pupil grant for grade 9-12 students. 

While the rest of Oregon school districts sponsoring virtual charter schools sponsor only one, the Mitchell School District is taking full advantage of the funding model, sponsoring three virtual public charter schools with total enrollment of 1054 students in 2022-2023:

 Insight School of Oregon Painted Hills, serving students in grades 7-12

 Cascade Virtual Academy , serving students in grades K-12

Destinations Career Academy of Oregon, serving students in grades 9–12.

Each of the virtual charter schools sponsored by the Mitchell School District  contracts for the use of technology and curriculum from K12, a profit-driven Stride Company (NYSE: LRN).

I asked Melissa Hausmann, Head of School at all three schools, for copies of their contracts with K12 to get a better understanding of payments made by the charter schools to K12. Although Oregon Public Records law requires that a public body acknowledge receipt of a public records request within 5 business days of receipt, Hausmann has not responded to repeated requests for the contracts.. 

Given the voluminous data maintained by the Oregon Department of Education (ODOE), I assumed securing information on the state money going to the Mitchell School District because of its sponsorship of the three virtual charter schools would be a simple request. Accordingly, I asked ODOE:

  • How much money did the State School Fund distribute to the Mitchell School District for the 2022-2023 school year for each of the three virtual public charter schools the district sponsors?
  • School district sponsors are allowed to keep a portion of per-pupil funding provided by the state, usually 20% for K-8 schools and 5% for high schools. The rest goes to the charter school. I asked what percentage, and how many dollars, of per pupil funding provided by the state to each of these three schools was retained by the Mitchell School District in the 2022-2023 school year?

Surprisingly, ODOE said it was not the custodian of records that contained the specific information I requested. It suggested I contact the school district directly.

The Oregon Department of Education says it doesn’t know how much it is spending in support of virtual charter schools.

Mitchell School District Superintendent Vincent Swagerty acknowledged that the district had some of the records requested, but said it would cost $800 “to summarize, compile, review and forward these records.”

Oregon’s public records law allows for “reasonably calculated” fees to be imposed for responding to a public records request, but I considered an $800 fee exorbitant, prohibitive and even silly. Was the district really not able to quickly and easily find out. how much money it’s getting from the state in connection with its sponsorship of three virtual charter schools?

So I pursued an alternative, calculating estimated state payments using ODOE guidance on available data posted online by the department. A review of the Mitchell School District’s contracts with the three virtual charter schools then revealed the percentages of state school fund money passed on to the virtual charter schools. 

Those calculations led to a rough estimate that the Mitchell School District retained the astonishing amount of approximately $727,000 of the state school fund money it received because of its sponsorship of the three virtual charter schools in the 2020-2021 school year.

The estimated total broke down as follows:


INSIGHT SCHOOL OF OREGON – PAINTED HILLS

The state sent an estimated $3,777,660 to the Mitchell School District. An estimated $130,656 (20% of the state’s money for students in grades 7-8) and $156,773 (5% of the state’s money for students in grades 9-12) was retained by the Mitchell School District. The remaining $3,392,445 went to Insight.

CASCADE VIRTUAL ACADEMY

The state sent an estimated $7,622,080 to the Mitchell School District.  An estimated $357,764 (5% of the state’s money) was retained by the Mitchell School District.  The remaining $6,797,516 (95% of the state’s money) went to Cascade.

DESTINATIONS CAREER ACADEMY OF OREGON

The state sent an estimated $1,681,164 to the Mitchell School District. An estimated $84,058 (5% of the state’s money) was retained by the Mitchell School District. The remaining $1,597,105 (95% of the state’s money) went to Destinations. 

Estimate of $ retained by the Mitchell School District in 2020-2021

From Insight contract: $287,429

From Cascade contract: $357,764

From Destinations contract: $84,058

TOTAL: $729,251

Does the Mitchell School District agree with these numbers?

I asked Superintendent Swagerty. He responded that he had accepted a position in a new school district and referred me to two officials from the Mitchell School District. Neither responded to my follow-up inquiry spelling out estimated payments retained by the Mitchell School District in the 2020-2021 school year.. 

Whether or not my calculations are on the money, is the Mitchell School District using Oregon’s charter schools law as a cash cow to generate revenue for minimal effort? 

Are the estimated 2020-2021 revenue numbers typical of annual payments retained by the Mitchell School District?

Does this put conservatives who oppose reckless government spending, but support school choice, in a quandary?

Are the district, the virtual charter schools and K12 in a parasitic relationship, each feeding off the other and Oregon taxpayers?

Is the funneling of so many taxpayer dollars to public school districts sponsoring virtual charter schools what the legislature intended with the charter school law?

For that matter, is it acceptable that the Oregon Department of Education, which dispenses millions of taxpayer dollars to school districts sponsoring virtual public charter schools, can’t, or won’t, tell the public precisely how much money it is sending to the sponsoring districts, how much those districts are keeping for themselves and how much they are sending on to the charter schools? Is that responsible governance?

The time has come for oversight that ensures public money is meeting its public purpose.

And then, of course, there’s the question of whether the taxpayer-supported virtual public charter schools are a public good in any case.

