TechTrends Special Issue: Charter Schools Go Cyber

I wanted to make everyone aware that the most recent issue of TechTrends is a special issue focused on cyber charter schools.  For those not familiar, TechTrends is a publication of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology.  The issue in question is the July/August 2009 or volume 53, number 4.

The introduction to the special issue, as written by guest editor Allison A. Carr-Chellman, reads:

Indeed, there are so many things to learn. We can only hope our current educational system inspires this love of learning. Unfortunately, I fear that our current system inspires much in the way of test-taking strategies, memorization, and plenty of regurgitation, but there is little evidence that these have any real measure of learning.

We spend a great deal of time chasing far-off worlds of constructivism and problem-based learning, various notions of cognition and learning sciences, technologically-based ideas of computer supported collaborative learning, and open learning environments. We are like backyard hunters looking for a great redwood with a magnifying glass clutched tightly in our hand. There is certainly nothing wrong with any of these ideas, but they are too narrow and tend to ignore the context and domain almost entirely. More to the point, are they really radical enough to create substantive and disruptive changes in what happens every day in classrooms all over this country? Perhaps not, perhaps we need to think much more broadly and more systemically. We need to consider alternative models of whole educational systems. Perhaps unorthodox ideas like charter schools, single gender schools, homeschooling, and unschooling should be seriously considered.

In this special issue of TechTrends, several scholars with expertise in cyber charter schools will help us to focus our thoughts on the current issues in implementing this innovative sort of schooling. Cyber charters most simply defined are schools in which a state gives a charter, just like any other charter school, but the entirety of the work of the cyber charter, all of its learning, is carried out electronically through the Internet and related materials. In many ways, cyber charters are the equivalent of online learning institutions of higher education such as World Campus.

This special issue is made up of seven articles that address several critical issues in the cybercharter movement. We start with a review of the literature offered by Cathy Cavanaugh. This is a very brief review, owing primarily to the lack of sufficient research in this area. Of particular concern is the lack of effectiveness data specifically generated to this point on the cybercharter school movement. Only the 2009 Rand report generated by Zimmer, Gill, Booker, Lavertu, Sass, and Witte specifically calls out cyber charters in an examination of achievement in charter schools, and they acknowledge that their findings are not as robust as they could be owing to some issues with who is counted in the study. Student-achievement data in cyber charter schools has remained somewhat mixed, but is so limited as to suggest that this needs to be a significant part of any research agenda going forward on this topic. There is a fair bit of reportage from an anecdotal or theoretical standpoint, but it is clear that we need to have significant work in empirical findings in a variety of areas including leadership, general models of operating, and achievement/effectiveness.

In the second article, Rose Marsh and I work through a careful explanation of where the money goes when cyber charters are part of the public schooling funding picture. In the state of Pennsylvania, among the leaders in charter school legislation, and cybercharters as well, it is a fascinating set of paths that money takes from property and state taxes into districts to the cybercharter with reimbursement from state level to the districts for part of the cybercharter payments. What makes this story interesting is also a careful examination of the potential to move a public non- profit school into a conduit for for-profit curriculum materials vendors.

Understanding more about what cyber charters look like is helped significantly by David Wiley’s description of the Open High School of Utah. As one of the founders of the OHSU, Wiley has committed to an experimental approach in which the entire school focuses on student learning with a great deal of reliance on outsourcing. This is a significantly different organizational model than is common in traditional schools, and to my knowledge has by and large not been tried in cyber charters. This model is only part of the innovation of the OHSU, however, because the founders have agreed to create an online curriculum that will be open and free to others. This sort of open approach is in direct opposition to the traditional model of vendor-provided materials outlined in Marsh and Carr-Chellman’s piece and runs in the face of the notion that the cyber charter is in part an effort to show that private corporations can run schools more economically than the public sector. On the contrary, this approach is perhaps the closest thing to a true open cyber charter, aiming at advancing the public good in terms of its operations as an open source school.

