June 13, 2023 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

Oregon’s Traditional Public Schools Are Cruisin’ For A Bruisin’

Thank goodness for Mississippi.

Only Mississippi lost a larger share of K-12 public school students in the 2022-2023 school year than Oregon.

Oregon’s public schools have lost 30,000 students since the fall of 2019. lowering total enrollment by 5% to 552,000 students in the fall of 2022.

Ethan Sharygin, director of Portland State University’s Population Research Center, told The Oregonian a switch from public school to private school represents about one-quarter of the “missing” students, many left to be homeschooled and some simply dropped out or weren’t enrolled in kindergarten when they reached the age of 5. Smaller slices of the loss are due to families moving out of state and to a gently declining birth rate.

Portland Public Schools (PPS) have been hit particularly hard by declining enrollment. The PPS website says “…With more than 49,000 students in 81 schools, it is one of the largest school districts in the Pacific Northwest.” But that’s far from reality.

In the 2022-23 school year, total enrollment was actually 43,023 and a Portland Public Schools Enrollment Forecast 2022-23 to 2036-37, Based on October 2021 Enrollments projected enrollment will continue to fall throughout most of the forecast horizon, reaching 42,047 in 2025-27, 39,561 in 2031-32 and 39,123 in 2035-36.

Under a “low growth scenario” enrollment could go down further to 37,350 in 2035-36. The difference is primarily due to different assumptions about the levels of net migration (the net movement into and out of the District) of the District’s population.

Every single one of the missing children will represent a loss of revenue to the school district. That’s because Oregon school districts receive (in combined state and local funds) an allocation per student, plus an additional amount for each student enrolled in more costly programs such as Special Education or English Language Learners.

If a departing student shifts to homeschooling, there is no money transfer to families at this point, but the student’s school still loses that student’s funding allocation.

If a student shifts to one of Oregon’s 132 public charter schools, whether a brick-and-mortar institution or an online entity, the money the traditional school got for that student goes to the district sponsoring the charter school. Oregon law then 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.

Charter school enrollment in Oregon rose steadily from 1.7 percent of total public school enrollment in 2006-07 to 8.2% (46,275 students) in 2020-2021, then slipped slightly to 7.7% (42,668 students) 2021-2022. Charter school enrollment rose again in the 2022-2023 school year, however, to 11.9% (46,278 students) with 30,578 attending brick-and -mortar schools and 15,700 attending virtual public charter schools.

Right now in Oregon, once a school district has 3% or more of its students enrolled in a virtual public charter school outside the district, it can generally start denying requests. But school choice advocates have been pushing to eliminate that cap. Legislative efforts to remove the cap have failed to date, but that may not hold.

The outflow of students to charters may also accelerate if a movement in Oklahoma is replicated in Oregon. Many parents abandon traditional public schools because they want a more religious-oriented environment for their children. In early June, Oklahoma approved America’s first religious charter school. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma won approval to launch an online charter school that would embrace Catholic doctrine.

Some advocates of religious schooling have been suggesting that any effort to stop charter schools from being religious is a form of discrimination against religion. Ultimately, this issue will end up in court, perhaps the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another potential problem could come from the increasing public pressure for more school choice.

The Cascade Policy Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Oregon, is at the forefront of Oregon’s school choice movement. “Oregon’s public schools, largely controlled by teachers’ unions, are a one-size-fits-all system that leaves many students behind,” the Institute argues. “Traditional public schools, charter schools, magnet schools, online learning, private and parochial schools, homeschooling, and tutoring are all paths to success for students. All options should be valued, and parents should be empowered to choose among them to help their children succeed.”

Cascade is particularly enamored of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), where a percentage of the funds that the state otherwise would spend to educate a student in a public school is deposited into accounts associated with the student’s family. The family may use the funds to spend on private school tuition or other educational expenses.

There are currently voucher and similar programs in 32 states and the District of Columbia, according to EdChoice, a free-market organization that promotes public money for private education. Voucher programs often are characterized in state legislation as “scholarship programs,” but whatever the name, the policies result in a transfer of public money to private institutions. Some even subsidize home-schooling.

In Arizona, the school choice movement has secured a school voucher program which has exploded since it was signed into law in 2022.

Arizona’s voucher program allows any child in the state to receive roughly $7,000 each year of their K-12 education while getting instruction at home or attending private school. The Arizona Department of Education recently estimated that enrollment in the program would continue to skyrocket and cost $900 million next year, nearly $300 million more than expected, Public school funding would have to go down to pay for it.

More students have applied for Iowa’s state-funded education savings accounts than expected as well, meaning the cost of paying for the private school scholarships could exceed what the state budgeted.

As of June 13, 2023, 17,520 applications had been submitted for the program, which will provide eligible families with $7,600 per child in state money to be used solely to pay for private school costs such as tuition and fees. A nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency had earlier estimated that 14,068 students would be approved to receive education savings accounts in the program’s first year. Families still have until June 30 to apply for the program, meaning the number of applications is likely to increase further.

Imagine the hit to traditional public school funding if similar programs were enacted in Oregon.

Regardless of the specific school choice options adopted, the prognosis for public school enrollment in Oregon is grim. How Oregon adapts in managing the enrollment decay is going to be a challenge.

April 18, 2023 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

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.

June 29, 2020 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

Why do Republicans want to undermine Oregon’s public schools?

publicschoolclassroom

What were they thinking?

Oregon’s traditional brick-and-mortar public school system is under stress and needs support. So what did the Republicans propose coming into the special session that started on June 24? They wanted to make it easier for students to transfer from their district’s brick-and-mortar public schools to virtual public charter schools, taking State School Fund dollars with them.

Oregon law provides that a school district may deny a parent’s request to shift their child to a virtual public charter school if more than 3% of the students who reside in the district are enrolled in virtual public charter schools not sponsored by the district.

Senate Republican leader Fred Girod (R-Stayton) proposed raising that 3% figure to 8% to allow more students to abandon their district’s schools. “Given this pandemic, people are going to want an alternative, and that alternative is going to be virtual schools,” Girod said.

Not only would this have potentially siphoned millions from already stretched district budgets, but research on virtual charter school performance outcomes across the country generally paints a distressing picture. In other words, Oregon’s traditional public schools clearly have their problems, but the virtual public charter schools are even worse.

The desire of some parents for school choice is understandable, but numerous studies have concluded that full-time virtual charter schools are not the right option for many K-12 students. The fact is many K-12 virtual charter schools are like tribute bands, just a facsimile of real education.

“Current online charter schools may be a good fit for some students, but the evidence suggests that online charters don’t serve very well the relatively atypical set of students that currently attend these schools, much less the general population,” the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University said in a report. “Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule.”

In the same vein, a report from the Colorado-based National Education Policy Center (NEPC) concluded, “There is…little high-quality systematic evidence that the rapid expansion of (virtual charter schools) the past several years is wise. Research has …consistently found that students enrolled in full-time virtual schools have performed at levels well below their face-to-face counterparts.”

A Fordham Institute study of virtual charter schools reached similar conclusions. “Online schools offer an efficient way to diversify—and even democratize—education in a connected world,” the study said. “Yet they have received negative, but well-deserved, attention concerning their poor academic performance, attrition rates, and ill capacity to educate the types of students who enroll in them.”

As most educators and parents learned in the widespread switch to online schooling spurred by COVID-19, it has been a worst-case outcome for most students. “There’s a sense that this has been an unmitigated disaster,” Dana Goldstein, a national correspondent for The New York Times, said in a June 28, 2020 Innovation Hub interview.

A recently published study published in Educational Researcher examined the effects of attending a virtual charter school on student outcomes. “We find the impact of attending a virtual charter on student achievement is uniformly and profoundly negative,” the authors wrote in a Brookings article.

The study authors concluded that “virtual charter schools are ill-equipped to take on a more prominent role” in light of the COVID-19 crisis. “Based on their dismal track record, policymakers should instead focus on greater oversight and accountability for these schools. Perhaps the worst policy response during the COVID-19 crisis is to promote these schools…”

Thankfully, Girod’s proposal didn’t go forward as a bill in the special session. It would be a shame if it rears its ugly head again.

Further reading:

Oregon’s Public Virtual Charter Schools Don’t Compute

COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime

Too Many Schools Leave Learning to Chance During the Pandemic

Oregon Connections Academy: Still a Virtual Calamity

Alternative Schooling in Oregon: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?

June 25, 2020 by whmacken2013 - 2 Comments

Is State School Fund money being misused by some Oregon virtual public charter schools?

virtualschoolpic

If an Oregon child attends a regular brick-and-mortar public school or the school’s online program, parents cover any outside extra-curricular expenses. But if a child attends an Oregon virtual public charter school there’s a chance parents will get a kick-back of up to $2,000 per year for personal use.

That’s not right.

Virtual public charter schools don’t collect tuition from their students. Instead, the schools are supported by money diverted from the state’s traditional 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 keeps a portion and passes on the rest to the charter school.

