Washington State is an education backwater. When I moved there 15 years ago it was considered a leader and folks chuckled at Louisiana. Things have changed–LA outpaces in WA in every reform category while WA rests on the laurels of imported talent and comparatively low levels of poverty.
An area where WA excels is online learning (in large part because of the pioneering work of Internet Academy) where healthy competition between leading online operators provides all WA students great public education options. So it was disappointing to hear today that the Washington state House Ways and Means Committee introduced their budget which proposes to eliminate funding for the state’s ALE (Alternative Learning Experience) programs for students in grades K-6. Online public school programs in WA operate under ALE. Therefore, all K-6 online public programs would be shut down next year.” This is basically an effort to kick out the homeschoolers that have joined public education in the last decade.
I get the budget situation–it’s a disaster. But we’d be better off building accelerated pathways to college degrees and industry certificates–most students should be able to earn a high school diploma and AA degree in 4-5 years. How about consolidating 100 of the 300 districts?
Rather than eliminating online learning, the state should be creating incentives for districts to adopt efficient blended models that combine online and onsite learning. A loan program, paid back out of savings, would make the transition to a lower cost operating models possible (e.g., high performing Rocketship). Time to get creative folks.
Just another example of how the anti-virtual bias is going to make it harder to create high-performing hybrid schools in lots of places. Hopefully we’ll see states start to regulate online learning not by assuming the worst, but by measuring outcomes and giving operators who achieve great results the same autonomy as any other charter school.
[...] one that saves the public money and gets better results—read Tom Vander Ark’s blog on the topic here and Governor Bob Wise and the Alliance for Excellent Education’s report on how online learning [...]
Good stuff, Tom. These type of shortsighted decisions scare me. Just look at what’s happening in California and around the country with education protests. Is this not an indication that we are in an education crisis? Scary stuff.