NY Times Delivers the Standard Virtual School Story

Today’s New York Times features the standard story on K-12 virtual schooling. The Times deserves kudos for covering this increasingly important topic and for accurately pointing out that there are different types of virtual schools. But, after noting that the vast majority of students participate in supplemental, mostly state-run virtual schools, the article focuses 90% of its copy on the controversies surrounding full-time, cyber schools.

True, cyber school issues are in play in many state courts and legislatures. More importantly, they are full of controversies around unions, home schooling, and privatization—the red meat issues that make for good copy and get the usual suspects going on either extreme of conventional education debates. It all makes for a good story that can be easily covered in the usual way that education is covered. But, there’s a much bigger story still untold.

Just as modern workplaces bridge multiple online and offline communications modes, the future for education is neither a fully virtual nor a parallel system, but an integrated one. The overwhelming majority of students will continue to attend physical schools. However, increasing numbers of students will also take courses or parts of courses online, moving back and forth seamlessly between the traditional and virtual—just as they do in every other aspect of their lives.

Right now, there is an opportunity for the deep structural changes that we’ve seen the Internet spark in almost every other field. In each case, new organizations developed alternative management structures, distribution methods, and work models.

Virtual schooling can drive the same sorts of transforming changes in public education. While the importance of effective teaching and learning has not changed, the Internet has enabled educators to significantly alter the experience of schooling. Virtual schools are personalizing student learning and extending it beyond the traditional school day. They’ve created new models for the practice of teaching—with opportunities to easily observe, evaluate, and assist instructors. And they are pioneering performance-based education funding models.

That is why it is increasingly important to understand the broader innovations that are emerging from online schooling and their potential to leverage reform on a far larger scale in public education.