The shifting digital learning policy battles
Recent posts have looked at how the online school wars seem to be waning, first giving some general background, then looking at the recent GAO report, and finally looking at a recent study that addresses concerns about student outcomes. This final post of this series reviews the evidence to suggest that perhaps the fault lines of digital learning policy battles are shifting.
There are four main issues that suggest that the lines are shifting, and help explain why.
1. Now that many more districts have their own online or hybrid schools, they and their supporters recognize that laws and regulations originally considered for online charter schools now may restrict district programs as well.
For example, many states fund online charter school students at lower levels than mainstream district, onsite students. Recently, we’ve seen efforts to reduce or restrict funding for online students in states such as South Carolina , Michigan, and elsewhere, regardless of whether those students are in charter schools or mainstream districts. Similarly, educators who are concerned about an over-reliance on state assessment scores or graduation rates seem to have more sympathy for all schools that are working with students facing a variety of challenges—whether they are online or onsite, and whether they are charter or mainstream.
2. It’s increasingly clear that the percentage of students/families who want full time online is small—even after the pandemic.
The number of students enrolled in statewide online schools went up during the pandemic by about 75%. This is a substantial number, but it doesn’t come close to some of the predictions—or concerns—that huge numbers of students would shift to online schools. Possibly the percentage of students in some states who elect for a full-time online school may climb to 3-4%--but it seems unlikely to get much higher in the foreseeable future. The percentage of students nationwide in online schools is likely to remain in the range of 1.5-3%. Therefore, the regulations intended to limit growth of online schools seem less important.
3. Many districts are running hybrid schools, and some of these districts may prefer that full-time online students choose charter schools. Many hybrid schools are called “online, “virtual,”, or similar, but relatively few districts are in fact running 100% online schools. A few of these districts are saying, mostly for the first time and usually privately, that perhaps both the students and the district are better off if a small percentage of students leave the district for an online school. Running a school for 1-2% of the students in a district is hard and, often, inefficient—except perhaps for the largest districts.
4. After emergency remote learning many more teachers, school leaders, and parents recognize that a small percentage of students flourish in the online learning environment for a variety of reasons. It’s no longer possible to suggest that online learning is being driven solely by a few profit-hungry companies, at least not without acknowledging that the online schools are meeting real demand. Again, the number of students seeking online schools remains small, but there is increased understanding that the demand is real.
In summary
This series of four posts has covered a lot of ground, so I will close with a quick summary:
There has been a long history of disputes centered on the full-time online charter schools that operate now in about 35 states.
Those disputes have often dominated online learning views, policies, and media attention, even though pre-pandemic the number of students attending such schools was always below 500,000, or about 1% of all students nationwide.
However, the disputes appear to be waning, as seen in the recent GAO report, among other points of evidence.
Arguments about academic performance in online charter schools may be decreasing to the level of background that has been present with physical charter schools as well as mainstream schools. This level of attention is important to some policymakers, researchers, and some reporters, but mostly at the margins. (Although to be clear, for students and families at those margins, as in a state considering whether to allow or restrict online schools, these remain very important issues.)
Digital learning advocates in mainstream districts, including those in supplemental programs and hybrid schools, are concerned about policies which will limit their growth and/or reduce their funding.
Parent attitudes shifted during the pandemic, towards greater acceptance of online learning.
Overall, the digital learning policy disputes are now more likely to combine the interests of the various digital learning players (full-time, supplemental, mainstream, charter, hybrid), than to divide them.
If the hypothesis presented in these posts is accurate and plays out, it is likely to be significantly beneficial to digital learning as a whole. Although the policy debates and occasional bad press have ostensibly been about a specific subset of online learning (or individual schools), the negativity has had a larger influence across much of the field. If that attitude shifts towards greater acceptance of all types of digital learning, that will represent a win for students everywhere.