K-12 Online Learning Quality Project - Feedback

Last week, I posted Feedback Request for K-12 Online Learning Quality Project.  At the time I wasn’t sure if I’d get around to it, but I had some time over the weekend and here are some thoughts I had.  iNACOL asked for feedback on three areas:

1. Identify arbitrary “requirements” or “policies” — what current policies and legislation exist that negatively impact online learning or create perverse incentives that may affect student access or success? [Examples include being required to print out every piece of student work on paper, having attendance audit policies dictate a students’ ability to accelerate, making a student go to a fixed location to learn to meet some arbitrary requirement, or, how you might lose funding (instead of get rewarded) when you bring a below basic student to proficiency (such as ELL), instead of being rewarded for doing a good job of accelerating students.

2. Quality Metrics – how is online learning measured for quality in your state/district/school? What are the current problems with this?

3. What do you feel are important student learning performance metrics or indicators (like individual student growth on a trajectory, proficiency) that should be captured and reported in order to better gain a picture of quality in full time online programs?

As someone who has been involved with and observing iNACOL for six or seven years now, I find questions 2 and 3 interesting – as I don’t think iNACOL really want feedback before their chosen path.  Over the past three to four years in particular, the iNACOL leadership – along with the neo-liberal proponents of K-12 online learning (and often the two groups are one and the same – have consistently used annual yearly progress (AYP) and school’s failure to meet it as evidence that the current brick-and-mortar system are failing our students.  However, when AYP is used to judge K-12 online learning programs – particularly full-time, for-profit, cyber charter schools – it is an invalid measure and we should consider other things.  When asked what other measures we should be using, iNACOL (and those neo-liberal proponents) point to growth – moving students from point A to point B, even if point B is still the student failing.  Regardless, the conversation is always about measuring something through the use of standardized testing – because that is cheap and easy and can be done without teachers (all things their for-profit membership likes to see).  The organization is silent on the closing of failing online schools – beyond token lip service about ensuring high quality online learning opportunities (and, by definition, to iNACOL and the neo-liberal proponents online learning equals high quality learning).  Also absent is really any conversation about models we see in other jurisdictions – many of which are out-performing the United States in international testing; models where the teacher is empowered to decide when a student has mastered the content and how they can or should exhibit that mastery.

But I suspect that iNACOL isn’t interested in such a dramatic shift from the neo-liberal positions on evaluation and quality that they current leadership have chartered, so I’ll defer my constructive comments to the first question.  When it comes to policies and regulations related to K-12 online learning, there are two things that iNACOL should consider moving forward.

1. Managed Growth and Appropriate Funding

When have seen time and time again within the K-12 online learning community that when a new market is opened up without restrictions, the for-profit providers go in and pillage what they can – providing little in the way of quality education in their wake.  Appropriate restrictions to K-12 online learning are not negative or perverse – as iNACOL often portrays them – but can be useful in growing a quality alternative for certain populations of students.  For example, the initial cyber charter school legislation in Michigan was a good illustration of this kind of managed growth.  Two cyber charter companies were given permission to operate in the state, both schools were limited to 400 students in their first year and then could add an additional 1000 students in their second year. The caveat was that of those 1000 students, the cyber charter company had to re-capture one student that had dropped out of the school system in order to enroll one student into its regular program. This measure forced the two companies to create programs specifically designed to cater to the unique needs of students that had dropped out of the system (something neither company has done much of in any other state, largely because they weren’t forced to do so).  At the end of two years, the Michigan Department of Education were going to look at the performance of both companies and make decisions about future growth based on how the students did during this initial pilot.

Now we could quibble that instead of 400 in that first year it should have been 500 or 750, and that the administrative rules in place for a student to be placed on the drop-out roll was poorly conceived; but the basic premise of the restrictions were good.  Limit growth to a manageable size to allow schools to improve with experience (and not be overwhelmed), and force the companies to address some of the real problems in the state’s education system (as opposed to simply coming into the state simply to make a buck).  Unfortunately, neo-liberals in the legislature – supported by lobbyists for both companies – began almost at the very beginning of that second year of operation to work to dismantle the review process schedule for the end of year two.  I suspect it had something to do with the extremely poor results both schools posted at the end of their first year of operation, unless there were dramatic – unexpected – improvements, there would be little rationale for expanding a form of education where most students were still failing.  In the end, the legislature removed any meaningful restrictions and the two companies – along with any others that wish to set-up shop – can come in to rape and pillage public education in Michigan.

Probably one of the only useful models that incorporates this managed growth concept is the model legislation drafted by Justin Bathon.  This is where iNACOL should be directing their energies in the coming years when it comes to how full-time online learning is regulated.  Unfortunately, this is not in the best interests of their corporate members and I suspect they’ll continue to be silent on this worthwhile model – as they were in the case of Arizona, when similar legislation was pass by the Republican House and Senate, along to be vetoed by the Republican Governor (much to the glee of the major for-profit cyber charter companies in that state).