A June 2023 analysis from the US Census Bureau linked statewide education records from Oregon with earnings information from IRS records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults. “Virtual charter students have substantially worse high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, bachelor’s degree attainment, employment rates, and earnings than students in traditional public schools,” the study concluded. “Although there is growing demand for virtual charter schools, our results suggest that students who enroll in virtual charters may face negative long-term consequences.”

BACKGROUND

Insight School of Oregon

Insight opened its doors in Oregon in 2012 as Insight School of Oregon Charter Option sponsored by the Crook County School District in Central Oregon. To operate the school, its board contracted with K12, Virtual Schools LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of publicly traded for-profit K12 Inc. (LRN:NYSE] ). Insight’s Oregon headquarters was located in a nondescript one-story office building at 603 NW. 3rd St. in Prineville.

In its first three years, Insight’s K-12 enrollment grew to more than 500 students from around the state.

But all was not well.

K12 Inc. argued that. its education program was “proven effective,” but the numbers told a different story to the Crook County School District. Even though the district netted $231,592 in the first year of its contract with Insight and $436,554 in the second, it began to have serious reservations about continuing the relationship.

In Nov. 2014, the Crook County School District sent a blistering letter to Insight expressing grave concerns about the school’s operations and academic performance. School Superintendent Dr. Duane Yecha and school board Chair Doug Smith told the school they had major concerns about Insight’s: inadequate tracking of student attendance and enrollment; academic achievement; poor test participation; low four-year graduation rate (16.18 percent in 2013-2014); and failure to meet financial requirements stipulated in the district’s contract with Insight.

“…these issues have given the district reason to consider whether Insight is able to meet its ongoing obligations under the Charter Agreement and under ORS Chapter 338,” the letter said.

In 2015, even though the district was set to net $480,710 from its sponsorship of Insight in the 2014 – 2015 school year, it decided not to renew the sponsorship.

So Insight went shopping.

It quickly found a new partner, signing a sponsorship contract with the Mitchell School District 55 on April 29, 2015. The district had just one school serving a few local kids, some teens from around Oregon and a few international high students from Germany, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The international and regional students all lived in a school dormitory at the school.

With a new sponsor in hand, Insight changed to a grade 7-12 school and renamed itself Insight School of Oregon – Painted Hills.

Another change was the financial arrangements. Under its contract with the Crook County School District, Insight had agreed to the district keeping 5 percent of the State School Fund money it received for Insight students in grades 9-12 and 20 percent of what it received for kindergarten-8 students. Under the new contract with the Mitchell School District, the district agreed to keep just 10 percent of the total State School Fund money.

Destinations Career Academy of Oregon

Destinations Career Academy of Oregon, a full-time online public charter school authorized by the Mitchell School District, began its inaugural school year on September 4, 2018. It initially served students in grades 9-11, expanding to offer 12th grade for the 2019-20 academic year.

As part of the Oregon public school system, Destinations Career Academy is tuition-free, providing parents and families the choice to access the curriculum provided by K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN) a provider of K-12 proprietary curriculum and online education programs.

Cascade Virtual Academy

Cascade Virtual Academy, a full-time online public charter school, began its inaugural school year sponsored by the Mitchell School District on September 4, 2018, offering a tuition-free to option students statewide in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Confusingly, there is also a Cascade Virtual Academy based in Aumsville, Oregon that provides a comprehensive online education for students in grades six through 12 who live within Cascade School District #5. The district , which operates six schools, serves approximately 2,500 students living in Aumsville, Turner, and Marion, Oregon.

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School Choice In Oregon: Proceed With Caution

Parents of Oregon’s K-12 public school students are between a rock and a hard place. Stay with their faltering public school or push for more school choice.

As a whole, it’s a dark moment for Oregon’s public schools:

  • One of every five Oregon high school students don’t graduate in four years.
  • A depressingly small percentage of Oregon students in grades 4 and 8 tested at a proficient level or higher in mathematics and reading in 2022 in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
  • Severe mental health challenges and behavioral issues have ramped up in schools as students have shifted from online to hybrid learning and back to in-classroom learning.
  • Oregon’s young people have been abandoning public schools at an distressing rate. Enrollment declined 3.7%. in the 2020-2021 school year, another 1.4% in the 2021-2022 school year and 0.1% in the 2022-2023 school year. Public school enrollment statewide dropped by more than 30,000 students, or 5%, from October 2019 to October 2022 statewide, the second highest in the country, according to Stanford University.  Only Mississippi, not a state we want to envy, lost a larger share.

Conservative public policy research organizations such as the Portland-based Cascade Policy Institute, say the time is ripe for more school choice. 

“Oregon families urgently need more options so they can find the right fit for their children to learn effectively and safely,”  says Cascade. “Traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, online learning, private and parochial schools, homeschooling, and tutoring are all paths to success for students.”

The frustration many parents have with Oregon’s underperforming public schools is understandable as well. 

As a conservative, it’s tempting to unreservedly join the school choice chorus and to think that going full speed ahead in broadening school choice will calm down the tempest and enhance learning. 

But some caution is needed.

The problem is that for all the handwringing about traditional brick-and-mortar public schools by school choice evangelists, they too often fail to acknowledge that the “do your own thing” alternatives aren’t necessarily better. And some are worse, much worse.

No matter how bad some public schools are, the fact is bad teachers, weak curriculum. incompetence and sloth are not found just in public brick-and-mortar schools.