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.

Marcola SD 79J in Lane County, for example, sponsors the virtual public charter school, Teach-NW. The State School Fund gave the district $2,348,684.27 for the 2018-2019 school year to support the sponsorship and the district passed on most of that money to Teach-NW.

But Teach-NW didn’t spend all the money.

Instead, the school set aside $2000 per student for “allotments” which parents were allowed to spend in support of their child’s education. A family with three children at Teach-NW, for example, got access to extra allotments totaling $6,000 each year.

According to 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).” Families can access the money through a debit card or request reimbursements from the school.”

Some parents say the $2,000 allotments are a key factor in enrolling their children at Teach-NW. Other parents deny the allotments are a factor in enrollment decisions. But as satirist and cultural critic H. L. Mencken put it, “When somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

The practical effect of this arrangement is that parents who choose to send their children to Teach-NW, rather than their local brick-and-mortar public school or their school district’s online program, get a substantial extra financial package. And it’s all paid for with taxpayer dollars.

That’s wrong.

October 25, 2019 by whmacken2013 - 2 Comments

Oregon Connections Academy/Oregon Charter Academy: another failing online charter school

orcanarrowlogo

Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), an online statewide charter school with 153 teachers serving about 4500 students, has been placed on the state’s a federally mandated improvement list. (The school was renamed Oregon Charter Academy in the 2020-2021 school year)

I’m not surprised.

I took a close look at ORCA in 2017 and it was clear the school had problems, but I figured things might get better. They haven’t.

Just look at the numbers.

Only 21.9 percent of tested students at the school met or exceeded math standards in 2018-2019, down from an already abysmal 22.7% in 2017-18.

English language arts (ELA) achievement has been poor, too. Only 41.8% of tested students met or exceeded ELA standards in 2018-2019 and an average of just 42.8% met or exceeded the standards over the past three school years.

School attendance is dreadful as well. Regular attendance during the 2018-19 school year was only 63.4%, and an average of 59.7% over the past three school years. That indicates chronic absenteeism. In 2018 – 2019, just 71% of the school’s students attended more than 90% of their enrolled school days.

Then there are graduation rates and college attendance. Graduation rates at all Oregon public schools, including virtual 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.

Only 57.1% of students in ORCA’s 2014-15 cohort graduated in four years and an average of 61.1% in the past three school years. There was no improvement with students in ORCA’s 2015-16 cohort, who were seniors in 2018-2019. Only 57% of those students graduated in four years.

Oregon 2014-15 Cohort Rates for Students Entering High School in 2011-12: 73.82%

Oregon 2017-18 Cohort Rates for Students Entering High School in 2014-15: 78.70%

And of ORCA’s graduates, only 41% enrolled in a two or four year college within one year of completing high school, as reported by the National Student Clearinghouse.

WHY DOES OREGON TOLERATE THIS?

An Oregon Connections Academy graduation ceremony

ORCA’s performance fits with national statistics for online charter schools. Nearly three-quarters of students enrolled in virtual charters are attending a high school where fewer than half graduate in four years, according to an analysis by the Education Week Research Center.

I’ve written before about Oregon’s virtual public charter schools. New data reveals that Oregon Connections Academy, and Oregon’s public virtual charter schools as a whole, are still failing their students and the parents who enroll them.

A recent study highlighted by Chalkbeat, an education newsletter, found that students who attended an online charter school in Georgia saw large declines in test scores. Of equal concern, the study concluded that ever attending a virtual school is associated with a 10-percentage point reduction in the probability of ever graduating from high school. “This is early evidence that full-time virtual schools as a type of school choice could be harmful to students’ learning and future economic opportunities, as well as a sub-optimal use of taxpayer money,” the study reported.

________________________

Suggested readings:

OREGON’S PUBLIC VIRTUAL CHARTER SCHOOLS DON’T COMPUTE

ALTERNATIVE SCHOOLING IN OREGON: IS THE CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE?

__________________________

Despite that truth, the schools, also called cyber and online schools, are multiplying like fruit flies. Supporters are intoxicated by their potential and doubters are being pummeled as technical Neanderthals unwilling to accept change.

Virtual charters have taken root across the country and continue to grow, though at a slower rate than in the past.

They are part of a movement that is exploding across the country and enjoys the support of President Donald Trump. Trump has called school choice “the civil rights issue of our time” and appointed Betsy DeVos, a fierce advocate of charter schools, Secretary of Education.

“Families want and deserve access to all educational options, including charter schools, private schools and virtual schools,” DeVos said in 2015, before becoming Secretary.

On June 13, 2017, after being confirmed as Secretary of Education, DeVos told the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, “…as a nation, we are simply not doing a good enough job educating our kids. A system that denies parents the freedom to choose the education that best suits their children’s individual and unique needs denies them a basic human right. It is un-American, and it is fundamentally unjust.”

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (R) with President Donald Trump

But the evidence clearly shows that within the charter school movement, the virtual charter industry is not “all about the kids.”

The growth of full-time public virtual charter schools in Oregon offers a case study of a misplaced faith in choice and technology.

ORCA, based in Mill City, is Oregon’s largest public virtual charter school. As noted earlier, its current enrollment is given as about 4500, but that number fluctuates throughout the school year. On Oct. 1, 2015, for example, the standard date for calculating charter school enrollment in Oregon, ORCA said it had 3,789 enrolled students. But 950 students left during the school year, and others enrolled. At one point during the year, total enrollment went as high as 5,631. At the end of the school year, 4035 students were enrolled.

CLASHING SENTIMENTS

Students, parents and teachers both praise and assail ORCA.

“All in all, ORCA is a fantastic educational experience for those who don’t fit the mold for brick and mortar schools,” a student told a school rating organization.

“This was the perfect fit for our family!,” Andrea Potter Kruse posted on Facebook. “My son was bored in class and getting into trouble. There was horrible communication from the school. We made the switch and my son is loving school again.”

“…my kiddo used to hide in the back of the class and not participate during lessons,” SC wrote about ORCA on Sitejabber. “He’s currently getting the best education of his life. It works for us.”

“Our daughter…has lost motivation and doesn’t really seem to care,” Alyssa E. commented about ORCA on Sitejabber. “At this point, she does the least amount required, which is essentially a lot of busy work and multiple-choice questions.. The teachers are limited by the horrible interface and limitations of the online learning platform. Connections Academy is essentially the K-12 equivalent of the troubled for-profit colleges.”

“Unless your child…has zero interest in doing anything but sitting at the computer for 7-10 hours a day, then I really don’t think this is what you are looking for as an alternative to regular school,” said a parent. “Don’t do this to your child!”

Some teachers praise ORCA for having a hardworking professional staff, flexible schedules, and a commitment to children first.

Other teachers complain about high student/teacher ratios, a revolving door of employees, poor management and profit-driven policies. “Sometimes the bottom line is the goal and not student achievement,” said one teacher.

Both sides of the virtual charter school debate are fighting a raging propaganda war that is almost Darwinian in nature.

Virtual charter champions churn out a torrent of supportive stories, arguing that traditional schools are relics and choice wouldn’t be so necessary if traditional public schools hadn’t utterly failed to meet the needs of children.

Critics argue just as vociferously that the online schools rob traditional brick and mortar public schools of students and public money, lack accountability, exacerbate inequalities of opportunity and worst of all, fail to educate.

IN THE BEGINNING

The public charter school movement in the U.S. has moved quickly from the margins to the mainstream.

Minnesota passed the first state public charter school law in the United States in 1991. The first charter school opened 25 years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota in September 1992.

Still, the virtual public charter sector barely existed in the United States prior to 2000, but it has grown rapidly since then. The siren song of technology as an education savior, particularly for disaffected students who want a non-traditional school setting, is proving irresistible to many parents and children.

Since enacting a charter school law in 1999, Oregon has become home to 21 virtual public charter schools, according to the Oregon Department of Education:

Virtual Public Charter School	School District Sponsor
Baker Web Academy	Baker SD 5J
Cascade Virtual Academy	Mitchell SD
Clackamas Web Academy	North Clackamas SD 12
Crater Lake Charter Academy	Eagle Point SD 9
Dallas Community School	Dallas SD 2
Destinations Career Academy of Oregon	Mitchell SD 55
Fossil Charter School	Fossil SD 21J
Frontier Charter Academy	Gervais SD 1
Insight School of Oregon-Painted Hills	Mitchell SD
Metro East Web Academy	Gresham-Barlow SD 10J
Oregon Connections Academy	Santiam Canyon SD
Oregon Family School	Harney County SD 4
Oregon Virtual Academy	North Bend SD 13
Oregon Virtual Education	Scio SD 95
Paisley School	Paisley SD 11
Sheridan AllPrep Academy	Sheridan SD 48J
Silvies River Charter School	Frenchglen SD 16
Summit Learning Charter	Estacada SD 108
TEACH-NW	Marcola SD 79J
West Lane Technology Learning Center	Fern Ridge SD 28J
Willamette Connections Academy	Scio SD 95

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Charter schools in Oregon, including virtual 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.

