But it's not at all good if researchers and advocates just use virtual schooling as a new venue to play out old ideological or political battles. My only addition to Cavanaugh and Black's review is my concern that the article tries to assess a new model with a very fixed notion of school. To be clear, I don't at all object to many of Glass's specific concerns -- I also share his concerns about financial incentives to lower quality, poor student outcomes, and abuses by fully-online cyber schools. But rather than see these as a part of a whole new, large, and varied mode of education, his conception that "traditional" norms and bureaucracies are the only "real" school limits his analysis.
My motivation for writing the cover feature on Florida Virtual School in the new edition of Education Next was to tell the story of a reform endeavor that has not fit neatly into these prevailing norms:
To accomplish this rare feat, the school has adroitly walked a fine line. It has built a distinct educational philosophy, approach, and culture. At the same time, it has maintained its identity as a public school and remains part of the system. This unique positioning, far enough outside to do business in a different way yet sufficiently inside the system to avoid political backlash, has been a key element in the school’s success. Mark Pudlow, spokesperson for the Florida Education Association, the teachers union that has fought pitched battles against many of Florida’s recent initiatives, acknowledges the result of Florida Virtual School’s approach: "[It] never developed the kind of mistrust that tends to be associated with other reform ideas." Savvy leadership, strong political support, and a series of well-timed decisions around growth have helped FLVS become the country’s most successful virtual school, and perhaps one of its most important reform stories as well.My article ends before the current legislative battle in Florida over the state's virtual school, but I've learned quite a bit from the episode. One big take-away is that for all the interest in the book Disrupting Class and the theory of disruptive innovation, the reality is that it is, well, disruptive.
We all talk about wanting to go to scale with innovation. Many people also want to promote competition in education. But very few are really prepared to deal -- particularly if a non-traditional, but still public, entity like Florida Virtual School competes and wins big -- when the results from competition at scale don't fit into the dominant narratives of public vs. private, reformer vs. status quo, what's good for teachers, etc. In this case, legislators are complaining because the school is too successful at attracting students that are engaged and want more than their prescribed allotment of education. The private sector lobbyists are complaining about too much competition and attempting to use the political process to carve out their protected niche. And it's a subset of public sector folks complaining that Florida Virtual is too successful because the school is winning enrollments from home and private school parents who are opting back into public education. Strange days indeed.
3 comments:
Incredibly well-put. Hurray for those willing to take risks to improve access to education for ALL. It's not acceptable that high-performers should be limited when they want more...and it's unacceptable that low-performers should be limited when they want more. The current system is inadequate and this innovation is out of Pandora's box already, so we'll see where it leads. I, for one, am excited to see what comes.
It's important not just to view the virtual charter school as a different thing, but to look at the components which define it, assessing what works and why.
The virtual charter school model, IMHO, is effective for three reasons. 1) Mastery learning allows children to speed through what they already know and slow down for topics they find difficult. They do not move on until they can prove they know the material. 2) Many aspects, such as the pace, are individualized forcing the teacher to work with the child as a partnership. 3) Some virtual charter schools develop their own learning materials, continually refining them so they are more effective than a textbook adopted by others and then used without change for years.
It's true that the children also spend more time at home and parents must be actively involved. But that shouldn't be all we see when we look at this school model.
I think that in due time, the traditional notion of schooling will expand to accommodate distance learning. There's no stopping the influence of technology since society is dependent (and increasingly dependent) on technology.
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