The approach has clear successes but important questions remain, policy brief concludes
Contact: Gene V Glass - (480) 965 2692; glass@asu.edu
Kevin Welner - (303) 492-8370; kevin.welner@gmail.com
TEMPE, Ariz and BOULDER, Colo. (April 20, 2009) -- So-called virtual education is becoming increasingly widespread in public education, but concerns remain about the benefits of full-time schools as well as issues of cost, accreditation, evaluation and the increased commercialization of schooling, according to a new policy brief from the Education and the Public Interest Center and the Education Policy Research Unit.
The brief, The Realities of K-12 Virtual Education, is by Gene V Glass, regents' professor of education at Arizona State University. Glass surveys the current research literature on virtual education, examining issues such as the quality of online schooling and attitudes toward it on the part of the public and public officials.
The most frequent form of virtual education, Glass reports is "credit recovery" -- online classes that make up for a previously failed course or for a necessary class that could not be scheduled conventionally. Increasingly, online schooling is being successfully marketed to home-schooled students, often under the umbrella of charter school legislation.
Three meta-analyses of studies examining virtual education programs, Glass notes, have concluded that there was no difference in achievement between students taught through online courses and those taught in conventional, face-to-face classroom settings. Overwhelmingly, these existing studies examined distance education -- online education used, for example, to provide services to students in extremely rural areas -- so research should now focus on the newer applications of the model. These earlier studies also "focused on highly structured curricula such as science, math, and reading," Glass notes. Little is yet known about how well students can learn from virtual courses on "less readily codified subjects" such as art, music, or literary interpretation.
The development of full-time virtual schooling also raises funding and other political issues, Glass explains. This policy debate tends to be dominated by "the commercial interests of large, private providers of courses and programs," with public school districts and universities now entering the market.
Glass concludes with a series of recommendations made to legislatures, state-level education officials, and school boards:
§ Adopt new regulations governing the provision of online K-12 schooling.
§ Call for audits of providers of virtual education, to help determine costs.
§ Recognize legitimate accrediting agencies.
§ Require credible assessment and evaluation.
Find Gene Glass's report, The Realities of K-12 Virtual Education, on the web at:
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/realities-K-12-virtual-education
CONTACT:
Gene V Glass
Regents' Professor of Education
Arizona State University
(480) 965-2692
glass@asu.edu
Kevin Welner, Professor and Director
Education and the Public Interest Center
University of Colorado at Boulder
(303) 492-8370
kevin.welner@gmail.com
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The Education and the Public Interest Center (EPIC) at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Education Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at Arizona State University collaborate to produce policy briefs and think tank reviews. Our goal is to promote well-informed democratic deliberation about education policy by providing academic as well as non-academic audiences with useful information and high quality analyses. This policy brief was made possible in part by the generous support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.
Visit EPIC and EPRU at http://www.educationanalysis.org/
EPIC and EPRU are members of the Education Policy Alliance
(http://educationpolicyalliance.org)
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