The system leads to big disparities among sponsoring districts in what they keep and what they pass on to the charter schools. This, in turn, can lead to “sponsor shopping” by charter school operators looking for maximum financial return and minimum oversight.

Ohio once encountered an egregious example of sponsor shopping. Charter school operators there that failed to get authorized or renewed by one sponsor simply shopped around for another.

“It’s been too easy for bad schools to find accommodating sponsors to keep them going…at least partly because sponsors in Ohio have earned fees for selling services to schools even when the schools in their portfolio produce poor results,” wrote two charter school supporters, Alan Rosskamm, CEO of Breakthrough Charter Schools, and Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Under ORCA’s 2005 contract with its initial sponsor, the Scio School District, Scio kept 10 percent of the State School Fund money it received for ORCA students in grades K-8 and 5 percent of the money it received for students in grades 9-12.

In 2005-2006, that translated into $311,358, half of which Scio had to send to the home districts of its ORCA students under Oregon’s charter law at the time.

As ORCA’s enrollment grew, so did the amount of State School Fund money retained by Sic. In the 2014-15 school year, the Scio district retained $1,886,498.34, half of which it had to send to the home districts of its ORCA students.

Scio was ecstatic to see the ORCA money rolling in and looking forward to the windfall continuing.

But while the Scio District and ORCA were in the midst of negotiations on a new contract, ORCA unexpectedly jumped ship. Abandoning Scio, ORCA signed a new contract with the nearby Santiam Canyon School District. The contract began with the 2015-2016 school year.

ORCA’s switch left the Scio School District perplexed and bitter. Not only was ORCA’s departure a shock, but it meant a big hit to Scio’s budget. Scio School District Superintendent Gary Tempel called the revenue loss “devastating” to the tiny district. But the switch was a bonanza for Santiam Canyon.

Charter schools have become cash cows for many school districts that sponsor them. This is even more true since the Oregon Legislature amended the charter school law in 2015 to eliminate the requirement that the sponsoring districts send half of the money they earned back to the home districts of their students. So Santiam Canyon got to keep all of the State School Fund money it held back.

Why, out of Oregon’s 197 school districts, did ORCA decide to switch to Santiam Canyon?

It was probably no coincidence that Todd A. Miller, appointed superintendent of the Santiam Canyon District in July 2013, served as ORCA’s executive director from April 2011 – June 2013.

The other key factor was likely money.

Instead of insisting on the same deal Scio had with ORCA, the Santiam Canyon district agreed to keep just 1 percent of the State School Fund money it received for ORCA.

ORCA also agreed to pay the district a 3.5 percent management fee to support things such as state reporting, business services, special education and other support services, but the payoff to ORCA (and Scio) was still substantial.

In 2014-15, Scio had retained $1,886,498 of the State School Fund money it received because of its sponsorship of ORCA. In 2015-16, Santiam Canyon retained just $1,362,272.49 of the State School Fund money it received because of its ORCA sponsorship. Not only did Santiam Canyon come out ahead because it didn’t have to share any of its money with the home districts of ORCA’s students, but ORCA paid its sponsor $532,235 less with the switch.

Miller defended the deal. “This fee structure does pass through more funds to ORCA than they previously received, yet the school board and I felt this arrangement was balanced for both of us and helped them add additional services to support struggling students,” Miller said.

REELING THEM IN

Oregon started with tough charter school enrollment restrictions.

The state’s charter law initially required that 80 percent of a public charter school’s student body live in the sponsor’s district and that no more than 10 percent of a district’s students could go to a charter school.

Those restrictions, however, lasted only five years. Charter schools can now recruit throughout the state with no limits.

ORCA is particularly aggressive in recruiting new students. Oregonians would be hard pressed to miss the ubiquitous ORCA television ads promoting the school.

The ads, which don’t even use the words “charter school,” are persuasive blends of Wall Street and Madison Avenue that fit right in with Connections Academy’s profit-driven culture.

The result has been a rapid expansion of enrollment at ORCA and other Oregon virtual charters.

Even though I said earlier that ORCA has about 4500 students, it’s actually hard to pin down exactly how many students attend Oregon’s virtual public charter schools at any given time. That’s because enrollment fluctuates wildly during and between school years, with some students going back and forth like ping pong balls.

“Many families enroll in virtual school for a short period of time to address a short-term issue or challenge, academically, socially or personally,” said Allison Galvin, ORCA’s executive director. “Once the family has navigated through the issue, they may decide to return to their previous school. Other families may find online school the perfect fit and remain enrolled.”

ORCA’s NEST

The original vision for Oregon’s charter schools was that they would be small, locally run institutions that would be innovative and flexible. But over time the virtual charter system has become profit-propelled and the structure has changed.

ORCA is a prime example of that. The school is like the smallest wooden figure in a classic Russian matryoshka doll, where wooden dolls nestle one inside the other.

russiannestingdolls2

ORCA is a not- for-profit corporation governed by a Board of Directors.

The Board has a Professional Services Agreement with a for-profit company, Connections Academy of Oregon, LLC (CAO), to operate and manage the school, under the direction of the Board of Directors.

CAO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Connections Education LLC (CE), a MD-based for-profit. CE is a division of UK-based Pearson PLC (LSE:PSON; NYSE: PSO), which reported annual revenue of $5.511 billion in 2018.

Critics of outsourcing the management of charter schools to companies like Pearson argue that it siphons off already limited school resources for service fees, profits, other layers of administration and costly marketing programs, such as television ads and online campaigns.

ACADEMIC NON-PERFORMANCE

ORCA says its curriculum “develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills” and “builds a solid foundation in reading, writing, and mathematics.”

ORCA says that in a 2019 Parent Satisfaction Survey, families gave the school high marks, A high level of 95 percent of the parents agreed that the program’s curriculum is high quality and that their child is satisfied with the program.

But if they looked closely at academic performance data, parents and students might not be so pleased.

ORCA may offer a superior option for some students, but for many students it does not.

This is consistent with a 2016 national study of virtual charter schools which concluded, “Multiple or expanded measures of school performance reveal that virtual school outcomes continued to lag significantly behind that of traditional brick-and-mortar schools.”

Standard test results for ORCA back that up.

ORCA officials said any evaluation of their academic performance needs to take into account that ORCA takes on many students who stumbled at their former traditional brick-and-mortar public schools. “We have a huge population of struggling learners,” Galvin said.

Research bears this out, documenting that students in virtual charter schools are more likely to come from the lower academic segments of traditional brick-and-mortar public schools.

But other research reveals that it’s the struggling learners who are least likely to be well served by online coursework. In other words, while struggling students are the ones most in need of traditional in-person courses, shuttling them off to online schools is exactly what they don’t need.

The same holds true for college students. Research on students taking online college courses indicates that virtual learning is most challenging for the least well-prepared students.

“These students consistently perform worse in an online setting than they do in face-to-face classrooms; taking online courses increases their likelihood of dropping out and otherwise impedes progress through college,^”concluded a Brookings Institute study on the “Promises and pitfalls of online education.”

Michael Petrilli, Executive Director of the Fordham Institute, made this point in remarks at an Education Commission of the States’ National Forum on Education Policy.

Because full-time virtual schools require “a kid who’s pretty driven, who has a pretty supportive home environment” for the best chance at success, Petrilli argued, “the schools would benefit from more selectivity and individual review of applications to determine fit, which is not now permitted at public virtual charter schools.”

Research on virtual charter school performance outcomes across the country generally paints a distressing picture linked to test-based outcomes.

A report from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University concluded that the majority of virtual charter school students showed poor learning growth in math and reading when compared to comparable students in traditional brick-and-mortar public schools.

The study also highlighted an intriguing finding, that the problem isn’t charter schools per se, but virtual charters. “Being an online school matters more than being a charter school, “the report said. “The principal impacts of attending an online charter school appear to be primarily driven by the online aspect of the school, rather than the fact it is a charter school.”

A 2017 CREDO report went even further, concluding that charter school operators with a for-profit orientation post significantly lower student academic gains than those with a non-profit status.

Virtual charter school advocates have an unending list of reasons for their poor performance.

Galvin also attributed ORCA’s low graduation rate to many of the students being way behind in credits when they arrived at the school, so bringing them up to speed can be a long and difficult task.

Left unsaid is that the transfer of many of these students to ORCA may, in a perverse sort of way, help the traditional public schools they come from. That’s because it removes academically struggling students from the rolls, improving graduation rates.

Research suggests this is a national problem.

“School officials nationwide dodge accountability ratings by steering low achievers to alternative programs,” ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, has reported.

“When low achieving students leave, for instance, average school test scores increase,” said a report from the California Legislative Analysts’s Office. “This gives the appearance that the school is improving, and it allows the school to focus on the education needs of the more motivated students that remain. In addition, when students marked as ‘problems’ or ‘trouble makers’ drop out, they relieve educators of administrative headaches. As a result, inattention to the needs of these types of students can actually make schools appear more successful.”

