Virtual learning

Rita Farin’s children, ages 9 and 11, get excited each fall when their school supplies arrive.

Not just books and pencils, but manipulative objects for geometry, scales for science, clay and paints — and shiny new desktop computers — are among the goodies delivered free of charge to their Tujunga doorstep, signaling it’s back-to-school time.

School for Farin’s children, unlike most of their peers, comes streaming across those new computer monitors, with daily attendance records and assignments, real-time class discussion and a variety of virtual hands-on lessons. There’s much more variety and more opportunities for creativity than was offered in her children’s former overcrowded “brick and mortar” classrooms, Farin says.

“I was really disturbed in my son’s kindergarten class,” she said. “There was so little actual teaching time. Three kids misbehaving distracted the whole class … I didn’t want my son to develop a negative attitude about school.”

Her search for an alternative led her to Simi Valley-based California Virtual Academy, or CAVA, the state’s largest entirely virtual charter school, which opened in 2002 and currently enrolls more than 3,500 elementary and high school students through its five satellite programs up and down the state. One-third of CAVA’s students live in Los Angeles County.

Today Farin works alongside a remote teacher to facilitate her children’s schooling.

The curriculum, supplies and computers — even the high-speed Internet hookup — come courtesy of the state and the four-year-old public charter school.

Depending on which expert you consult, such school programs are among the most cutting-edge or controversial manifestations of educational choice.

While distance education and virtual learning have for many years been integral at the college level, proponents say California’s primary and secondary schools — with few exceptions — are behind the times when it comes to tapping into the Web’s educational possibilities for kindergarten through 12th-graders.

Cyber school

Besides CAVA, there are six entirely virtual charter schools in the state. Additionally the University of California and Stanford University, among other public and private institutions, offer supplemental online grade school and high school classes.

In some of the most innovative virtual school programs, students can view streaming video lectures by the same scientists their peers are reading about in textbooks.

“You can really tailor a program to your children’s interests and abilities,” said Terri MacQuarrie, a California Virtual Academy parent and teacher, who works out of her Pasadena home. That is why MacQuarrie, a mother of three, sought an alternative program. “When my daughter was in third grade, she was two grades behind in math, but reading at a high school level. … I asked her [local public school] teachers, ‘Can we give her more challenging language arts?’ They said no.”

She began home schooling and when CAVA opened she switched her youngest child to the program. She was so impressed with it that she went back to school to earn a California teaching credential and master’s degree and has been teaching for CAVA for a year.

“Every student could benefit from some access to virtual education,” said Moises Torres, director of the University of California College Prep Online program at UC Santa Cruz. While not all kids have the independence, or the parental support, for a full-time virtual- school program, online education fills gaps in the substance and style of teaching for many, said Torres, whose program on Sept. 26 will release the first comprehensive study on the state of virtual education in California.

Torres said he believes cyber schools and supplemental virtual courses could help to decrease California’s high school dropout rate, which hovers today around 40 percent.

“We used to assume you go to school during the day and everyone learns in the same manner. We know [now] that we all learn differently,” Torres said, adding that virtual education caters to various learning styles and attention spans, and could be key for some at-risk populations.

But critics of virtual charter schools — and other such home-study-based charter programs — see them as vehicles for entrepreneurs more interested in profits than pupils.

Luis Huerta, an assistant professor at Columbia University Teachers College who has been studying the charter school movement in California for more than a decade, said that the financial structure of charter schools — which pay the chartering school districts overseeing them on a per-pupil basis for the contract — makes it difficult for objective monitoring of programs to take place.

A co-author of the 2006 report “Cyber and Home School Charter Schools: Adopting Policy to New Forms of Public Schooling,” Huerta added that virtual and non-classroom-based charter schools are nonetheless the most closely regulated of any charter schools in the state.

A new way

The California Legislature supported the creation of charter schools in the early 1990s, which was a low point for the state’s public education system. Proponents saw an opportunity for educators and innovators to set up neighborhood schools with a format of their own design and offer needed alternatives for students. Even some of those opposed to using public funds for what amounted to private education got behind charter schools, considering them the lesser of evils when compared with the voucher programs adopted by some states.

Non-classroom-based charter schools emerged in force soon after charter school legislation was enacted.