Options school choice advocates usually trumpet include public brick-and-mortar charter schools, public online charter schools, private schools and homeschooling.

There are currently 133 public charter schools serving 46,275 students in Oregon, according to the Oregon Department of Education. Of those, 102 are physical brick-and-mortar schools and 31 are virtual/online/cyber schools. 

Under Oregon law, a charter school is a separate legal entity operating under a binding agreement with a school district sponsor. Charter schools in Oregon, including online charters, are publicly funded, so parents don’t pay tuition. Instead, the Oregon Department of Education distributes State School Fund money to each school district that sponsors a charter school.

Unfortunately, the performance of Oregon’s charter schools is all over the map in terms of tested proficiency in key areas, graduation rates, parent satisfaction and other criteria. 

For example, at Oregon Charter Academy (formerly Oregon Connections Academy), a heavily advertised online charter school sponsored by the Santiam Canyon School District, just 35.1% of all students taking the state assessment in Mathematics, 54.6% of all students taking the state assessment in English Language Arts and 51.4% of all students taking the state assessment in Science tested “Proficient” in 2021-2022.

Some other online public charter schools in Oregon are much worse.

At Cascade Virtual Academy, an online charter school sponsored by the Mitchell School District, just 21.7% of all students taking the state assessment in Mathematics, 35.2% of all students taking the state assessment in English Language Arts and 24.8% of all students taking the state assessment in Science tested “Proficient” in 2021-2022.

The experiences of many Oregon children during the pandemic also revealed that exclusive online schooling led to depression, undue stress, low levels of social inclusion, anxiety and learning losses for many students. 

Oregon’s brick-and-mortar charters have an uneven record as well.

For example, at The Academy for Character Education, a K-12 public charter school in Cottage Grove, 58% of all students taking the state assessment in Mathematics, 63.8% of all students taking the state assessment in English Language Arts and 48.8% of all students taking the state assessment in Science tested “Proficient” in 2021-2022.

In contrast, at the Ione Community Charter School, a K-12 public Charter school in Ione, just 26.8% of all students taking the state assessment in Mathematics, 40.8% of all students taking the state assessment in English Language Arts and 13.3% of all students taking the state assessment in Science tested “Proficient” in 2021-2022.

The same variability in quality exists with private schools in Oregon. 

At private schools, parents, not the state, pay the bills. There are 483 private schools serving 57,768 K-12 students in Oregon, with about half religiously affiliated (most commonly Christian and Catholic) according to Private School Review. 

The Cascade Policy Institute, which asserts that the K-12 public school system is a “dysfunctional government school monopoly,” wants to establish an Empowerment Scholarship Account program under which a portion of state-level education funding would be converted to portable accounts for students to use wherever they want, which would benefit private schools. 

Cascade praises a new Arkansas law which creates Educational Freedom Accounts for all K-12 students, to be phased in by 2026. Individuals choosing a Freedom Account will get 90% of what public schools get per student in state funding from the previous school year, equal to $6,600 for the current year. They can spend this money on private school tuition, textbooks, tutoring, and other approved educational expenses.

But “private” does not automatically mean “superior”. The academic performance of private schools can vary widely and it can be hard to pin down their performance because they are not required to participate in statewide testing.

So parents take their chances when they send their children to private schools.

School choice could become an even more contentious issue in Oregon if there’s pressure to provide taxpayer dollars to religious schools.

Wisconsin, Iowa and Utah already offer vouchers to parents to enroll their children in approved private and religious schools. An effort is also underway in Oklahoma to extend publicly paid vouchers to online religious schools. The Catholic Church in Oklahoma City and Tulsa wants to create St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the country’s first publicly-funded religious charter school. 

(NOTE: On Oct. 9, 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board (OSVCSB) voted 3-2 to approve the contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to make the first religious public charter school in the country. The school’s application was approved in June and is already facing legal action. The OSVCSB hired an outside legal team after Attorney General Gentner Drummond denied representing the board in litigation since the board went against his prior legal advice. Now, the board has approved a contract to outline how the board expects the first taxpayer funded religious charter school to operate.)

For many Oregon parents, the preferred alternative to public or private schools is homeschooling. 

Oregon law (ORS 339.035) allows a child (between ages 6, and 18, grades 1-12) to be taught by a parent, guardian, or private teacher in the child’s home. Homeschool families may choose their own curriculum, and may use the Oregon’s Academic Content Standards to guide their instruction; however, there is no requirement to adhere to Oregon academic standards. 

Oregon education officials estimate that most of the more than 20,000 students in Oregon who are not in public schools are being homeschooled, about 40% more than in 2019, before the pandemic moved classes online. 

Parents of students between the ages of 6-18 are supposed to notify their local Education Service District (ESD) of their intent to home school within 10 days of beginning to home school, but compliance is not comprehensive.

A homeschooler is expected to take standardized testing by August 15 of the summer following the completion of 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 10th grades, as long as the child has been homeschooled since at least February 15 of the year preceding testing (18 months before the test deadline).

The required tests include grade-level math (concepts, application, skills), reading (comprehension), and language (writing, spelling/grammar, punctuation, etc.)

With the above information, you might think that public oversight of homeschoolers is comparable to that of public school because the state knows how all homeschooled students are performing. You’d be wrong.