COMPUTING ALONE

In E.M. Forster’s 1909 dystopian story “The Machine Stops,” people live alone in small solitary rooms deep under the surface of the earth. Relying on “the Machine” to keep the technology running that allows them to survive, they connect, though rarely, via a Skype-like function on a blue optic plate.

Virtual education can be like that for young people, alienating and isolating.

“A real course creates intellectual joy, at least in some,” Mark Edmundson, a professor of English at the University of Virginia, wrote in a New York Times column. “I don’t think an Internet course ever will. Internet learning promises to make intellectual life more sterile and abstract than it already is — and also, for teachers and for students alike, far more lonely.”

Some assume that virtual schooling for K-12 students must be appropriate and effective because it’s already been proven to work in higher education.

But even in higher education, there are doubts about the suitability of virtual instruction because of its focus on the individual rather than the group. “Learning at its best is a collective enterprise, something we’ve known since Socrates,” Edmundson wrote.

Studies show that the vast majority of students in online K-12 schools suffer because of isolation and the lack of a structured learning environment with required classroom attendance.

Then there’s the question of whether virtual charter schools that take students away from the daily face-to-face interaction of traditional public schools are exacerbating the fraying of the social fabric. That trend was explained in “Bowling Alone”, Robert Putnam’s provocative writing on civic disengagement in the United States.

A powerful tide that once pulled Americans into deep engagement in their communities reversed itself in the late 20^th century and has pulled us apart from one another and our communities, Putnam wrote. The result is a society of isolated individuals deficient in social capital.

A “Social Capital Project” report prepared by the staff of a Congressional Committee observed that as Americans interact less with each other, particularly with people outside their immediate circle of family and friends, we trust those outside that circle less. But building broad relationships is exactly what’s needed to collectively develop community, the feeling of being part of something bigger than our close personal network.

In other words, k-12 virtual schooling may be one of the things compromising the health of America’s associational life.

THE VERDICT IS IN

The Center for Education Reform, a school choice advocacy group, said recently that the evolution of the charter school movement “…elevated educational choice to its current state as an invaluable good and an essential component of public education.”

Not so fast.

The charter school movement overall may have made significant gains, but the rapid, almost unrestrained, expansion of K-12 virtual charter schools is showing itself to be a mistake.

A 2015 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study found that technology use could positively impact student learning, but only if used in moderation. Overexposure to computers and the Internet actually causes educational outcomes to drop, the study found.

“Students who use computers very frequently at school do much worse, even accounting for social background and student demographics,” the report said.

Similarly, a RAND Corporation study found that students with low test scores who enrolled in online-only schools tended to fall even further behind, rather than recover loses.

At the same time, the movement of big business into the cyber charter school movement is revealing a questionable embrace of for-profit over non-profit public institutions.

What started as individualized efforts by non-profits to serve small, centralized groups of students online has morphed into a huge national business. Already, about 70 percent of students enrolled in virtual charters across the U.S. are attending schools managed by big for-profit companies such as Connections Academy and K12 Inc.

The desire for school choice is understandable, but numerous studies have concluded that full-time virtual charter schools are not the right option for many K-12 students.

“Current online charter schools may be a good fit for some students, but the evidence suggests that online charters don’t serve very well the relatively atypical set of students that currently attend these schools, much less the general population,” said Stanford’s CREDO in a report. “Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule.”

In the same vein, a 2017 report from the Colorado-based National Education Policy Center (NEPC) concluded, “There is…little high-quality systematic evidence that the rapid expansion of (virtual charter schools) the past several years is wise. Research has …consistently found that students enrolled in full-time virtual schools have performed at levels well below their face-to-face counterparts.”

The National Education Association (NEA), never hesitant to raise doubts about charter schools, has piled on, too. In July 2017, 7,000 delegates to the NEA’s Annual Meeting approved a policy statement calling for prohibitions on for-profit charter school operations. “…virtual charter schools are never an appropriate part of the public education system as they cannot provide students with a well-rounded, complete educational experience,” the NEA said.

In 2019, The National Education Policy Center cited “the overwhelming evidence of poor performance by full-time virtual…schools” and recommended: Slow or stop the growth in the number of virtual schools and the size of their enrollments until the reasons for their relatively poor performance have been identified and addressed.”

There’s even an antagonistic split within the charter school sector.

While brick-and mortar and virtual charter schools may be at the same 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 a 2017 panel at an Education Commission of the States’ National Forum on Education Policy.

Other national charter school advocates have also blasted the virtual charter schools sector for chronic underperformance.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now (50CAN) and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has reported that “…too many of these (full-time virtual charter) schools are not providing a quality educational program to the vast majority of their students, while enrolling too many who are simply not a good fit for attending a fully online school.”

Their report emphasized:

“The well-documented, disturbingly low performance by too many full-time virtual charter public schools should serve as a call to action to state leaders and authorizers across the country.
It is time for state leaders to make the tough policy changes necessary to ensure that this model works more effectively than it currently does for the students it serves.
It is also time for authorizers to close chronically low-performing virtual charter schools.”

There’s also concern that virtual-charters are siphoning off money from other public schools, particularly some that are already in serious financial trouble.

“Some will argue that because we’re not serving those students, the loss of funding shouldn’t be an issue,” said Beth Graser, the Hillsboro School District’s Communications Director. “But because those students don’t leave in perfect sets of 30, all from the same grade and the same school, it doesn’t really reduce our costs because we still have to maintain the same levels of staffing and other services.”

Pulling money out of traditional brick and mortar public schools to support virtual charters is thought by many critics to be especially egregious when some of that money goes not to education, but to for-profit management companies.

Oregon’s charter funding rules are also reason for concern.

With the potential for wide variations in sponsoring district fees and levels of oversight, it can be lucrative for virtual charters to go sponsor shopping.

In addition, school districts, particularly small struggling ones that are supposed to oversee the charters they sponsor, have a strong financial incentive to provide more lenient oversight and to ignore problems that might jeopardize the charter’s payments to the district.

Another issue is the wide disparity in amounts of state school fund money sponsoring districts are skimming off the top, leaving varying amounts for actually educating students.

The only groups finding positive results for full-time virtual charters, “have been advocacy organizations supporting charter schools and school choice—and the for-profit corporations operating many virtual schools,” the NEPC claims.

Even though charter schools are public, the movement is being driven, in part, by a loss of faith in traditional public institutions.

A recent Gallup survey reported that Americans have very low confidence in many major institutions. Education has taken a particularly hard hit. While per-pupil expenditures at K-12 schools have been rising, public confidence has been falling. According to Gallup, only 29% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the public schools, down from 58 percent in 1973.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that virtual charter schools, given their track record and use of public money, are not the answer.

The market alone cannot be relied upon to provide quality control over virtual charter schools. As Chester Finn Jr., President Emeritus at the Fordham Institute, put it, operating on the principal that quality is in the eye of the beholder, and ignoring school outcomes, is “idiocy,”. “It arises from the view—long since dismissed by every respectable economist—that education is a private good and the public has no interest in an educated citizenry.”

“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, at least in schools that call themselves ‘public,’ “ Finn said.

Despite serious reservations about the efficacy of K-12 virtual charter schools and reams of data calling into question their impact versus brick-and-mortar traditional public schools and even brick-and mortar charter schools, there’s almost sycophantic adoration of the schools by the parents of many attendees and families are increasingly turning to them for their children’s education.

It may be because the debate about virtual charter schools is more about people’s values than academic performance. To a lot of parents and students, virtual charters are really about independence, bonding with like-minded parents, having the option of choice, and escaping from what are perceived as stifling, monopolistic government bureaucracies.

Living in a cocoon of misinformation, they’re not interested in contrary data. And as neuroscientist Tali Sharot observed in her book, “The Influential Mind,” it is hard to convince people with just data. When presented with hard evidence that contradicts their deeply held beliefs, people often work overtime to find reasons to defend those beliefs rather than modify them.

In the 2017 book issued by the Center for Education Reform, the authors argued that these parents should be trusted to make good decisions for their children. “We believe that parents (who see their child come home from school every day) are better able than bureaucrats (who see mostly standardized tests scores) to judge the quality of the school they’ve chosen,” they said.

But the fact is that many K-12 virtual charter schools are like tribute bands, just a facsimile of real education.

Relying solely on the presumed wisdom of the parents to determine the suitability of virtual charter schools is a grievous mistake with potentially damaging consequences for Oregon’s, and America’s, children.

October 17, 2017 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

PERS problems? Some charter schools say, “Fugettaboutit”

PERSlogo

Oregon’s traditional public schools may be struggling with escalating pension costs, but some charter schools aren’t worried. They’ve figured a way out.

Oregon’s charter school law says public charter schools are public employers, so teachers and staff are required to participate in PERS, the Public Employees Retirement System.

