How many ways can we improve on our public education system? Chartered schools, home schools, Catholic schools, private schools have all been attempts to improve how and what children learn. Alternatives abound, yet the state controled K-12 schools dominate the average American childhood. Now add to the list of suitors for your education dollar - virtual charter schools.
A box arrives at your door, filled with the school supplies your daughter Sally will need for the year. On your home computer, she logs in to her classes, gets lessons from her teacher, completes her homework assignments. No more school bus, cafetaria, gym, bully, favorite teacher, crush on the boy who could draw.
This approach to schooling is picking up steam. In fact, every state that borders North Carolina has a virtual charter school. Yes, even South Carolina.
Recently, the Independent Tribune reported that the Cabarrus County Board of Education gave its approval for a virtual charter school application. Can North Carolina have its first publicly funded virtual charter school in the next five years? Ten years?
More importantly, will the virtual charter school be a solution? In December 2011, The New York Times published an extensive article on K12, Inc., the company who wants to take the school experience to the computer. One of the most pressing questions about a virtual school is that the school has incentive to pass even students with low performance. The NYTimes article cites K12's profits as sufficient motive for inflating grades. Easy grades mean the company looks good, while the task at hand of teaching a child remains incomplete. But even if K12 were a non-profit, the need to attract new students and public dollars would still make easy grades an enticing shortcut. How many teenagers have public school diplomas without being able to read?
That the pitfalls aren't unique to K12, though, is cold comfort. Certainly, that is not a selling point of K12. The best sales job for K12 is to cure what ailes the public schools - truancy, high student-teacher ratios, under-performing students, low teacher pay, budget shortfalls, lack of personal attention.
Perhaps K12's saving grace at the moment is its novelty. In many ways, virtual schools can compare themselves to the first few internet businesses. Just as the first dot coms had to perfect their game, so do the virtual schools. They can argue that they are the nascent school of the future, and that their future success requires persistence now.
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