It’s unconscionable that states and local school districts across the country have eliminated the remote learning option where children connect with their classroom teachers online. Instead, they’re opening virtual schools, outsourcing to for-profit companies, using the pandemic to privatize public schooling.
Parents fearful of the Delta variant and in-person schooling, hearing dire warnings about sick children filling pediatric ICUs while observing parents fighting mask mandates at school board meetings, want a remote option with their child’s teacher. The Delta variant has made in-person schooling even more complicated than last year.
If parents don’t get a remote option with the school district, they’ll look for another way to keep their children safe.
The number of parents choosing to homeschool has increased. Along with homeschool, school districts are steering parents to virtual academies, many run by for-profit tech companies.
Newsweek reported that 38 states are setting up permanent virtual schools. That’s right. Permanent.
Who will run them? Many of these companies have bad track records.
Yet American Association of School Administrators Executive Director Dan Domenech says it’s the future. Some of these states might be denying it now, but soon they will have to get in line because they will see other states doing it and they will see the advantages of it.
Telling Americans, they have to get in line for for-profit virtual schools seems bold and anti-democratic, especially when parents and students want nothing more than to get rid of the pandemic and get their schools back!
Here are a few examples of this privatization ploy.
Arizona
On August 18, 2021, the State of Arizona threatens its public schools with a loss of funding if they return to remote learning with their children’s teachers. This seems harsh.
A few days later, parents read Online schools provide Arizona parents another option amid COVID-19 spike by Jason Barry on AZFamily.com.
They highlight the Arizona Virtual Academy powered by Stride K12, which is K12 Inc.
The state’s name, followed by “Virtual Academy,” is usually K12.
See: K12 Inc. Reports Full Year Fiscal 2020 with Revenues of $1.04 Billion.
These are tax dollars flowing to an online school where many reports pop up if one types “K12 Fail” on Google. No wonder there’s a name change.
Massachusetts
From The Boston Globe, August 31, 2021. ‘We’re being set up for failure’: Massachusetts’ hard line against remote learning this year has left some families feeling hopeless. By Bianca
According to the report, If parents reject sending their students to in-person classrooms, they’re forced to turn to TEC Connections Academy Commonwealth Virtual School and Greenfield Commonwealth Virtual School, which advertises real-time classes from anywhere to anywhere.
Minnesota
From the Star Tribune’s As Minnesota schools’ online options grow, so do complications by Erin Golden, August 15, 2021.
Adding to the complexity is the growing but tough-to-track presence of for-profit online learning companies, which multiplied during the pandemic and have swarmed schools in Minnesota and across the country as they attempt to build new virtual academies from scratch.
The online learning companies offer software, lessons, and sometimes even teachers.
That’s right. Sometimes even teachers.
In some states, online learning companies have become major lobbying powers at state legislatures, spending millions to push for policies that support and expand virtual schools. That’s not the situation yet in Minnesota, but at least two big names in the industry, Pearson and Stride Inc., have registered lobbyists in St. Paul.
Tennessee
Tennessee has seen a bad run of the Delta variant in children, so parents are nervous about in-person school.
In April 2021 the State Board passed a permanent rule limiting remote instruction for the 2021-2022 school year. It gives the Governor and former Teach for America corps member and current Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn power to determine if schools will get to do remote learning.
As a result, families desiring that their students continue to receive a significant portion of their instruction remotely must enroll their students in a virtual school.
Meanwhile, Tennessee approved 29 new online schools!
Check them out to see which for-profit companies get the business. For example, in Hamilton County, they say:
. . . for parents of school-aged children in Hamilton County, there are now more options for parents who aren’t comfortable with the spiking cases in our schools.
This is different from HCS at home which was an option last year. That program tied a student to their home-zoned school but allowed them to learn at home. The Tennessee State Board of Education restricted programs like that this school year.
Parents can choose to enroll their child in an all-virtual school for a new quarter. That school uses Edgenuity.
National Education Policy Center (NEPC) Study
Most balanced reports about for-profit online schools cite the NEPC’s 2019 study, which along with six of their other studies about online learning, looks at the poor performance of online schooling.
See what your state is doing and whether they’re capitalizing on the pandemic to privatize public schools by outsourcing to online for-profit companies.
Every state should be offering students remote instruction by real teachers from their local schools. They should be reaching out to qualified teachers to carry on this task with support and necessary resources.
Sooner or later, the pandemic will end; but for now, let’s hope Americans realize what they stand to lose when it comes to their public schools and a professional teaching workforce.
No surprise that Florida, which has had a state-run virtual school for years, forbids local school districts from remote learning this school year.