For charter schools, that has traditionally meant teachers and staff were required to contribute a percentage of their pay to PERS and the employing agency had to match these contributions with a percentage of total payroll. The problem is employer contribution rates have been escalating, imposing an increasing burden on charter school budgets.

In early 2011, after PERS announced an increase in the employer contribution rate, Kings Valley Charter School, sponsored by the Philomath School District, worried that increases would force the school to reduce its operations or even close.

kingsvalleycharterschool

In Sept. 2000, an opinion from Oregon Attorney General Hardy Meyers declared the following:

Under ORS chapter 338, may a public charter school contract out its operations to a private, for-profit entity? Yes, assuming that the contract is consistent with the terms of the charter and all applicable laws.
Would contracting out a public charter school’s operational responsibilities to a for-profit entity violate the Oregon Constitution because it would result in the loss of governmental accountability for the performance of governmental functions? No, but in order for a public charter school’s contracting out of the school’s operations to a private, for-profit entity to be constitutional, the public charter school must :(1) maintain a right of control over delegated governmental functions; (2) provide procedural safeguards to affected members of the public in relation to those aspects of the school’s operations that constitute the governmental function of providing a public education.

A non-profit group, People Sustaining Kings Valley (PSKV), was formed to come to Kings Valley’s rescue as an independent contractor. At the start of the 2011-2012 school year, the school contracted with PSKV to have it hire 35 of its 36 employees, everybody but the school’s director. The school subsequently agreed to pay PSKV $973,637 for specified services that school year, including providing instructors and teacher assistants.

With that move, the teachers and staff, as private employees of PSKV, were no longer required to participate in PERS, saving the school about $80,000 a year in PERS contributions.

This also allowed teachers and staff to participate in a pension program provided by PSKV. Under the new system, PSKV automatically contributes 6 percent of the employee’s salary to a 403b retirement plan and the employee can decide whether to contribute more.

“The school has received considerable positive feedback from the teachers and staff regarding the new arrangement,” reported a Jan-Feb. 2013 Charter Starters Newsflash, though it wasn’t at all clear whether the end retirement benefit with the 403b, which would vary with the market, would be better or worse than a PERS benefit.

As for PERS itself, the impact of decreased member participation resulting from any PERS employer engaging “independent contractors” who are not eligible for PERS participation rather than “employees” who are eligible for PERS participation is somewhat neutral, PERS says.

Generally speaking, to the extent any public employer has more “employees” participating as members of PERS it would help to decrease the unfunded actuarial liability (UAL) in the short term because of the corresponding contribution payments. However, it would also increase the future pension liability in the long run because of the increased benefit obligations accrued by those members. Conversely, if a public employer has less employees participating in PERS it would not help decrease the UAL in the short-term, however, neither would it increase the future pension liability.

logoslogo

Logos Public Charter School, sponsored by the Medford School District, has a similar arrangement with a private company, Western Collegiate Consulting (WCC). On its website, WCC says it is “a state certified Professional Employment Organization (PEO) that was specifically created to provide charter schools in Oregon… qualified teachers and staff …”

WCC registered with the Oregon Secretary of State as an Eagle Point, OR business on Oct. 28, 2015. In a rather interesting relationship that could pose a conflict of interest, the Chief Executive Officer of WCC is Joseph D. VonDoloski, who was a principal organizer of Logos and served as its Executive Director until Aug. 2017. VonDoloski left Logos and simultaneously, as CEO of WCC, hired all its teachers and staff.

Logos entered into a 30-page contract with WCC on August 1, 2017, according to Cassie Zimmerer, WCC’s Chief Human Resources Officer. Logos’ former business manager, she is the daughter of Logos’ current Executive Director, Sheryl Zimmerer.

“As part of the agreement, WCC onboarded the majority of Logos’ previous existing employees and hired approximately 10-15 more individuals to fit the school’s needs for next year,” Cassie Zimmerer said. She added that WCC WCC offers a benefit package to it’s employees which includes a 401k matching program (up to 6%) that employees are fully vested in day #1.

The Medford School District subsequently raised the conflict of interest issue. It also questioned whether Logos had complied with state contracting statutes when it contracted with WCC. Those statutes, Medford asserted, require Logos to show using WCC is more cost effective than using its own personnel and resources or that it wasn’t feasible for Logos to use its own personnel.

According to the Oregon Government Ethics Commission, the Medford School District has filed an ethics complaint with the Commission over the situation and the Commission is currently conducting a review.

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READ MORE about charter schools:

Virtual Charter Schools Don’t Compute

Too many Oregon virtual charter school students skip state tests

October 10, 2017 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

Lake Oswego man a big player in charter school movement

Sometimes influential people are hiding in plain sight. Like John Bryan.

JohnBryan

Bryan is a wealthy, low-profile Lake Oswego resident who retired in 1989 from Georgia Gulf, created in 1984 when a group of executives took over Georgia-Pacific’s chemical interests. Since hen he’s become a prominent supporter of a charter school network, TeamCFA, in North Carolina, Arizona and Indiana.

He’s also a big financial supporter of conservative causes, Bryan has said one of his goals is to “inculcate my belief in the libertarian, free market, early American Founder’s principles” into both A CFA foundation he supports and individual schools.

The News & Observer newspaper of Raleigh, North Carolina, recently ran a comprehensive story about Bryan’s actions with respect to charter schools and conservative groups:

A rich donor’s money backed NC’s charter takeover law, and his school network expands

BY LYNN BONNER, JANE STANCILL AND DAVID RAYNOR, OCTOBER 09, 2017 10:00 AM

A school network founded by a wealthy Oregon resident is expanding quickly in North Carolina.

John Bryan founded the charter network TeamCFA, which has 13 schools in North Carolina – more than in any other state. Arizona has four TeamCFA schools, and Indiana has two.

TeamCFAlogo

Bryan’s influence extends beyond support for the schools themselves and into education policy. He is a generous contributor to political campaigns and school-choice causes in North Carolina.

In a letter posted to the network’s website in April, Bryan said his commitment of “significant economic resources” – contributions to politicians and nonprofit “social welfare” groups, and the engagement of investment advisers and others – helped win legislative approval of the controversial North Carolina law that will have charter operators take over up to five low-performing public schools.

A foundation Bryan supports helps schools with start-up costs and provides instructional support and money for technology. TeamCFA is a nonprofit network that provides $300,000 in forgivable loans to new schools that agree to its principles. Teachers in TeamCFA schools must be trained in a curriculum called Core Knowledge. Some TeamCFA schools have a classical education theme, but it is not required.

Libertarian principles

Bryan, 84, was vice president of operations at Georgia Gulf until his retirement in 1989. An August 2002 edition of Atlanta Business Chronicle attributed Bryan’s wealth to company stock.

Bryan has been a contributor to conservative advocacy groups and Republican candidates. He gave the Fund for Growth, a conservative advocacy group, $210,000 in 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2014, he gave the conservative super PAC Opportunity Alliance $200,000 and Freedom Partners Action Fund, another conservative super PAC, $575,000.

In a 2011 “founder’s letter” posted online, Bryan described his philosophy and goals for the CFA operating foundation. One goal, he wrote, was to “inculcate my belief in the libertarian, free market, early American Founder’s principles” into both the foundation and the individual schools.

Long reliant on Bryan’s money, the TeamCFA board is attempting to expand its donor base. Last spring, TeamCFA announced a $1 million grant from the Charles Koch Foundation.

Bryan has also contributed to North CarolinaCAN, a group that supports charter schools. Marcus Brandon, North CarolinaCAN executive director, spoke out in support of the law allowing charter managers to take over traditional public schools as legislators debated it in 2016.

Bryan’s contributions over the years to North CarolinaCAN have not exceeded $50,000, Brandon said, and Bryan is not the group’s main source of funds.

Bryan was not available for an interview. TeamCFA responded to questions about the schools in an email, but said Bryan’s political contributions were his personal decisions.

“Mr. Bryan fell in love with North Carolina after spending many years in the Southeast,” the organization said in a statement. “He also found the people had similar values to which he was accustomed growing up in Livingston, Montana. In addition, the Core Knowledge curriculum, taught in our TeamCFA schools, is very appealing in a state that has always valued a well rounded education that includes not just math and English but science, literature, history, music, art and physical education.

Eric Hall, superintendent of the new N.C. Innovative School District, says communities should embrace and not be afraid of a new program to turn five low-performing elementary schools into charter school operators.

In his April letter, Bryan was enthusiastic about the law passed last year that created what is now known as the Innovative School District. He envisioned that those traditional public schools chosen for the district could be converted permanently to charters if student performance improves.

“I am excited about the new North Carolina law which allows knowledgeable and experienced entities the possibility of taking over failing traditional public schools,” he wrote. “By raising a school’s ‘F’ rating to a ‘C’ rating within two years, such entities could gain permanent ownership and control of that school. If our organizations can show how this works for the good of a community, this approach could expand to other states, hopefully across the country!! How exciting that would be! And our team could be of help to others who want to travel the same road.”

