Virtual Schooling

Since the early 1930s, elementary and secondary students have learned through the use of electronic distance learning systems. Several benefits have been reported for K-12 distance education: increased access to education for students with a wide range of needs, flexibility in the speed and schedule of learning, greater parental influence on education. However, some researchers have found that the effectiveness of distance education depends on the contexts in which it occurs. The research on the effects of ...

In this paper, the author situates school choice within the field of K-12 online learning, specifically the use of full-time K-12 online learning in the form of cyber charter schools. The author then examines the use of cyber charter schools as a mechanism for school choice in K-12 online learning, specifically the effectiveness of cyber charter schools. This examination focuses on not just the findings, but critically examines the sources (and potential motivations) for those findings. Given the growth of full-time K-12 online learning, and the continued pressure by proponents to create favorable regulatory climates for cyber charter schools, a critical – but honest – examination of student outcomes is long overdue.

4 Introduction 5 Distance Education in the K–12 Context 5 Characteristics for Success 6 Teaching and Learning Theory 7 Purpose of the Study 8 Method 10 Location and Selection of Studies 11 Limitations of the Review 13 Coding of Study Features 13 Calculation of Effect Sizes 14 Statistical Analysis of Effect Sizes 15 Results 15 Characteristics of the Study 15 Overall Effects on K–12 Distance Education 16 Publication and Methodological Variables 18 Distance Education Variables 18 Instructional and Program Variables 19 Discussion 19 Implications for Research and Practice 19 Conclusions 21 The Need for Prospective Study in Virtual Schooling 22 Recommendations for K–12 Online Learning Policy and Practice 23 References 26 Appendix: Coded Variables and Study Features in the Codebook 32

LA ESCUELA EN LA NUBE. EL FUTURO DEL APRENDIZAJE MITRA, S. (2020) Barcelona: Paidós. 272 págs. La escuela moderna, según Sugata Mitra, autor de este ensayo, se parece mucho a la de hace 300 años. El profesor frente a una clase, los alumnos en pupitres ordenados: este sistema se desarrolló bajo el Imperio Británico. Pero con el auge de Internet, la memoriza-ción de datos ya no es tan importante. Para los trabajos del futuro, los estudiantes deben aprender a pensar de forma crítica. Este es el cambio de paradigma que Sugata Mitra espe-ra introducir con la Escuela en la Nube. Además de abrir laboratorios físicos de aprendizaje, está creando la "Nube de las Abuelos/as", una red mundial de profesores jubilados/as que apoyan a los niños/as a través de una plataforma en línea de la Escuela en la Nube. Su objetivo: compartir el método del Entorno de Aprendizaje Autogestionado (SOLE) con padres, profesores, programas extraescolares y comunidades de todo el mundo, y transformar la forma de aprender de los niños.

From the perspective of alternative education philosophies, compulsory schooling seems ridiculous. Firstly there are the human and children's rights issues. The lack of care for the dignity of the person, the physical violence, the potential abuse because of power structures and so on. A perspective on compulsory schooling which performs like this is connected to schools as a social function in ways that emerge from within the failing aspects of the centre of the schooling enterprise. They are its shadow side but also perhaps its source of most hope. Secondly there is the law. In many countries schooling is not compulsory in any way. The UK and America are two countries where this reality has taken on a power and a life that begins - because of the growing numbers of home educators - to challenge the possibility of an assumption that education is schooling and to challenge also the philosophy that goes with it. Education alone is fairly compulsory these days. The mechanism by which that truth bears itself out varies and can vary. In countries where this “truth” is not the case and it is schooling that is indeed compulsory, interesting factors contribute to that situation: in Germany the compulsory nature of schooling was enshrined in law by Adolf Hitler and has not been changed since. In Sweden where home education becomes close to impossible, complaints of the rise of the political far right temporally tally with complaints from parents who find their choice about educating their children diminishes to the point where the state is the educator of the child. And so we are back to human rights, but this time of parents. This chapter will examine the very idea of compulsory schooling from the point of view of an alternative world of education, where different rules apply. This will highlight the role of educational philosophy from and in an alternative education perspective.