As Earthsong Homeschool says, “Homeschooling in Oregon is easy. There are no laws specifying record keeping, attendance, or mandatory subjects. You do not need a college degree or teaching degree to teach your child. You register your child as homeschooled and test every few years. It’s that easy. In Oregon, you do not have to use grade level curriculum. Your child does not have to do what their public-school counter parts are doing.”

Homeschooled students are not required to take common standardized tests that measure academic progress. They can opt out, and many of them do.

Homeschoolers’ tests are also scored on a percentile, so the score a child gets represents how many people taking the same test got a lower score. In other words, the scores don’t represent how well the child knows the material, only how well the child performs relative to every other homeschooler taking the test. Even then, if a child scores at the 15th percentile or above, then the ESD simply files the report and there’s no follow-up.

Homeschoolers also don’t have to report their scores to anybody unless their education service district (ESD) asks for them. But the state cares so little about how these children are doing that ESDs almost never request test scores, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

Not that it would make much difference if ESDs did request the scores.

That’s because homeschoolers only need to report their composite percentile score. This is an almost useless single percentile representing a child’s performance on all three subjects together. It’s almost as though the state doesn’t really want to know how homeschoolers are doing.

Earthsong points out that Oregon homeschooling parents “can even legally be radical unschoolers”, relying on a child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn by not following any set homeschool curriculum.

Psychologist Peter Gray, author of “Free to Learn,”  wrote in Psychology Today that unschooling parents  “allow their children freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests,”

Unschooling advocate Akilah Richards frames it as a social justice practice, defining unschooling as a “child-trusting, anti-oppression, liberatory love-centered approach to parenting and caregiving.”

Critics of unschooling assert that it ignores research on the benefits of direct instruction for mastering skills in math and reading, which can leave children without basic literacy or numeracy skills, and is correlated with higher rates of drug use, delinquency, social isolation, and poor academic performance.

So, what to do?

As King Mongkut reluctantly cries in the play, The King and I, “Tiz a puzzlement!”

There is some validity to the view that the traditional public school system in the United States, a monopoly financed by taxes whether or not your child attends, and a one‐​size‐​fits‐​all approach that doesn’t respond to the needs of diverse students, provides few incentives to innovate or respond to families’ needs.

It’s also true that opinion on public education is souring, with Americans now giving lower grades to schools both locally and nationally than before the pandemic. Today, only about one in five Americans give the nation’s schools an A or B. Last year, Gallup found public satisfaction with K-12 schools was at its lowest level in more than 20 years.

In a June 2022 poll, Gallup found that only 13 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of Democrats have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in U.S. public schools.

A shift to an education system that offers more choices could drive quality improvements in traditional public schools, because there would be a financial incentive for them to retain students.

Broader school choice would also allow parents to seek educational institutions that fit their children’s needs better than their traditional public schools. 

 “A universal (school choice) program would generate enough demand for robust market entry in the long run, meaning more choices for all families,” argues the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank. “If parents do not perceive that certain schools or services will be appropriate for their children, they will not choose them—enticing schools to improve or force them to close down. The schools that are a quality match for many children will be financially rewarded and expand in the long run.”

“If the primary school choice mechanism is the supply of high‐​quality schools, we should allow the market to determine which institutions are high quality,” says the Cato Institute. “The choices of individual parents, rather than bureaucrats, can determine which schools remain open and which ones close.”

Clearly, it’s criminal to keep children in lousy underfunded public schools with lousy teachers and lousy administrators, and with no ability to opt out, to choose a better alternative. 

But let’s not fool ourselves. More choices could mean a further splintering of the body politic.

A shift to an education system that offers a multitude of taxpayer-funded choices could end up shattering efforts to foster national identity and rich common values that foster mutual respect and active citizenship. 

As Kwame Anthony Appiah, a British-American philosopher and writer, put it in a graduation address at the University oi Pennsylvania, education is “a means both to foster the autonomy of the child—the capacities to make his way in the world—and to promote the welfare of the polity.”

If American parents all “do their own thing”, as many school choice evangelists advocate, the divisiveness and polarization inflicting American society today is likely to increase and we’ll become even more atomised.

Disadvantaged and vulnerable children may also be shortchanged in the maelstrom. And as more children are taught only what their parents want them to learn, shared values will erode. School choice shouldn’t be a license for parents to handicap their children. America has an interest, after all, in an educated populace.

In short, the pell-mell rush toward more school choices will not be an unalloyed good if it undermines academic achievement, community, justice, common principles, mutual respect and political coexistence.

All this suggests teacher unions, parents and the legislature need to move forward with care if Oregon’s children are to be well-served in their education.

So, yes to school choice, but be damn careful.

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Alternative schooling in Oregon: is the cure worse than the disease?

School-Choice_banner

More choices don’t always mean better choices.

Oregon, eager to appease vocal parents, gives them lots of K-12 options if they don’t want to send their children to traditional brick-and-mortar public schools.

This being National School Choice Week, alternative schooling advocates are in a particularly celebratory mood. “The landscape of options to meet the learning needs of today’s students is more diverse than ever, ” Kathryn Hickok,  executive vice president of the Cascade Policy Institute, said on Monday, Jan. 27.  “Empowering parents to choose among these options can unlock the unique potential of every child. “

There’s no question that alternative schooling can be seductive. After all, it can offer flexibility, more curriculum choice, self-paced learning, protection from threatening ideas and religious freedom. And I’m inclined to think that parents should have a role to play in conveying important values to their children.