The state education commission says it is concerned that remote learning at public schools last year led to gaps and learning loss. It has no such problem with the state-run virtual school or the corporate ones that advertise widely.
Great point, Stephen. Especially since a child’s teacher puts the true personalized touches on instruction, that they won’t get from an outsourced company. Thank you!
This is so alarming!! Thank you Nancy, as always, your information and articles are a great source of information. As much as I tried to stay informed, I did not see the reason for the lack of preparedness in schools. I could not comprehend why schools and school officials spread, in June, the absurdity that schools in fall would open normally as pre-pandemic, pretending the pandemic would be gone by then, when it was obvious that it would only get worse regardless of the vaccines. Using this wishful thinking as an excuse to not do anything about safety to attend school in-person during the pandemic. I thought the reasoning was passivity and stupidity. Now your article makes sense on why this “stupidity”.
Thank you, Monica. It took a while to figure out. In-person school without a safety net didn’t make sense.
Scary stuff, but not a surprise that so many Republicans are going after public education, because that is their MO. They simply do not believe in the idea of a “public purpose’ of ANY enterprise, apparently.
That’s exactly right! As I am sure, you remember who originally started K12 Inc., likely the original game plan. Thank you so much for your comment!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K12_(company)
Our county has started its own online school. This is primarily due to the lack of success in the realm of hybrid learning situations last year. Almost to a person, teachers were frustrated with the covid remote instruction methods of last year. I did a session at our inservice in which I asked teachers to tell their stories. Almost all reported the experience of having students use the online platform to either get out of work, or to live in the protective umbrella of parents who would lurk near the computer and whisper answers to students. Testing was impossible. I decided to abandon the test immediately, and was rewarded by the cooperation of a good many of my students who were virtual, but all admitted that they were less effective at home. Just today, as covid ramps up and we are required to make out seating charts for the health department, I asked a child to reflect on her experience in virtual. She responded with revulsion. But what could we do?
I suspect the truth is that remote learning is an oxymoron. Like other forms of learning, there is some experience better than other. But none of it is good. But what can we do?
Thank you, Roy! Do local teachers teach the county online school?
I don’t know anyone keen on online learning, but at least last year, most teachers still had charge. As you know, the game changes enormously when services are outsourced to for-profit companies where the teacher might have shaky credentials if there is a teacher.
Our online school teaches from a building near me where my wife still teaches. Local teachers are staffing the effort.
Meanwhile, there is a student teacher in our building getting certified through WGU, the state online university. She was complaining to me the other day about the paperwork she was obliged to do, which had to to be submitted to Pearson for grading. So perspective teachers in the online program at least are selected by Pearson in our state. Sound like a conflict of interest? Leviathan.
About teachers staffing online. . . I wonder if there’s a company running the operation, hiring the teachers.
https://www.stridelearning.com/careers.html
Interesting about WGU. Thanks, Roy.
I am pretty sure the online school is staffed with teachers hired just like I was.
WGU is more frightening than covid, as far as I am concerned. While I realize that online relationships, such as the one I have established with this and other websites, can be informative, I do not anticipate the transformative relationships I developed as a college student. Oppenheimer famously said important physics discoveries happen over coffee, which may refer to a meeting in the 1600s at an English Coffee house in which Hooke and others discussed a concept they took to Isaac Newton. Or perhaps he was speaking generally about the relationships that are the emotional underlayment for all of education. We cannot duplicate these relationships in the online format.
WGU is a concern. I agree. Online programs, as you say, can never replace in-person connections. Thanks for the interesting examples.
Online teaching programs are troubling. Here’s another. https://www.americanboard.org/
I have many concerns about education moving online: screen time is associated with mental health and medical harms, not to mention the massive collection, sharing, profiling, and monetizing of kids’ data. I worry about the gamification of education and takeover of the classroom by Silicon Valley — and neither virtual or remote online school are great alternatives to an in-person human teacher. I think we need to be pushing back VERY hard and demanding that students have brick and mortar schools, human teachers, and books to return to in the future.
I agree with how important schools and human teachers are for students.. However, with the Delta variant and kids getting sick, the next step from the classroom involves teachers working remotely online with students and perhaps careful visitations, even talks by phone. I think teachers had it pretty much together last year. Remote doesn’t always need to be online.
That child/teacher connection is important for when school buildings are safe. I don’t think they are at this time.
But passing by local teachers for modules and online tech companies or pushing parents to homeschool, leaving local teachers out of the picture, seems to be part of an ulterior motive.
Thank you for your comment, Cheri.