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This book addresses issues around elective home education (EHE- also known as home schooling) discovery, which for too long have been unnecessarily problematic. Three theoretical frames using Kuhn, Foucault and Hirschman, and a policy framework for assessing discovery motivations are offered to contribute to increased understanding of the difference of EHE. An educational philosophy of EHE is developed. “Educationism” is presented as a term describing a widespread form of educational prejudice operating against the marginality of alternatives such as EHE and thorough-going democratic schooling. Empirical data extracts from a street survey and from in-depth interviews with adults who have discovered an educational alternative to mainstream schooling attendance are used. These show surprising and even shocking insights into the extent to which education is blindly conflated with schooling: finding out that schooling is not the only pathway for education to occur can cause wholesale revelation and personal transformation of the social, political, familial, financial and ethical. Unmet needs of parents to have information about alternative educational pathways are highlighted. Ignorance of professionals about EHE difference and a need for greater training is raised. The issues discussed have wide ranging implications for the concept of education and for the conduct of educational studies around the world. A reconfiguration of how education is structurally organised is suggested: from one field with educational marginalia to multiple equal paradigms of practice. The rise of technology is seen as a key factor in a reconfigured educational studies and increased discovery of EHE as option.

K-12 Online Learning has exponentially grown in the last 15 years. An estimated 1.2 million K-12 students took online classes last year; 45 states currently have some form of online learning at the state-level; and some states mandate some sort of online experience prior to high school graduation. Given its dramatic growth and ubiquity in K-12 schooling, it is critical that administrators learn more about K-12 schooling and the role it may play in their district or building. Unfortunately, there is not one single model of K-12 online schooling. Therefore, there is not one suggested set of recommendations, learnings, or best practices administrators should pay attention to. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce administrators to some of the more generic models of K-12 virtual schooling, the new roles that are created with this innovative form of teaching and learning, and any research that might impact decision-making at the building or district levels.

What Works in K–12 Online Learning provides an overview of online teaching and learning practices. Based on extensive experience and research, chapters cover a spectrum of topics including virtual course development, online learning in elementary classrooms, instructional assessment and differentiating online instruction, professional development for teachers of virtual courses, and the challenges that virtual schools will face.

Depending on the reference, the practice of K-12 online learning began sometime between 1991 and 1996. Yet almost three decades later, there is still little research to describe the K-12 online learning student experience, which has resulted in a lack of understanding of the actual instructional model, nature of the curriculum, and type and amount of support employed by K-12 online learning programs. Further, much of the available research is atheoretical, methodologically questionable, contextually limited, and overgeneralized. All these factors make the K-12 online learning research that does exist of little value in guiding practice. This manuscript examines the maturity of research in the field of K-12 online learning, with the goal of providing researchers with meaningful impact on future practice.

Dependiendo de la referencia, la práctica del aprendizaje en línea de K-12 comenzó en algún momento entre 1991 y 1996. Sin embargo, casi tres décadas después, todavía hay poca investigación para describir la experiencia de los estudiantes de aprendizaje en línea de K-12, que ha resultado en una falta de comprensión del modelo de instrucción real, la naturaleza del plan de estudios y el tipo y la cantidad de apoyo empleado por los programas de aprendizaje en línea K-12. Además, gran parte de la investigación disponible es teórica, metodológicamente cuestionable, contextualmente limitada y sobregeneralizada. Todos estos factores hacen que la investigación de aprendizaje en línea K-12 que existe sea de poco valor para guiar la práctica. Este manuscrito examina la madurez de la investigación en el campo del aprendizaje en línea en K-12, con el objetivo de proporcionar a los investigadores un impacto significativo en la práctica futura

In this literature review, the authors examined three key areas that were chosen as relevant to the challenges faced by small rural schools, and collaborative practice between schools working in virtual learning environments in New Zealand. The first area was rural education, where definitions of rurality and the demographics and characteristics of small rural New Zealand schools were described, and the challenges and innovations in rural school setting were explored. The second area was collaborative practice, where features of effective collaboration were discussed as is the professional practice and theory that underpins collaboration across school networks. Finally, the third area was virtual learning, which was defined and described, along with the benefits and challenges of learning in virtual environments, and the growth of networked learning communities in New Zealand was chronicled. A comprehensive scope of the current New Zealand education landscape was included to provide the context in which this review resides.

K-12 online learning is growing in Canada and elsewhere in the world. However, the vast majority of literature is focused on practitioners and not on systematic inquiry. Even the limited published research has largely excluded the perspectives of students engaged in virtual schooling. This study examines secondary student perceptions of components of virtual schooling that were beneficial and challenging.
Students largely enjoyed their virtual school courses and found the synchronous classes, the technology, and the ability to control their own learning as positive aspects of their experience.
Students also found the lack of a sense of community, working during their asynchronous class time, and the asynchronous course content to be challenging; and made suggestions for improvement to each, along with advice to future virtual school students.