“By 1997, the number of charter schools had reached 100 and home-school charter students comprised nearly 50 percent of the 37,000 students enrolled in charter schools,” Huerta’s report found. Today about one-fourth of the state’s roughly 200,000 charter school students are in such non-classroom-based programs.

Virtual charter schools, while relatively new to California, have gained momentum in other parts of the country. The Florida Virtual Academy, for example, enrolls roughly 50,000 students.

Opening a charter school requires the approval of a public school district board, which grants the school a renewable contract, or charter, takes from one percent to three percent of its revenues and provides minimal oversight.

Until 2001, all approved charter schools automatically received the same state funding as regular public schools, roughly $5,000 per pupil.

A series of incidents, however, in which some non-classroom-based charter schools began taking in huge profits from the state based on this per-pupil allowance and the low costs of operating home-based-programs, led to stricter regulation of non-classroom-based programs.

A 2001 law requiring non-classroom-based charter schools to spend at least 80 percent of their budgets on instruction or have their state funding reduced went a long way toward curbing funding disparities.

However, just last month a Department of Education audit of the state’s largest non-classroom-based charter school organization found the company claimed more than $57 million in state funding. According to the Aug. 9 audit report, the heads of Pasadena-based Options for Youth and La Cañada Flintridge-based Opportunities for Learning paid themselves “excessive” salaries. OFY and OFL, headed by husband-and-wife team Joan and John Hall, operate eight schools with more than 40 storefront satellite sites up and down the state serving more than 15,000 junior high and high school students per year.

Left alone

Critics are quick to lump cyber charter schools in with such non-classroom-based charter programs. But all non-classroom-based programs are not equal, say virtual school proponents.

To date, none of the state’s online charter schools have been accused of mishandling state funds, said Keith Edmonds, a consultant for the state Department of Education charter schools division.

And while a draft of Torres’ soon-to-be-released report notes a “lack of comprehensive data and evaluations on the effectiveness of online learning,” it also highlights the potential of cyber school.

According to the study, “Report of Online Learning in California: A Look at Current K-12 Policies and Practices,” “Students are finding increased opportunity, flexibility and conveniences; teachers are discovering a new way to reach students … and administrators are exploring ways to offer a wider range of courses to students and professional development opportunities to teachers. In these ways online learning strengthens public education goals of equity and access for all students.”

As for the social components most educators agree are an essential to the school experience, the report, produced by an “e-learning ad hock committee of educators,” finds: “Quality online courses are highly interactive. ... Teachers interact with students in real time via live video and audio … through discussion boards and email.”

Torres added that such tech-savvy communication more accurately reflects the way today’s youth socialize — through such vehicles as MySpace, chat rooms, email and text messaging.

“We all value socialization,” Torres said. “We have to take into account that the population of kids we’re dealing with is very different [today]. … When we were growing up, you would get one hour on the phone. Now there are multiple sources of communication.”

Other benefits include a shift in the teachers’ roles, from the knowledge source to the “facilitator for further acquisition of knowledge,” Torres said.

MacQuarrie added that cyber schoolteachers tend to be less occupied with daily lesson planning, making them more available to address individual student needs.

Her job with California Virtual involves frequent in-person and phone conferences with individual students and parents, as well as tutoring on an as-needed basis.

MacQuarrie, who teaches kindergarten through eighth-graders, also plans regular outings for groups of CAVA students.

Still, even virtual education enthusiasts caution that such programs are not for everyone. Elementary students require tremendous parental involvement to succeed in cyber school.

For high school students, “online school means a new generation of kids get to learn at their own pace any time,” Torres said, adding that they have to be disciplined enough to buckle down and do the work without the reinforcement of daily teacher contact.

And, Torres said, the state needs to ensure that the virtual programs are of high quality.

To that end, his report, which will go to state and local education departments, makes a series of recommendations, including the creation of a statewide e-learning council to examine the “potential and concerns” of virtual schools.

Additional recommendations in the report include: reviewing online course completion rates and standardized test scores, comparing student achievement between traditional and online school settings, setting minimum standards for communication between teachers and students in online programs, and expanding online course offerings.

“The idea with some [cyber and non-classroom-based] charter schools is that they need to be left on their own to try new things,” said Tom Conry, a middle school teacher and California Teachers Association board member who sits on the state Department of Education Advisory Commission on Charter Schools. “But non-classroom-based charter schools and the districts that grant the charters for these schools need to work closely to make sure students are getting the resources they deserve.”