This post by John is an interesting read, as there are parts of it I agree with wholeheartedly in concept – but the reality of the US political system means that in reality the promotion of these kinds of positions means taking a very specific ideological position.
In particular, John’s position that “the state should not be influencing the decisions being made by districts to offer online and hybrid schools by… funding students at these schools at lower levels.” Conceptually Parent A and Parent B pay the same taxes for education. An argument could easily be made that Parent A’s child shouldn’t receive less funding towards their education than Parent B’s child simply because Parent A chose to send their child to an online school. Granted, by that same argument, childless Citizen A shouldn’t have to pay any taxes towards education at all. The notion of equality of funding ignores the XXX of equity of funding.
For those unfamiliar with the equality vs. equity debate, the basic premise is that equality means everyone gets the same, while equity means everyone gets what they need. The common graphic that is used illustrates the difference quite well.
What John is arguing is that all student education should be funded equally, regardless if online learning may be able to provide a similar quality of instruction for less money. Now I do have to say MAY because we really don’t know. The vast majority of full-time K-12 online learning is provided by for-profit corporations, and they have no interest in sharing what it actually costs to provide a similar quality of instruction. Additionally, unfortunately, the for-profit motive also means that in most instances the quality of instruction isn’t actually similar.
This brings up the second problem between the conceptual notion of equal funding regardless of modality and the reality. The reality is that the vast majority of full-time K-12 online learning in the United States is provided by for-profit corporations. Most literature suggests anywhere from two thirds to up to 80% of full-time K-12 online learning is provided directly or indirectly by for-profit corporations. So a call for equal funding for online learning, in reality, is promotion to increase the profits for these online education corporations.
As I have mentioned many times in the past, there is a big difference between vendor as the direct or indirect provider of education and vendor as contracted service provider for products or services to schools and districts. When the vendor is the direct or indirect provider of education, the vendor is the one making all of the educational decisions – which means they are weighing factors like whether the cost of doing something for the student is worth the hit to the profit. As corporations – particularly publicly traded companies like K12, Inc./Stride, Inc. and Pearson that have shareholders that expect dividends – the profit motive is king. The bottom line is how to maximize the profit per widget, and in the case of education the students are the widgets. This is very different from the vendor as service/product provider, because in this instance the school or school district – which is a non-profit entity – is the one making the educational decisions. Schools and school districts, while they do have funding constraints, are motivated by trying to provide students with what they need to have success.
Now I know that John will argue that by putting limits on how funding can be spent it limits the ability of the school and school district to provide students with what they need to have success… And he is right. The issue becomes whether you are willing to accept, and even encourage, the extreme amounts of profiteering from public education funds by online learning vendors and the lower quality education they provide, just to remove potential restrictions on schools and school districts for a few students. Put another way, are you willing to allow corporations to make millions of dollars from public education and academic disadvantage the majority of their students to allow schools and school districts a few hundred or thousand dollars of additional funding?
Since it is an important issue in the media these days, to use an analogy… Are you willing to be shot in the chest simply for the right to be able to return fire or should we just limit firearms in the first place?
Far too often in education we are willing to accept something that MIGHT benefit some students, while at the same time KNOWING that it will disadvantage a greater number of students. The arguments around equal funding are an example from our field illustrate this reality quite well.
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BY JOHN WATSON
(This blog post expands on testimony that I gave to a working group of the Texas Virtual Education Commission last week.)
How students in online and hybrid schools should be funded, and at what levels, has been a topic of debate for as long as online schools have existed. The Digital Learning Collaborative (DLC) has touched on these issues in our recent funding report and blog post, and will explore these issues further in an upcoming webinar.
Prepping for the Texas Commission hearing, however, got me thinking about a simple way to state my belief on this issue:
“The state should not put its ‘thumb on the scale’ regarding instructional modalities that are available to students.”
I believe in the above statement because as of fall 2022:
- most students and teachers experienced a form of online learning during the remote learning of the pandemic,
- we have seen increases in enrollment in online and hybrid schools,
- more college students than ever are taking at least one online course,
- and plenty of evidence exists that online learning can be successful.
With all these elements in place, decisions as to whether students will learn online, f2f, or in combination, should be made by students, families, teachers, and educators. State policy should be neutral on this topic.
What does this mean in practice? In part, it means that the state should not be influencing the decisions being made by districts to offer online and hybrid schools by either:
- Funding students at these schools at lower levels, or
- Creating friction with difficult student accounting procedures, in particular those that ignore that students are often choosing these options for their time flexibility.
These first principles don’t cover all potential questions, of course. Although funding students at the same level regardless of modality is fairly easy conceptually, accounting for student funding purposes quickly runs into challenges when shifting from face-to-face to online.
But a lot of questions come up that are easily addressed by adhering to the first-order principle that the state should leave instructional modality decisions entirely to families, students, teachers, and schools. |
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I think this article makes some important points about the role of venture capitalists (VC) in education. As Ben Williamson notes, educational technology (edtech) can be profitable for investors, but only if the future of education matches their expectations. So they have an interest in ensuring such a future comes to pass. That wouldn’t be so bad, I think, except that they future they imagine is one where they become wealthy, usually at the expense of institutions and students. This also makes them political actors (a phenomenon I’ve seen a lot over the years).
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