There is a shift occurring in education systems around the world, which could change the face of education as we have known it through blended and online learning. The purpose of this chapter is to describe the current e-learning initiatives and projects for students in secondary schools in Singapore. An overview of the Singapore education system, along with a more in depth look at the current e-Learning initiatives and how they evolved are shared. Finally, a specific look at how e-learning has been implemented within Singapore’s secondary schools is described. The research in this chapter looked at both the policy and practices happening within Singapore’s education system.

Many involved with the practice or study of K-12 online and blended learning are familiar with the American context. It surrounds us in the media and published research. However, online and blended learning is occurring in meaningful ways to address specific K-12 student needs all around the globe. There are several areas where the international practice is consistent with what we know about the United States (e.g., similar evolutions, early initiatives were government-funded, many of the labels are similar). At the same time, there are some key differences internationally (e.g., the prevalence of legacy forms of distance education, a lack of online learning below the secondary level, and blended learning being seen as a form of technology integration). While far less is known about K-12 online and blended learning in international contexts, programs in these jurisdictions are just as keen to tell their own success stories and undertake cyclic research to improve the design, delivery and facilitation of their programs.

Over the last five years, the National Education Policy Center has published a Virtual Schools in the U.S.: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence report. As an extension of the data collected for the Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2017 report (Molnar et al. 2017), the lead authors produced case studies for five states (i.e., Ohio, Wisconsin, Idaho, Washington, and Michigan). The goal of these case studies was to describe the enrollment, characteristics, and performance of virtual and blended schools in that state over the previous year; discuss the research related to the virtual and blended school characteristics and outcomes, as well as the legislative activities; and examine the legislation and policies that have been introduced (and enacted) over the past two years.

These five case studies reveal a great degree of consistency between the different states. For example, most of the full-time virtual schools in each of the five states were independent (i.e., not run by EMOs). However, the vast majority of students attend a virtual school that is operated by an EMO. Virtual schools also had far more students for each teacher compared to traditional public schools. Further, virtual school students underperformed compared to their traditional public school counterparts. In addition to the similarities across the cases, when it came to student enrollment, student characteristics, and student performance, with the exception of Michigan there was a general lack of empirical research related to full-time virtual schools (and almost no research related to blended schools). Finally, with the exception of Idaho, there was also a general lack of legislative activity over the two years reviewed for this report.

Given that each of these five case studies was generated using data from the latest Virtual Schools in the U.S.: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence report, it is important to examine the recommendations made by Molnar et al. (2017) based on the national data. However, based on the data from these five individual states, we recommend the following.

- Policymakers need to slow or stop the growth in the number of virtual schools and the size of their enrollments until the reasons for their relatively poor performance have been identified and addressed. They should prioritize understanding why virtual schools perform poorly under a college- and career-ready accountability system and how their performance can be improved prior to expansion.

- Policymakers need to create long-term programs to support independent research on and evaluation of virtual and blended schooling.

- Policymakers need to develop new funding formulas based on the actual costs of operating virtual schools and new accountability structures for virtual schools, including guidelines and governance mechanisms to ensure that virtual schools do not prioritize profit over student performance. Further policymakers need to assess the contributions of various providers to student achievement, and close virtual schools and programs that do not contribute to student growth.

- Policymakers need to define certification training and relevant teacher licensure requirements specific to teaching responsibilities in virtual schools, require research-based professional development to promote effective online teaching models, and work with emerging research to develop valid and comprehensive teacher evaluation rubrics that are specific to online teaching.

Online learning at the K-12 level is growing exponentially. Students learning in supplemental virtual schools and full-time cyber schools, using a variety of delivery models that include and sometimes combine independent, asynchronous, and synchronous instruction, in almost every state in the US. In some instances the knowledge, skills, and abilities required by teachers in this technology-mediated environment is consistent with what they learned about face-to-face teaching in their teacher education programs, while in many instances, the two are quite different. Presently the lack of empirical research into effective K-12 online teaching limits teacher education programs. However, teacher education programs still need to better prepare pre-service and in-service teachers to design, deliver, and support students engaged virtual schooling

While the use of distance and online learning at the K-12 level of growing exponentially, the availability of empirical evidence to help guide this growth is severely lacking. The author of this chapter provides an overview of the nature of K-12 distance and online learning today and a critical examination of the literature and – lack of research – supporting its use. The author further describes some of the methodological issues surround the limited among of existing research, and calls for researchers in this field to adopt practices that have been employed by their colleagues investigating adult populations over the past decades.