It’s not clear, however, that all the schooling choices out there are better for the children or are adequately preparing young people to succeed and participate in our complex economy.

In addition, the fragmentation of our educational system may be undermining the need for all members of our society to see themselves in common cause – a necessity for the survival of our democracy. Where too many people are isolated from their peers, they may be less likely to see a relationship of mutual commitment and responsibility to others.

A case study: Junction City School District

junctioncitytower

According to the Junction City, OR School District, of all of its  K-12 students in the 2019-2020 school year:

  • 1820 are attending district public schools
  • 74 are attending online public charter schools
  • 37 are being home schooled
  • >52 are attending private schools

Some district students may also be attending brick-and-mortar public charter schools, such as Triangle Lake, Willamette Leadership and Network Charter School, but they are not located within the district’s boundaries.

Students can attend a brick-and-mortar charter school without a release from the Junction City School District and such schools are not required to send the district a roster. The result is that no trail of paperwork is exchanged between the schools regarding Junction City resident students who attend the charter schools.

Online Public Charter Schools

According to the Junction City School District, as of Oct. 2019, district students were attending the following online public charter schools:

  • Oregon Connections Academy  (renamed Oregon Charter Academy in the 2020-2021 school year) – 4 students
  • Baker Web Academy – 42 students
  • Destinations Career Academy of Oregon – 1 student
  • Fossil Distance Learning Programs – 21 students
  • TEACH-NW – 6 students

bakerweblogo1  destinationslogoORCAlogo1  Print

fossiltownlogo

FOSSIL DISTANCE LEARNING ACADEMY

The academic performance of individual students attending the online public charter schools cannot be determined on the basis of available data. Only data on the performance of grades as a whole, based on standardized tests taken in English Language Arts, Mathematics and Science, are public.

That means there’s no way of knowing whether the students living within the Junction City School District who attend these schools are doing well or not.

The Oregon Department of Education does, however, collect data on the online schools, and it is dispiriting. It is clear that the schools are drawing children and money away from public schools while failing to provide a good alternative.

Despite that, the schools, also called cyber and virtual schools, are multiplying like fruit flies. “Other states have… increased oversight of fast-growing online schools,” noted a 2017 report by the Oregon Secretary of State’s Audits Division. “In contrast to these states, Oregon’s laws allow online schools to increase enrollment rapidly regardless of their performance.”

While online charter champions churn out a torrent of supportive stories that assert traditional schools are relics, critics are pummeled as Neanderthals unwilling to accept change.

Oregon’s online public charter schools and the districts sponsoring them are listed below:

Sponsoring District Online School 2018-19 Total Enrollment
Baker SD 5J Baker Web Academy 1,808
Mitchell SD 55 Cascade Virtual Academy 69
North Clackamas SD 12 Clackamas Web Academy 445
Eagle Point SD 9 Crater Lake Charter Academy 292
Mitchell SD 55 Destinations Career Academy of Oregon 38
Fossil SD 21J Fossil Charter School 755
Gervais SD 1 Frontier Charter Academy 303
Mitchell SD 55 Insight School of Oregon Painted Hills 305
Gresham-Barlow SD 10J Metro East Web Academy 522
Santiam Canyon SD 129J Oregon Connections Academy 3,886
North Bend SD 13 Oregon Virtual Academy 1,900
Scio SD 95 Oregon Virtual Education 37
Sheridan SD 48J Sheridan AllPrep Academy 128
Frenchglen SD 16 Silvies River Charter School 432
Estacada SD 108 Summit Learning Charter 1,081
Marcola SD 79J TEACH-NW 306
Fern Ridge SD 28J West Lane Technology Learning Center 73
Harney County SD 4 Oregon Family School 266
Paisley SD 11 Paisley School 215

Source: Oregon Department of Education

Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), the largest online public charter school in terms of enrollment, is a target of many online school critics who argue that such schools stand out more for their aggressive tactics to recruit and enroll students than for their academic excellence. (The school was renamed Oregon Charter Academy in the 2020-2021 school year)

ORCA was placed on Oregon’s federally mandated improvement list after only 21.9 percent of tested students at the school met or exceeded math standards and 41.8% of tested students met or exceeded English Language Arts standards in 2018-19.

Baker Web Academy hasn’t performed well either. Just 28.1% of tested students at the Academy were proficient in math and 56.5 % of tested students were proficient in English Language Arts in 2018-19.

At TEACH-NW, 77.4% of tested students met or exceeded English Language Arts standards, but just 41.9% of tested students met or exceeded math standards in 2018-2019.

Attendance at online schools isn’t their strong suit either.

ORCA attendance has been dreadful. Regular attendance was only 63.4% during the 2018-19 school year and an average of 59.7% over the past three school years. That indicates chronic absenteeism.

At Destinations Career Academy, regular attendance was a dismal 26% in both the 2018-19 and 2017-18 school years. The online school says it combines traditional high school academics with industry-relevant, career-focused electives. Its poor attendance isn’t a very good start for those who will be eventually expected to show up regularly and on time at work.

Then there are graduation rates.