Seeing this sort of leadership in action in the development and establishment of the OHSU leads to questions around how such innovations are created, expanded, diffused, and ultimately led. After an investigation of the history of educational leadership issues and trends, Eugene Kowch predicts, “A more subjective distributed leadership trajectory for successful cyber charter school leaders…”. As we imagine the sort of leader and distributed leadership teams that will be needed to work with governance systems and vendors, or to outsource previously core functions, it is obvious that leaders will need to begin to understand competitive pressures, new forms of autonomy, and public demands as Kowch outlines in his article. It would seem that leaders who would thrive in agile organizations may be at a distinct advantage in the new world of cyber charters and the same could be true for school governance more generally, (e.g., boards, state departments and so forth).

There is an inextricable link between homeschooling and cyber charters. To this point, we do not have definitive statistics even within a single state that indicate how pervasive the overlap between homeschoolers and cyber charter attendees is. However, it is clear that it is a considerable overlap, one that should not be ignored or overlooked. Understanding why parents, and in particular homeschooling parents, choose an alternative like a public cyber charter is the concern of the article that Beth Sockman, Rose Marsh, and I authored for this special issue. Their reasons are perhaps not all that surprising, but it is a contribution of true empirical work, having interviewed several home school parents about their choice to enroll in a cyber charter. Parents felt that cyber charters were well-funded using public funds, they felt that cyber charters have the ability to tailor materials to the specific needs of their children and in some cases they reported their connection with some of the leaders of cyber charters as aligning with their political or religious viewpoints. The level of intervention afforded home schooling parents into the education of their children raises some issues and concerns about parental control of socialization aspects that have traditionally been considered one of the primary concerns of public schooling.

This larger issue, particularly where religious education is concerned, is raised by Belinda Cambre who discusses the legal limitations of
parental direction within cyber charters as a function of a public endorsement of religion. Cambre outlines a number of legal tests that have been part of the history of public education where governmental religious establishment is concerned. In general, parental rights to share religious messages with their children are protected in the context of the charter experience when it is outside the school setting. However, where is the school setting when schooling is carried out in the home? Where are the walls in that case? Cambre’s message is a cautious one; we need to think carefully about the establishment of schools run by religious groups, and, I would add, run by those who are perceived to have a religious agenda or to be aligned with a specific religious agenda. Bill Bennett is the one who immediately comes to mind given the findings of the Sockman, Marsh and Carr-Chellman study which points to his influence in parents’ minds as a politically and religiously like-minded leader.

The final article in the series for this special issue deals with a very important concern of connecting social tissue within cyber charter schools. In addition to the academic mission of K-12 schooling, brick-and-mortar schools perform a vital social function in the development of our children. The ability to take part in extra- curricular activities and interact with each other between classes or before and after school are elements that are difficult to replicate within an online learning environment. A major concern for cyber charter schools should be finding equivalent opportunities to create positive student interaction. In a school that exists entirely, or almost entirely, virtually, it becomes even more important to promote belonging, eliminate the feeling of complete isolation, and design environments that focus on connectivity. The case study described by Michael Barbour and Cory Plough of the Odyssey of the Mind network is a compelling one, with some pitfalls, but a good pathway through a social network that succeeds at connecting students across geographical distances.

In the end, the point of this special issue is to help us all to learn—to learn a bit more about cyber charters, what they are, what issues they face, why we use them, how to lead them, what promises they hold, how to make them better, and how to about them. (pp. 3-4 & 31)

The specific articles for the special issue are as follows:

• An Introduction to this special issue of TechTrends – Allison A. Carr-Chellman
• Effectiveness of Cyber Charter Schools: A Review of Research on Learnings – Cathy Cavanaugh
• Selecting Silicon: Why Parents Choose Cybercharter Schools – Rose M. Marsh, Allison A. Carr-Chellman & Beth R. Sockman
• The Open High School of Utah: Openness, Disaggregation, and the Future of Schools – David Wiley
• New Capabilities for Cyber Charter School Leadership: An Emerging Imperative for Integrating Educational Technology and Educational Leadership Knowledge – Eugene Kowch
• Pennsylvania Cyber School Funding: Follow the Money – Allison A. Carr-Chellman & Rose M. Marsh
• Social Networking in Cyberschooling: Helping to Make Online Learning Less Isolating – Michael K. Barbour & Cory Plough
• Tearing Down the Walls: Cyber Charter Schools and the Public Endorsement of Religion – Belinda M. Cambre

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