Under the law passed last year, charter management companies are supposed to run the schools for five to eight years. The State Board of Education is scheduled to vote by Dec. 15 on at least two schools to be taken over in the 2018-19 school year. School boards will have until Feb. 1 to either transfer their schools to the program or close them.

In Tennessee, students in the Achievement School District that formed using the same model have not done better academically than students in comparable low-performing schools that weren’t taken over.

NC contributions

Bryan has contributed about $600,000 to legislative candidates in North Carolina, most of them Republican, and GOP political committees from 2011 to 2016. Included is a $100,000 contribution to a group supporting GOP candidates for the state Supreme Court. He contributed $50,000 to a political action committee called Truth & Prosperity, set up to support Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest.

A vocal charter-school champion, Forest has a seat on the State Board of Education. Forest’s general counsel and policy adviser, Steve Walker, is vice chairman of the state Charter School Advisory Board.

Forest said he met Bryan once, and doesn’t know why he gave to the PAC.

Forest said he doesn’t keep track of donations from charter supporters and the money does not “in any way influence the decisions I make.”

“I make the decisions, then people choose to support me because I make the decisions. It doesn’t go the other way around,” he said.

TeamCFA has other connections to state leaders. Gregg Sinders, a former adviser to retired Republican state Rep. Paul Stam of Apex, is state director for TeamCFA and on the board of a new charter school in Holly Springs. Chris Millis, a former member of the North Carolina House of Representatives and a Pender County Republican, is chairman of the board of a new TeamCFA school that opened this fall in New Hanover County.

October 8, 2017 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

Too many Oregon virtual charter school students skip state tests

computertest

The evidence is clear. Public virtual charter schools, also called cyber and online schools, are failing Oregon’s children.

But too many parents, blinded by the certainty of their ideological convictions, still commit their children to failing institutions.

Making it worse, they aren’t insisting that their children take tests designed to determine whether they are on track to be ready for college and the world of work.

In the 2016-17 school year, 95 percent of Oregon students took the English Language Arts tests, 94 percent took the math tests and 88 percent took the science tests.

bakerwebacademylogo But at Baker Web Academy, sponsored by Baker School District 5J, just 74.5 percent of students took the English Language Arts exam and 74.1 percent took the math tests, according to Oregon Department of Education Assessment Reports. Only science participation exceeded 90 percent, coming in at 91.2 percent.

orcalogo Participation rates at Oregon’s largest virtual charter school, Oregon Connections Academy, renamed Oregon Charter Academy in the 2020-2021 school year, were deficient in 2016-17 as well. Just 72.3 percent of students took the English Language Arts exams, 72.1 percent took the math tests and 70.3 percent took the science tests.

oregonvirtualacademy

Another poor performer is Oregon Virtual Academy (ORVA), part of a virtual charter network affiliated with for-profit company, K12 Inc. The company has come under heavy criticism for the academic performance of its schools across the country.

At ORVA, sponsored by North Bend School District 13, just 69.1 percent of students took the English Language Arts exam in the 2016-17 school year, 68.1 percent took the math tests and 65.4 percent took the science tests.

So many virtual charter school students skipping the tests seriously compromises the reliability of the test scores. It also makes if difficult for the virtual charter schools to systematically use performance measurement information to enhance learning.

But maybe the schools don’t care.

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READ MORE about how public virtual charter schools are failing Oregon’s children:

Virtual Charter Schools Don’t Compute

September 26, 2017 by whmacken2013 - 0 comments

Oregon’s Public Virtual Charter Schools Don’t Compute

Oregon Connections Academy (now Oregon Charter Academy), an online statewide charter school serving about 4500 students has been placed on the state’s a federally mandated improvement list. I’m not surprised.

Just look at the numbers.

Only 21.9 percent of tested students at the school met or exceeded math standards in 2018-2019, down from an already abysmal 22.7% in 2017-18.

School attendance is poor as well. Regular attendance at the school in 2018-19 was only 63.4%, and an average of 59.7% over the past three school years. That indicates chronic absenteeism. In 2018 – 2019, just 71% of the school’s students attended more than 90% of their enrolled school days.

Then there are graduation rates and college attendance. Only 57.1% of students in the school’s 2014-15 cohort graduated in four years and an average of 61.1% in the past three school years. And of the school’s graduates, only 41% enrolled in a two or four year college within one year of completing high school, as reported by the National Student Clearinghouse.

The fact is, Oregon Connections Academy, and the Oregon’s public virtual schools as a whole, are failing our children.

Virtual charters have taken root in at least 30 states and the District of Columbia and serve in excess of 200,000 students.

“Families want and deserve access to all educational options, including charter schools, private schools and virtual schools,” DeVos said in 2015, before becoming Secretary. “States are well ahead of Congress on this and their efforts should be encouraged and supported.”

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (R) with President Donald Trump

But the evidence clearly shows that within the charter school movement, the virtual charter industry is not “all about the kids.”

The growth of full-time public virtual charter schools in Oregon offers a case study of a misplaced faith in choice and technology.

OREGON CONNECTIONS ACADEMY

Oregon’s largest public virtual charter school is Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA), based in Mill City, a rural community of fewer than 2000 people.

Earlier this year, Jack Haldeman, then an intense eighth grader at ORCA, sat in a plastic chair at ORCA’s learning center hunched over a laptop computer. He was there to deliver a six-minute LiveLesson presentation on cloud formations. His audience? An unseen virtual teacher and 15 classmates in an ORCA literature class.

Jack Haldeman participating in an online class at Oregon Connections Academy

Jack completed 1^st– 6^th grade at highly rated schools in a well-off community outside Portland, OR when his parents decided to transfer him and his twin brother, Michael, to a virtual charter school. They enrolled at ORCA in the fall of 2015. Their mother, Jen Reinmuth-Birch, took on the job of serving as their Learning Coach. “We wanted a more ‘hands-on’ approach to our children’s education,” she said.

Jack said he was an average student at his brick and mortar public school, but has thrived at ORCA. He plans to stay at ORCA through graduation and expects to go on to Oregon State University on campus to pursue a career in battlefield archeology.

CLASHING SENTIMENTS

Students, parents and teachers both praise and assail ORCA.

“All in all, ORCA is a fantastic educational experience for those who don’t fit the mold for brick and mortar schools,” a student told a school rating organization.

“This school is the best of the best,” said an exuberant parent.

“School is about learning and getting excited about learning – this is pure stress…,” a student said. “This school is only for the child who is a robot and can work at lightening speed.”

Some teachers praise ORCA for having a hardworking professional staff, flexible schedules, and a commitment to children first.

Both sides of the virtual charter school debate are fighting a raging propaganda war that is almost Darwinian in nature.

The virtual charter champions churn out a torrent of supportive stories, arguing that traditional schools are relics and choice wouldn’t be so necessary if traditional public schools hadn’t utterly failed to meet the needs of children.

IN THE BEGINNING

The public charter school movement in the U.S. has moved quickly from the margins to the mainstream.

Minnesota passed the first state public charter school law in the United States in 1991. The first charter school opened 25 years ago in St. Paul, Minnesota in September 1992.

Now there are more than 6,900 charter schools across the country enrolling an estimated 3.1 million students.

The virtual public charter sector barely existed in the United States prior to 2000, but has grown rapidly since then. The siren song of technology as an education savior, particularly for disaffected students who want a non-traditional school setting, is proving irresistible to many parents and children.

Since enacting a charter school law in 1999, Oregon has become home to 126 charter schools, including 14 virtual charters with total enrollment of about 30,000 students. This is approximately 5 percent of enrolled K-12 public school students in the state.

Oregon’s newest virtual charter school is Frontier Charter Academy. Sponsored by the Gervais School District, the Academy recently began accepting students who entered 5^th-9^th grade in the fall of this year.

Frontier Charter Academy staff.

Beau Neal, Frontier’s co-founder, said the school plans to add a grade each year until it serves grades 5-12. The school will have 460 students at that point, Neal projected.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

Oregon’s State School Fund distributed about $60 million to school districts sponsoring virtual charter schools for the 2015-16 school year.

Ohio once encountered an egregious example of sponsor shopping. Charter school operators there that failed to get authorized or renewed by one sponsor simply shopped around for another.

In 2005-2006, that translated into $311,358, half of which Scio had to send to the home districts of its ORCA students under Oregon’s charter law at the time.

As ORCA’s enrollment grew, so did the amount of State School Fund money retained by Scio. In the 2014-15 school year, the Scio district retained $1,886,498.34, half of which it had to send to the home districts of its ORCA students.

Scio was ecstatic to see the ORCA money rolling in and looking forward to the windfall continuing.

Why, out of Oregon’s 197 school districts, did ORCA decide to switch to Santiam Canyon?

It was probably no coincidence that Todd Miller, appointed superintendent of the Santiam Canyon District in July 2013, served as ORCA’s executive director from April 2011 – June 2013.

The other key factor was likely money.