Graduation rates at all Oregon public schools, including online public charters, are calculated the same way by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) as an “adjusted cohort graduation rate.” That rate is the percentage of all students who graduate from high school with a diploma within a four-year cohort period after they start 9th grade.

Graduation rates for 2019 are based on students who first entered high school during the 2015-16 School Year.

In 2019, the graduation rate for all Oregon public schools was 80.01%.  For the Junction City School District, it was 85.16%. In sharp contrast, the graduation rate at Baker Web Academy was 62.50% and at Oregon Connections Academy 56.40%.

Only the Fossil Distance Learning Program has had a consistently high graduation rate of 83.33% – 100% over the past several years. It is worth noting, however, that Fossil hasn’t been dealing with as many students with disabilities, English language learners and low-income students as the Junction City School District.

TEACH-NW started in 2017 and Destinations Career Academy of Oregon in 2018, so neither has a graduation rate for a cohort that entered during the 2015-16 school year.

Another way to evaluate school performance is to look at students’ on-track performance, the percent of freshman who have at least 25% of the credits needed to graduate with a regular diploma by the beginning of their sophomore year. Students on-track to graduate by the end of their freshman year are more than twice as likely as students who are off-track to graduate within four years of entering high school.

The 2018-19 on-track average was 85% for all Oregon public schools and 82% for the Junction City School District. In contrast, the average was just 62% at Baker Web Academy and 59% at Oregon Connections Academy.  Data is not available for the other online public schools Junction City School District students attended that year.

Even brick-and-mortar charter schools are critical of their online counterparts. While they may be at the same charter dance, they’re engaged in an increasingly hostile pas de deux.

“For a significant number of “students who are attending full-time, fully online schools, the outcomes are pretty devastating,” M. Karega Rausch, vice president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, told attendees at an Education Commission of the States’ National Forum on Education Policy.

What all this data indicates is that most Junction City parents enrolling their children to online public charter schools are not choosing superior alternatives to district schools.

Homeschooling 

How about children who are being homeschooled instead of sent to the traditional public schools?  Is that a superior alternative?

As noted earlier, there are 37 registered homeschoolers in the Junction City School District, a small portion of the estimated 22,000 statewide.

Parents of students between the ages of 6-18 are supposed to notify their local Education Service District (ESD) of their intent to home school within 10 days of beginning to home school, but compliance is not comprehensive.

A homeschooler is expected to take standardized testing by August 15 of the summer following the completion of 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 10th grades, as long as the child has been homeschooled since at least February 15 of the year preceding testing (18 months before the test deadline).

The required tests include grade-level math (concepts, application, skills), reading (comprehension), and language (writing, spelling/grammar, punctuation, etc.)

With the above information, you might be tempted to say that public oversight of homeschoolers is obviously comparable to that of public school because the state knows how all homeschooled students are performing. You’d be wrong.

First, homeschooled students are not required to take common standardized tests that measure academic progress. They can opt out, and many of them do.

Second, homeschoolers’ tests are scored on a percentile, so the score a child gets represents how many people taking the same test got a lower score. In other words, the scores don’t represent how well the child knows the material, only how well the child performs relative to every other homeschooler taking the test. Even then, If a child scores at the 15th percentile or above, then the ESD simply files the report and there’s no follow-up.

Third, homeschoolers don’t have to report their scores to anybody unless their education service district (ESD) asks for them. But the state cares so little about how these children are doing that ESDs almost never request test scores, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

Not that it would make much difference if ESDs did request the test scores.

That’s because homeschoolers would only need to report their composite percentile score. This is an almost useless single percentile representing a child’s performance on all three subjects together. It’s almost as though the state doesn’t really want to know how homeschoolers are doing.

What is clear, then, is that nobody really knows whether Junction City parents who are homeschooling their children are providing them with an equal or superior alternative to District schools.

Private schools

According to the Junction City School District, more than 52 students in the district attend private schools, but obtaining an accurate count is difficult.

“Private schools are not required to report to us as to how many (or which) JC resident students are attending private school,” said Kathleen Rodden-Nord, the district superintendent. “Our estimate is based on when my assistant has called them to inquire about the number.”

The count can also be off because some students whose transfer to an online public charter school was approved by the district are also enrolled in private schools.

According to the Junction City School District, private Schools in the district offering classes within the K-12 band, and their enrollment of district students, include:

  • The Strive Academy (Grades 4-12) – 12
  • Docere Academy of Arts (Grades 7-10) – 11
  • Nature Discovery Christian School (Grades PK-12) – 52

I visited The Strive Academy and Docere Academy of Arts on Jan. 15, 2020 to gather information about their operations.

The Strive Academy

The Strive Academy was hard to find. After driving by the school’s address, 375 Holly Street, several times and seeing no school signs, I figured maybe it had suddenly moved or closed. To find out, I knocked on the door of Martial Arts America, the business at the Holly Street address.

strivedoor

To my surprise, Strive was located inside the business. Outfitted for martial arts training, with striking bags along the wall and a thick mat covering most of the floor, the sole indication of a school in the room was a long table where seven children of varying ages sat with their laptops. The only adults in the room were Ruth Garcia, Strive’s owner and Director, and an assistant. Overall, the scene looked more like a children’s gym/playroom than a school and it was hard to believe much real, intense, creative learning was going on.

striveclassroom

The Strive Academy

Garcia, who has no background in education, said the school serves students in 5th – 12th grade. It has about a dozen students enrolled and a capacity of 15, she said. . All core classes (science, math, social studies and language art) are taken online through Baker Web Academy, which is tuition-free because it is a public online charter school.