Educators have been quick to spot the enormous potential afforded by virtual worlds for situated and authentic learning, practising tasks with potentially serious consequences in the real world and for bringing geographically dispersed faculty and students together in the same space (Gee, 2007; Johnson and Levine, 2008). Though this potential has largely been realised, it generally isn't without cost in terms of lack of institutional buy-in, steep learning curves for all participants, and lack of a sound theoretical framework to support learning ...

As proponents continue to make the case that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education, full-time virtual schools have attracted a great deal of attention. Advocates contend that this potential for individualization allows virtual schools to promote greater student achievement than can be realized in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. NEPC researchers found, however, that the research evidence does not support this claim.

This three-part brief provides disinterested scholarly analyses of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; reviews the relevant available research related to virtual school practices; provides an overview of recent state legislative efforts to craft virtual schools policy; and offers policy recommendations based on the available evidence.

This chapter provides an overview of the state of K-12 online, blended and distance education, or e-learning, in Canada. A summary of the history of K-12 e-learning and research is provided along with enrolment, current policy and legislation. A description of programs is provided along with an overview of practitioner-based organizations and consortia that have evolved to support e-learning programs in the country. A discussion of issues in K-12 e-learning and research are included and the chapter’s conclusion calls for more research and sharing of innovative practices emerging in Canada.

Only weeks before the 2019 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association (AERA) was held in Toronto, Ontario, the provincial government announced a major reform of education for that province entitled Education that Works for You – Modernizing Classrooms. From an e-learning perspective the proposal called for a centralization of e-learning, a graduation requirement of four e-learning courses, and increase the class size limit for e-learning courses to 35 students. The AERA call for submissions for the 2020 meeting issued a challenge for scholars to ‘connect with organizational leaders to examine collaboratively continuing educational problems... [and] programmatically engaging with educational organizations.’  This article accepts that challenge and describes a collaboration between scholars and a pan-Canadian organization to examine the research behind each of these proposed e-learning changes.

While the use of distance and online learning had been used for over a century in the K-12 setting (including in isolated ways during previous pandemics and natural disasters), the complete worldwide closure of schools focused attention on the use of distance and online tools and content to provide continuity of learning in a remote context. The way in which both practitioners and scholars make sense of what has occurred over the past 18 months, and what is likely to continue into the future, will impact both regular schooling and how we prepare for future crisis. This article explores this pandemic pedagogy, with a goal of situating the events since March 2020 within the broader field and providing guidance on a path forward.

The community of K–12 education has seen explosive growth over the last decade in distance
learning programs, defined as learning experiences in which students and instructors are
separated by space and/or time. While elementary and secondary students have learned through
the use of electronic distance learning systems since the 1930s, the development of online
distance learning schools is a relatively new phenomenon. Online virtual schools may be ideally
suited to meet the needs of stakeholders calling for school choice, high school reform, and
workforce preparation in 21st century skills. The growth in the numbers of students learning
online and the importance of online learning as a solution to educational challenges has increased
the need to study more closely the factors that effect student learning in virtual schooling
environments. This meta-analysis is a statistical review of 116 effect sizes from 14 webdelivered
K–12 distance education programs studied between 1999 and 2004. The analysis
shows that distance education can have the same effect on measures of student academic
achievement when compared to traditional instruction. The study-weighted mean effect size
across all outcomes was -0.028 with a 95 percent confidence interval from 0.060 to -0.116,
indicating no significant difference in performance between students who participated in online
programs and those who were taught in face-to-face classrooms. No factors were found to be
related to significant positive or negative effects. The factors that were tested included academic
content area, grade level of the students, role of the distance learning program, role of the
instructor, length of the program, type of school, frequency of the distance learning experience,
pacing of instruction, timing of instruction, instructor preparation and experience in distance
education, and the setting of the students.

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed virtual schooling to the forefront of the national educational landscape. Long-time proponents of this technology quickly positioned digital programs and platforms as the obvious solution for schools that had to close buildings to avoid transmitting the virus.

The pandemic exacerbated a trend that NEPC virtual schools’ reports have documented since 2013. While it is clear that virtual schools—particularly for-profit virtual schools—are expanding rapidly, there remains little research evidence to support or justify the expansion. Moreover, there is little policymaking at the state level adequate to the task of ensuring the quality of education that virtual school students receive.

Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2021 provides scholarly analyses of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; reviews the relevant available research related to virtual school practices; provides an overview of recent state legislative efforts to craft virtual school policy; and offers policy recommendations based on the available evidence.