Instead of insisting on the same deal Scio had with ORCA, the Santiam Canyon district agreed to keep just 1 percent of the State School Fund money it received for ORCA.

REELING THEM IN

Oregon started with tough charter school enrollment restrictions.

Those restrictions, however, lasted only five years. Charter schools can now recruit throughout the state with no limits.

ORCA is particularly aggressive in recruiting new students. Oregonians would be hard pressed to miss the ubiquitous ORCA television ads promoting the school.

ORCA spent $200,000 on promotional ads in 2015-16 alone, said Allison Galvin, ORCA’s executive director.

The ads, which don’t even use the words “charter school,” are persuasive blends of Wall Street and Madison Avenue that fit right in with Connections Academy’s profit-driven culture.

The result has been a rapid expansion of enrollment at ORCA and other Oregon virtual charters.

It’s hard, however, to pin down exactly how many students attend the schools at any given time. That’s because enrollment fluctuates wildly during and between school years, with some students going back and forth like ping pong balls.

On Oct. 1, 2015, the standard date for calculating charter school enrollment in Oregon, ORCA said it had 3,789 enrolled students. But 950 students left during the school year, and others enrolled. At one point during the year, total enrollment went as high as 5,631. At the end of the school year, 4035 students were enrolled.

“Many families enroll in virtual school for a short period of time to address a short-term issue or challenge, academically, socially or personally,” Galvin said. “Once the family has navigated through the issue, they may decide to return to their previous school. Other families may find online school the perfect fit and remain enrolled.”

ORCA’s NEST

ORCA is a prime example of that. The school is like the smallest wooden figure in a classic Russian matryoshka doll, where wooden dolls nestle one inside the other.

ORCA is a not- for-profit corporation governed by a Board of Directors.

The Board has a Professional Services Agreement with a for-profit company, Connections Academy of Oregon, LLC (CAO), to operate and manage the school, under the direction of the Board of Directors.

CAO is wholly owned subsidiary of Connections Education LLC (CE).

Connections Education (CE) is a Maryland-based for-profit online education company. It employs approx. 1,100 corporate employees.

In addition, a number of schools contract with CE to assist with staffing needs. That workforce varies from year to year. There are currently approximately 1,000 employees supporting the schools in that capacity.

CE provides online education products and services to virtual schools in 26 states that are operated by charter schools, school districts, and state departments of education, as well as district run virtual programs for students within that particular district.

CE also provides online education products and services to Nexus Academy schools, blended (online and in-person) high schools for students in three states; International Connections Academy, a private virtual school for students worldwide; and CE, which offers digital learning solutions to schools and school districts.

CE is a wholly owned subsidiary of UK-based Pearson PLC (LSE:PSON; NYSE: PSO), which reported $5.6 billion of revenue in 2016.

In 2015-16, Santiam Canyon passed on $28,740,437 to ORCA. ORCA said it paid $27,287,365.91 to Connections Academy of Oregon, LLC (CAO) to provide educational products and services. This included the costs of ORCA’s staff, including 153 teachers, 14 administrative support staff and a senior leadership team.

It’s not clear how much of that $27,287,365.91 ended up as Pearson profit.

ACADEMIC NON-PERFORMANCE

ORCA says its curriculum “develops critical thinking and problem-solving skills” and “builds a solid foundation in reading, writing, and mathematics.”

In a recent ORCA survey, families gave the school high marks for helping students succeed academically and emotionally. An impressive 94 percent of the parents agreed that the program’s curriculum is high quality and that their child is satisfied with the program.

But if they looked closely at academic performance data, parents and students might not be so pleased.

ORCA may offer a superior option for some students, but for many students it does not.

Standard test results back that up.

Oregon assesses K-12 performance in English Language Arts, Mathematics and Science. The English Language Arts and Mathematics tests are aligned to Oregon’s Common Core State Standards and are called Smarter Balanced assessments. The Science tests are called the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS) tests.

In 2016-17, 54.2 percent of tested ORCA students scored proficient or better in English Language Arts, down from 61.5 percent in 2015-2016, and 27.5 percent scored proficient or better in Mathematics, down from 30.6 percent in 2015-2016.

56.2 percent met or exceeded state standards in Science in 2016-17, down from 59.3 in 2015-16.

These scores are even worse than 2014-2015, the last year that ORCA was sponsored by the Scio School District. In that school year, 61.3 percent of tested ORCA students scored proficient or better in English Language Arts, 37.6 percent scored proficient or better in Mathematics and 62.7 percent met or exceeded state standards in Science.

ORCA officials said any evaluation of their academic performance needed to take into account that ORCA takes on many students who stumbled at their former traditional brick-and-mortar public schools. “We have a huge population of struggling learners,” Galvin said.

Research bears this out, documenting that students in virtual charter schools are more likely to come from the lower academic segments of traditional brick-and-mortar public schools.

The same holds true for college students. Research on students taking online college courses indicates that virtual learning is most challenging for the least well-prepared students.

Michael Petrilli, Executive Director of the Fordham Institute, made this point in remarks at the June 2017 Education Commission of the States’ National Forum on Education Policy.

Research on virtual charter school performance outcomes across the country generally paints a distressing picture linked to test-based outcomes.

A 2015 report from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University concluded that the majority of virtual charter school students showed poor learning growth in math and reading when compared to comparable students in traditional brick-and-mortar public schools.

A 2017 CREDO report went even further, concluding that charter school operators with a for-profit orientation post significantly lower student academic gains than those with a non-profit status.

GRADUATION RATES: OREGON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Because they are public schools, virtual charter schools are required to meet the same diploma requirements as Oregon’s traditional brick-and-mortar Oregon public schools.

Graduation rates at all Oregon public schools, including virtual 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.

The graduation rate of all Oregon public schools in 2016 was 75 percent. ORCA’s graduation rate in 2016 was 61.7 percent.

ODE calculated ORCA’s graduation rate by determining how many students enrolled in the school at some point during their four years of high school beginning with the 2012-2013 school year. That total was 1,349 students. Of those, 295 started as freshman at ORCA, 1,054 transferred in at some point after the beginning of the 2012-13 school year and 808 transferred out.

That left 541 students (1,349 – 808) accountable to ORCA. This is the “adjusted cohort”. Of these 541 students, 330 earned a regular diploma and 4 earned a modified diploma from ORCA, for a total of 334 graduates. 334/541 = 61.7%.

That’s bad enough, but the average graduation rate of all virtual charter schools in Oregon with a high school program was a miserable 42.93 percent, with one school at only 9.52 percent.

Seven of Oregon’s virtual charter schools had graduation rates below 50 percent, including North Bend-based Oregon Virtual Academy (ORVA) with a graduation rate of only 28.25 percent. ORVA, which enrolled 1,883 students from across the state in 2015-16, is part of a virtual charter network affiliated with another big for-profit company, K12 Inc., which has come under heavy criticism for the academic performance of its schools

Overall, Oregon’s virtual charter school sector resembles failed public school districts in some troubled American cities.

Virtual charter school advocates have an unending list of reasons for their poor performance.

Listening to them is like the scene in The Blues Brothers when Jake, played by John Belushi, tried to explain to his ex- fiancé why he left her at the altar.

“I ran out of gas! I had a flat tire! I didn’t have enough money for cab fare! My tux didn’t come back from the cleaners! An old friend came in from out of town! Someone stole my car! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn’t my fault! I swear to God.” John Belushi, The Blues Brothers

Galvin also attributed ORCA’s low graduation rate to many of the students being way behind in credits when they arrived at the school, so bringing them up to speed can be a long and difficult task.

ORCA’s June 2017 graduation ceremony.

Research suggests this is a national problem.

“School officials nationwide dodge accountability ratings by steering low achievers to alternative programs,” ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom, reported in February 2017.

ProPublica cited a situation at Olympia High School in Orlando, FL. In the 2015-16 school year, 137 students in Olympia’s attendance zone went, instead, to Sunshine High, a charter school run by for-profit Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS). Students at the school, located in a strip mall, sat for four hours a day in front of computers with little or no live teaching.

Sunshine High School in Orlando, FL

“Sunshine takes in cast-offs from Olympia and other Orlando high schools in a mutually beneficial arrangement,” ProPublica reported. “Olympia keeps its graduation rate above 90 percent…partly by shipping its worst achievers to Sunshine. Sunshine collects enough school district money to cover costs and pay its management firm, Accelerated Learning Solutions (ALS), a more than $1.5 million a year ‘management fee,’ 2015 financial records show.”

In another case, Voice of San Diego, a digital nonprofit news organization, reported that the San Diego Unified School District achieved an extraordinary 91.2 percent graduation rate in 2016 partly by unloading low-performing students to charter schools.

Voice of San Diego noted that concern about the practice goes a long way back. He cited a 2005 report from the California Legislative Analysts’s Office raising concerns that alternative schools gave traditional high schools an incentive to push struggling kids out to rid themselves of problem students or simply make schools appear more successful:

“When low achieving students leave, for instance, average school test scores increase,” the report said. “This gives the appearance that the school is improving, and it allows the school to focus on the education needs of the more motivated students that remain. In addition, when students marked as ‘problems’ or ‘trouble makers’ drop out, they relieve educators of administrative headaches. As a result, inattention to the needs of these types of students can actually make schools appear more successful.”