For the online classes, Strive says it uses only accredited and approved online schools recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the United States Department of Education.

CHEA does not, however, “recognize” any online K-12 schools. “We don’t have anything to do with K-12, only post-secondary education,” said Eric G. Selwyn, CHEA’s Membership and Information Administrator. The U.S. Department of Education doesn’t recognize, approve or accredit any online K-12 schools or programs either.

Most of the students now at Strive initially sought approval from the Junction City School District to transfer to Baker Web Academy, Garcia said. Once enrolled at Baker Web, they also enrolled at Strive.

The academic performance of the individual students at Strive is a true mystery, partly because it is not Strive that is grading them, but Baker Web Academy. Furthermore, the Oregon Department of Education discloses performance measures by grade level, not by individual students.

Docere Academy of Arts

Docere Academy of Arts wasn’t that easy to find either. The school gives its address as 530 W 7th Ave, Junction City, but that address is attached to a building identified on a plaque at the entrance as Christ’s Center.

ChristsCenter

Entrance to Christ’s Center Church

Learning from my experience with Strive, I walked into the building and asked if they knew anything about Docere.  It turned out the church building was a former elementary school and Docere was in a classroom down one of the hallways.

Like Strive, Docere operates in one large room, though Docere’s space is furnished and pleasantly decorated like a traditional classroom setting.

Docereclassroom

A student at the Docere Academy of Arts

Docere embraces John F. Kennedy’s view that, “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

“…my hope and vision is to see a school for girls that starts with the Bible as our foundation for all subjects and to inspire a love for learning and discovering God’s truths through academia and the arts,” the school’s Director and instructor,  Jaymie Starr, says in a standard letter to prospective families and students.

Starr said the school currently serves 11 girls in grades 7-10. As with Strive, all core classes are offered only online, with most students registered at Baker Web Academy and a few with the Junction City School District’s online program, JC Online.

There are two people on Docere’s staff according to its website, Jaymie Starr (also identified as Barbara J. Starr in other records) and her husband, Jeffery Starr.

The website says Jaymie holds an Associate’s of Biblical Studies degree from University of the Nations, which is not accredited by any recognized accreditation body. “The goal of the U of N is to teach students how to apply biblical truth practically and to fulfill the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20),” The university’s website says.

Jaymie completed a year of teacher training from U of N through their satellite campus in Tyler, TX.  The program, Teachers For The Nations (TFN), says it teaches how to “train the student to prepare and present Biblically-based lesson plans for every subject in the curriculum.”

According to Docere’s website, Jaymie’s husband, Jeffery Starr, is a Youth Pastor at Christ’s Center Church. He also works as a middle school track and cross country coach at Junction City’s Oaklea Middle School. “I love Jesus, my family and coffee!,” he says on his Facebook page.

Although Docere’s classroom setting is superior to Strive’s, the academic performance of the individual students at Docere  is just as much a mystery. Baker Web Academy is grading them, not Docere, and the Oregon Department of Education discloses performance measures only by grade level, not by individual students.

Then there’s the money

One thing all the alternative schooling arrangements have in common is that somebody is making money.

At Docere, Strive and other private schools that access online coursework through public charter schools, the online classes may be free, but all the private schools have additional charges.

At Strive, all new students pay a $149 processing fee that also covers a martial arts uniform. Then there is a $99 a month charge for a required martial arts class twice a week. In addition, tuition is $300 a month, which covers field trips and instruction in things such as robotics, music, art and first aid. That translates into $3740 for a school year for a new student.

If the school was operating at capacity, it would generate $56,100 of revenue over a 9-month school year. “You’re paying for a safe place, a safe environment,” Garcia said.

At Docere, there’s a registration fee of $100 and a monthly tuition fee of $275 per student with a $50/month sibling discount. The tuition is expected to cover the majority of costs for everything from weekly science labs, dance workshops, and art classes to cooking classes and field trips. Tuition also covers the school’s rent, activity costs, salary for the school director, payments to other teachers, tutor costs, substitutes, supplies, copies and wifi. That translates into $2,575 for a school year for a new student.

With 11 students, the school is generating $28,325 of revenue over a 9-month school year.

The big money, however, isn’t being made by the private schools.  It’s being made by the online public charter schools that provide the coursework.

These schools aren’t collecting tuition from their students. Instead, the mostly poorly performing online schools  are being supported with money diverted from the state’s brick-and-mortar public schools. The Oregon Department of Education distributes State School Fund money to each school district that sponsors a charter school; the district then passes on most of that money to the charter school.

 The Santiam Canyon School District sponsors Oregon Connections Academy, which had the largest enrollment of 3,886 students on Oct. 1, 2019. The State School Fund gave the district $30,419,216.36 for the 2018-19 school year to support that sponsorship.

Oregon law provides that a sponsoring district must pass on to its charter school at least 80 percent of its per-pupil grant for K-8 students and 95 percent of its per pupil grant for grade 9-12 students.