Beyond the managed growth model, another one of the issues addressed – at least partially – by the model legislation is funding.  If K-12 online learning is being sold to legislators (and to parents) as an alternative to failing schools, then it seems reasonable to tie their funding at least partially to backing up that claim.  Unfortunately, the model legislation – at least based on my memory – does not address the level of funding.  With the exception of those with a vested interest in receiving equal levels of per student funding (i.e., the companies themselves) or those who represent them (i.e., iNACOL), just about everyone else – even the right-wing Fordham Foundation – acknowledge that online learning costs less than face-to-face instruction.  As such, it should be funded at a lower rate.  What that rate should be I suspect depends on the nature of services being provided.  However, jurisdictions that provide equal levels of funding are simply needlessly putting money into the pockets of corporate executives and shareholders.

2. End Glorified Homeschooling

At present, the model for many cyber charter companies is little more than glorified homeschooling.  The company provides the family with a computer and access to an online curriculum, but the main instructional role falls upon the learning coach (which is generally a parent or guardian – someone in the home when the child is supposed to be doing their school).  The only real “school” aspects that the cyber charter companies provide is someone to grade the student’s work – although quite often that is done by the computer with all of the standardized tests, and there have been instances of companies even out-sourcing this grading function to India – and then the ability to interact with a tutor.  I use the term tutor quite specifically because in many of these instructional models the teacher isn’t a teacher in the traditional sense, where they are guiding the student.  The teacher is someone who answers questions when the student isn’t progressing and the parent learning coach isn’t able to help.  In this kind of model, the state is essentially providing the family with a portion or all of the FTE (depending on how full-time online learning is funded in that state), to go out and lease a computer, lease curricular materials, and buy tutoring.

This is not to say that all full-time cyber charter company models are like this.  What makes some different is the role of the teacher and, specifically, how they interact with the students.  Interaction in the online learning environment is key to the teaching and learning process.  It is the difference between schooling and not.  If there is no real, meaningful interaction between student and the teacher it isn’t schooling.  It is little more than a student with their own personal learning network, learning on their own.  Interaction, and the nature of that interaction is the key (hell, even the NCAA has figured this out – oddly enough, before many of the groups within the K-12 online learning world began to focus on this aspects).

So when it comes to interaction, there are a variety of ways to look at what is occurring.  For example, the NCAA includes statements like:

• “The interaction between teacher and student may include telephone conversations, electronic mail, instant messaging and other forms of electronic communication between the student and instructor. That interaction should include feedback on assignments and course assessments by the instructor to the student, and the opportunity for the instructor to provide individual instruction to the student.”
• “The interaction between teacher and student may include telephone conversations, electronic mail, instant messaging and other forms of electronic communication between the student and instructor. That interaction should include feedback on assignments and course assessments by the instructor to the student, and the opportunity for the instructor to provide individual instruction to the student.”

From an academic standpoint, Moore (1989) was the first to outline types of interaction in the distance education environment:

• learner-teacher interaction as “interaction between the learner and the expert who prepared the subject material, or some other expert acting as instructor” (p. 2)
• learner-learner interactions as interactions between learners at an individual or group level, with or without the instructor
• learner-content interaction as the students’ interaction with the subject matter which brings about a change in student understanding

This was extended over the years to include:

• learner-interface interaction was characterized by the types of interactions the learner has with the technology itself (Hillman, Willis, & Gunawardena, 1994)
• vicarious interactionwas characterized as students observing the interactions of their peers and/or instructor in an online setting, but they themselves do not actively participate (Sutton, 2001)

This was a good model if you were interested in classifying the types of interaction that occurred, but if you were interested in describing the nature of interaction between the teacher and the learning – as the NCAA recommends (and I tend to agree) – then I have one of my former doctoral students, Dr. Abigail Hawkins, to thank for alerting me to the work of Heinemann. Heinemann (2005) described teacher student interaction as falling into three categories:

1. Intellectual/instructional interactions deal with communication exchanges related to the subject matter.
2. Procedural/organizational/managerial interactions deal with communication exchanges related to course logistics, policies, procedures, and progress.
3. Social/supportive interactions deal with communication exchanges to nurture, encourage, motivate, and retain students.

As a side note, for those interested in exploring these types of interactions in a K-12 online learning environment, I’d recommend two of the articles that Abby published from her dissertation study – Strictly Business: Teacher Perceptions of Interaction in Virtual Schooling AND “Everybody is their own Island”: Teacher Disconnection in a Virtual School.

If iNACOL is really serious about providing high quality online instruction, they really need to focus upon the teacher-student interaction in the online learning environment and Heinemann’s classification of the types of interaction are an ideal framework for examining this issue.

Bibliography

Heinemann, M. H. (2005). Teacher-student interaction and learning in online theological education. part II: Additional theoretical frameworks. Christian Higher Education, 4(4), 277-297.

Hillman, D. C., Willis, D. J., & Gunawardena, C. N. (1994). Learner-interface interaction in distance education: An extension of contemporary models and strategies for practitioners. The American Journal of Distance Education, 8(2), 30-42.

Moore, M. (1989). Editorial: Three types of interaction. The American Journal of Distance Education, 3(2), 1-6.

Sutton, L. A. (2001). The principle of vicarious interaction in computer-mediated Communications. International Journal of Educational Telecommunications, 7(3), 223-242.

I should note that I suspect this is a fool’s errand, as I know that iNACOL – at least under its current leadership – are stuck in the neo-liberal view of K-12 online learning, and any voice to the contrary is a voice of dissent.  But I did promise someone I’d speak to these issues this week, so I wanted to follow through on that promise.