COMPUTING ALONE

“You mustn”t say anything against the Machine,” said his mother
“Why not?”
“One mustn”t.”
“You talk as if a god had made the Machine,” cried the other.
“I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind.” The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster

Virtual education can be like that for young people, alienating and isolating.

Some assume that virtual schooling for K-12 students must be appropriate and effective because it’s already been proven to work in higher education.

Studies show that the vast majority of students in online K-12 schools suffer because of isolation and the lack of a structured learning environment with required classroom attendance.

In other words, k-12 virtual schooling may be one of the things compromising the health of America’s associational life.

THE VERDICT IS IN

Not so fast.

The charter school movement overall may have made significant gains, but the rapid, almost unrestrained, expansion of K-12 virtual charter schools is already showing itself to be a mistake.

“Students who use computers very frequently at school do much worse, even accounting for social background and student demographics,” the report said.

Similarly, a RAND Corporation study found that students with low test scores who enrolled in online-only schools tended to fall even further behind, rather than recover loses.

At the same time, the movement of big business into the cyber charter school movement is revealing a questionable embrace of for-profit over non-profit public institutions.

The desire for school choice is understandable, but numerous studies have concluded that full-time virtual charter schools are not the right option for many K-12 students.

“Current online charter schools may be a good fit for some students, but the evidence suggests that online charters don’t serve very well the relatively atypical set of students that currently attend these schools, much less the general population,” said Stanford’s CREDO in a 2015 report. “Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule.”

A 2016 Fordham Institute study of virtual charter schools reached similar conclusions. “Online schools offer an efficient way to diversify—and even democratize—education in a connected world,” the study said. “Yet they have received negative, but well-deserved, attention concerning their poor academic performance, attrition rates, and ill capacity to educate the types of students who enroll in them.”

There’s even an antagonistic split within the charter school sector.

While brick-and mortar and virtual charter schools may be at the same dance, they’re engaged in an increasingly hostile pas de deux.

Other national charter school advocates have also blasted the virtual charter schools sector for chronic underperformance.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the 50-State Campaign for Achievement Now (50CAN) and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) reported in 2016 that “…too many of these (full-time virtual charter) schools are not providing a quality educational program to the vast majority of their students, while enrolling too many who are simply not a good fit for attending a fully online school.”

Their report emphasized:

“The well-documented, disturbingly low performance by too many full-time virtual charter public schools should serve as a call to action to state leaders and authorizers across the country.
It is time for state leaders to make the tough policy changes necessary to ensure that this model works more effectively than it currently does for the students it serves.
It is also time for authorizers to close chronically low-performing virtual charter schools.”

There’s also concern that virtual-charters are siphoning off money from other public schools, particularly some that are already in serious financial trouble.

Some states, including Washington, Tennessee, Rhode Island and New Mexico, have responded to this concern by prohibiting for-profit companies from contracting with not-for-profit charters to provide management services.

These prohibitions have often been sought by public school advocates, particularly teachers unions, who object to companies making profits on public education. Others support the prohibition because they want to limit the opportunities for scale in charter school systems that could challenge traditional brick-and-mortar school systems, according to Chester Finn Jr. and Paul Hill in “Charter Schools Against the Odds,” a book issued by the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution.

Oregon’s charter funding rules are also reason for concern.

With the potential for wide variations in sponsoring district fees and levels of oversight, it can be lucrative for virtual charters to go sponsor shopping.

Another issue is the wide disparity in amounts of state school fund money sponsoring districts are skimming off the top, leaving varying amounts for actually educating students.

Even though charter schools are public, the movement is being driven, in part, by a loss of faith in traditional public institutions.

A recent Gallup survey reported that Americans have very low confidence in many major institutions. Education has taken a particularly hard hit. While per-pupil expenditures at K-12 schools have been rising, public confidence has been falling. According to Gallup, only 30 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the public schools, down from 58 percent in 1973.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that virtual charter schools, given their track record and use of public money, are not the answer.

But the fact is that many K-12 virtual charter schools are like tribute bands, just a facsimile of real education.

Relying solely on the presumed wisdom of the parents to determine the suitability of virtual charter schools is a grievous mistake with potentially damaging consequences for America’s children.

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More: One of the more egregious practices of virtual charter schools is shifting sponsors to lessen oversight or increase revenue.

SHOPPING AROUND

“My mama told me, you better shop around.”

Oregon’s Insight cyber charter school took to heart this advice from Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

Insight opened its doors in Oregon in 2012 as Insight School of Oregon Charter Option sponsored by the financially stretched 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 [U.S.:NYSE] ), which runs 58 separate virtual charter schools across the country. The company reported revenues of $888.5 million for the Year Ended June 30, 2017.

Insight’s headquarters in Oregon was located in a nondescript one-story office building at 603 NW. 3^rd 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. says its education program “is 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 high school students from Germany, Thailand, and Hong Kong. The 20 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.

Academic performance didn’t change for the better, based on Report Cards by the Oregon Department of Education.

In the 2014-2015 school year, the last with the Crook County School District, only 16.4 percent of the students tested in Mathematics and 48.1 percent of those tested in English Language Arts met the state standard for college/career readiness. Just 37.8 percent met or exceeded state standards in Science.

On top of all this, the graduation rate was a horrific 19.1 percent.

In the 2015-16 school year, the first under its new sponsor, the Mitchell School District, the scores in Mathematics and English Language Arts got worse and science scores were only marginally better

Only 8.0 percent of the students tested in mathematics and 36.7 percent of those tested in English Language Arts met the state standard for college/career readiness. Just 45.5 percent met or exceeded state standards in Science.

In 2016-17, with the school reporting enrollment of 390 students, performance in English Language Arts improved to 47.1 percent meeting the state standard for college/career readiness, though this was still far below the 60.9 percent performance of all schools statewide. Mathematics performance increased from an abysmal 8.0 percent to an abysmal 14.9 percent. Science dropped precipitously from 45.5 percent to 25.0 percent, compared with 60.5 percent statewide.

Other 2016-17 numbers were pretty weak, too. Only 34.5 percent of freshmen were on track to graduate in four years , up from 13.2 percent in 2015-16, but still pitiful compared with 83.4 percent of students at all schools statewide.

Meanwhile the percent of the school’s students that dropped out during the school year and didn’t re-enroll leaped to an almost unbelieveable 75.6 percent in 2016-17, compared with 49.8 percent in 2015-16.

To top it off, the graduation rate, students earning a standard diploma within four years of entering high school, sank from an already horrific 19.1 percent in 2014-15 to 11.8 percent in 2015-16. The graduation rate for 2016-17 is not yet available.

Another virtual charter school in Oregon powered by K12 Inc. is Oregon Virtual Academy (OVA), sponsored by North Bend School District 13. “Oregon Virtual Academy awakens the power of learning in students through a personalized program of engaging courses, caring teachers, and a vibrant school community,” says the school’s website.

But, as at Insight, that awakening doesn’t appear to have brought about academic excellence, or even middling success.

For the 2015-16 school year, the North Bend School District received $14,874,303 from the State School Fund because of its sponsorship of OVA. The District retained $961,681 of that money and forwarded $13,912,622 to OVA. OVA’s distribution was likely larger in 2016-17 because of increased enrollment.

With enrollment of 2,142 students from nearly every county in Oregon during 2016-17, only 47.9 percent of those tested in English Language Arts and 23 percent of those tested in mathematics met the state standard for college/career readiness. Fewer than half, 44.1 percent, met or exceeded the state standard in science. Worse, the mathematics and science scores have been going down each year for the past three years.

OVA’s graduation rate for 2016-17 has not yet been released, but in 2015-16 it was just 28.3 percent. Even the share of students earning a regular, modified, extended, or adult high school diploma or completing a GED within five years of entering high school was just 42.8 percent .

Jessica Schuler, K12’s Corporate Communications Manager, offered the same explanation for the low graduation rates as other virtual charter schools. Every high school student enrolled in Insight School transferred in from another school or education program. High percentages of these students enter behind in credits and not on track to graduate on time. The federal four-year cohort graduation rate does not account for this. The four-year cohort graduation rate unfairly penalizes schools with high mobility that serve under-credited transfer students (The grad rate of the sending school/district is not affected). Even though these transfer students successfully earn high credits at Insight, they are unable to graduate “on time” in their four-year cohort, thus negatively impacting Insight’s grad rate. of its students earned a standard diploma within four years of entering high school in 2016-17.

With this kind of performance, why do these schools still exist?

By Bill MacKenzie

Bill MacKenzie worked as a business and politics reporter at The Oregonian newspaper for 10 years and as a Communications Manager at a Fortune 500 company in Oregon for 15 years.

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