The Santiam Canyon School District chose to retain 1% ($304,192.16) of the State School Fund money it received and then to charge Oregon Connections Academy 3.5% ($1,054,025.85) of the balance as a management fee for the provision of services for the 2018-19 school year. That translated to $1,358,218.01 in revenue to the Santiam Canyon School District and $29,060,998.35 in revenue to Oregon Connections Academy.

Distributions to all the Oregon school districts sponsoring online public charter schools that year are shown below:

County District sponsor Charter school SSF $ rec’d
Linn Santiam Canyon SD 129J Oregon Connections Academy  $  30,419,216.36
Coos North Bend SD 13 Oregon Virtual Academy  $  14,510,307.99
Baker Baker SD 5J Baker Web Academy  $  14,147,825.08
Clackamas Estacada SD 108 Summit Learning Charter  $    8,616,826.86
Wheeler Fossil SD 21J Fossil Charter School  $    5,856,698.56
Multnomah Gresham-Barlow SD 10J Metro East Web Academy  $    4,047,657.29
Clackamas North Clackamas SD 12 Clackamas Web Academy  $    3,511,076.97
Wheeler Mitchell SD 55 Cascade Virtual Academy; Destinations Career Academy of Oregon; Insight School of Oregon-Painted Hills  $    3,409,914.44
Harney Frenchglen SD 16 Silvies River Charter School  $    3,367,207.13
Marion Gervais SD 1 Frontier Charter Academy  $    2,350,696.75
Lane Marcola SD 79J TEACH-NW  $    2,348,684.27
Jackson Eagle Point SD 9 Crater Lake Academy  $    2,256,338.83
Harney Harney County SD 4 Oregon Family School  $    2,032,711.22
Lake Paisley SD 11 Paisley Charter School  $    1,618,021.06
Yamhill Sheridan SD 48J Sheridan All Prep  $    1,047,705.30
Lane Fern Ridge SD 28J West Lane Technology Learning Center  $        579,874.37
Linn Scio SD 95 Oregon Virtual Education  $        232,202.48

Source: Oregon Department of Education

     Oregon’s State School Fund sent $100,352,964.96 to school districts sponsoring online public charter schools for the 2018-2019 school year.

All that money for a mostly substandard education and mediocre results.

Some State School Fund money may also be leaking back to the parents of the online students in the form of cash, debit cards or school-controlled accounts that students and their families are supposed to use for school-related purposes.

In a late 2019 posting to the Junction City School District’s districts website, Rodden-Nord  alleged that some online public charter schools are using State School Fund money to give their students “stipends”  that ranged from $900 per student to at least $2000 per student. “A handful of Junction City families seeking a release from our district to attend a virtual charter program have expressed that they do not want to do JC Online (the district’s online program) because we do not provide such a stipend and they need it, or want it,”  Rodden-Nord said.

The TEACH-NW website confirms that annual so-called “allotments” will be made to students in the 2019-2020 school year as follows, with amounts allocated based on initial enrollment quarter:

According to Phillip Johnson, the Director at TEACH-NW,  allotments can be used to cover academic materials such as textbooks, school supplies, curriculum materials, approved instructional programs (i.e. music, dance), enrichment experiences, educational subscriptions, educational fees, tutoring services, some athletics fees and equipment, field trips, and internet expenses as approved by the student’s Educational Facilitator (assigned teacher).

“All expenditures are closely monitored (daily) by our account supervisor,” Johnson said. “Families do have access to a program issued debit card which is under the direct control of our program (activation, deactivation, loading). We also process reimbursements for those families who prefer to not use their debit card. All expenditures must be directly linked to the student’s Individual Learning Plan (ILP) which is aligned to state standards.  Failure to maintain program compliance results in allotment suspension.”

Amber Jallo, Enrollment Manager at the Fossil Distance Learning Program, said her school also supplies funds to families. “We supply $1500 of ed funds,” she said. “This breaks down to be $750 per semester. These funds can be spent on curriculum, field trips and enrichment.”

Jim Smith, Superintendent of the Fossil School District, added,  “We provide educational funds to purchase curriculum and instruction.  All purchases must meet all requirements provided in our policies. Our students can currently use these funds for curriculum, educational supplies, tutoring, instruction, and field trips.”

Daniel Huld, Superintendent of Baker Charter Schools, said they don’t provide students with any such stipends.

Even if online public charter schools do give some of their State School Fund money to students or their families, they may not be breaking any rules if the funds are intended to be used for school-related expenses.  “To our understanding there is nothing that explicitly prohibits this in the charter school statutes, or in state law that speaks specifically to this issue,” said Jenni Knaus, a Communications Specialist at the Oregon Department of Education.

_______________________

I get it that the alternative education choices reflect a lack of confidence in traditional educational institutions. However, despite the almost messianic belief in alternative schooling held by many supporters, it’s clear from the facts on the ground that they have not found the promised land.

A close look reveals a brutal truth — there are major flaws in many of the alternative options being chosen by Oregon parents and the damage being inflicted on their children could be severe.

All Oregonians, particularly the legislature and governor, should care because education is not just a private good.  Studied indifference or washing our hands of the consequences of educational malfeasance can have serious consequences for the community at large.

As Chester Finn Jr., Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, put it, “Once you conclude that education is also a public good—one whose results bear powerfully on our prosperity, our safety, our culture, our governance, and our civic life—you have to recognize that voters and taxpayers have a compelling interest in whether kids are learning what they should…”