A Wrong Turn for Virtual Education in Florida

Last December I flew to Tallahassee to testify as part of the Florida State Legislature's K-12 Virtual Education Workshop. As a native Floridian, I've been proud of my home state's leadership in virtual schooling. Florida Virtual School is the largest and one of the most successful state-run virtual schools in the country. It's widely regarded as a nationwide model. And, while I'm less intimate with the details of the state's two full-time K-8 programs, Florida Connections Academy and Florida Virtual Academy, they have consistently achieved As and Bs in Florida's state accountability system. At the legislative workshop in December, most participants emphasized that Florida was doing things the smart way.

So, I was shocked to read the new virtual education bill that has just recently cleared the legislature (the governor has not yet signed the bill). The bill has a number of flaws, but the most egregious is its mandate that each of Florida's 67 school districts contract with a provider or develop its own program to provide a full-time K-8 virtual schooling program, beginning in the 2009-10 school year. Thus, Florida will move from a well-run, successful, state-authorized program to a system that forces each district to manage and authorize its own program.

This is a horrible idea for a number of reasons:

1. Reduced Accountability and Quality: From the charter movement, we've learned that high-quality authorizing is one of the essential components leading to high-quality educational experiences. Moving to a district-by-district model, especially when many of the districts have neither the capacity, nor desire, to authorize this type of program, almost ensures that there will be much weaker authorizing and relatively little oversight for these programs.


2. Reduced Competition and Fewer Student Options: Ironically, this change will likely reduce student options. Under the current statewide model, families in Florida have at least two options. And, there's no reason that this number couldn't grow. But, it's highly unlikely that districts will provide multiple options. It's almost certain that they will contract with either one of the current providers or start their own program. So, not only do students have fewer programs to choose from, but it's likely that a mini-monopoly will develop in each individual district.


3. Wrong Emphasis: A district-by-district scheme makes sense if it allows each district to customize virtual education programs to integrate and strengthen its current educational offerings. But, districts can already do this by working with the state's existing supplemental program, the Florida Virtual School. This bill addresses full-time virtual education--a parallel system that does not integrate with the district's current programs. And, as noted above, it's very likely that the providers and offerings will be the exact same.

To date, Florida has been wise in its virtual education program design, avoiding the problems in a number of states such as Colorado, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. While almost every other state looks to Florida's current programs as a model, this bill takes that model in the opposite direction.