Editor’s Note: Last week, Education Sector released On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service, which outlines how school inspections have become part of the accountability system in England. Would such a system work in the U.S.? We asked a variety of education experts to weigh in with their thoughts. We’ll share them throughout the week, and we encourage you to share your reactions as weContinue Reading »

Editor’s Note: Last week, Education Sector released On Her Majesty’s School Inspection Service, which outlines how school inspections have become part of the accountability system in England. Would such a system work in the U.S.? We asked a variety of education experts to weigh in with their thoughts. We’ll share them throughout the week, and we encourage you to share your reactions as well.Continue Reading »

The Costs of Online Learning, the latest in Fordham’s digital learning policy series, tackles the tricky question of per-pupil spending. And while the paper cannot offer definitive answers for policymakers and school leaders, it does provide a helpful primer on the overall economics of online and blended learning.

The top-line findings, that blended learning models cost an estimated $8,9Continue Reading »

Sunday’s New York Times story broke the news that Stanford University, one of the world’s most prestigious research institutions, is putting its brand squarely behind a full-time, degree-granting online high school program. It’s just one more reason to set aside the silly debate about whether online education can possibly be effective for high school students.

Stanford&Continue Reading »

The Nation’s recent online learning expose, How Online Learning Companies Bought America’s Schools, in its zeal to connect various dots into a narrative of a corporate public education takeover, makes critical errors. It falsely equates K-12 online learning with privatization, leading to an incomplete and flawed political analysis. More importantly though, the article makes a credibContinue Reading »

In addition to the new Fordham reports that I reviewed yesterday, here’s what I’ve been reading/thinking about:

Teachers in the Age of Digital Instruction and School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era, two new working papers in the Fordham Institute’s series on digital learning, are welcome additions to the often narrow debates around online learning.

“Teachers,” written by Public Impact’s Bryan and Emily Hassel, opens with an important and refreshing perspective: “tContinue Reading »

Amidst all of the reporting in Education News Colorado’s excellent three-part investigative series on Colorado’s largest full-time online learning programs, it was Laura Johnson’s story that struck me:

In the tiny Florence School District outside Pueblo, Johnson was one of 39 students who left Florence High School last year to sign up for online classes with GOAL AcContinue Reading »

In the first day of our check-in on Ohio’s e-schools, we saw how increases in enrollment were driven by only four statewide schools. Yesterday, we saw that about a third of all students at Ohio’s e-schools had been enrolled for under a year – a figure that calls attention to the challenge of measuring e-school accountability. But the majority of Ohio’s rated e-schools were mediocre Continue Reading »

Yesterday, we examined the 2010-11 enrollment numbers for Ohio’s e-schools and uncovered some curious trends. While the e-school sector as a whole experienced its largest post-moratorium increase, that growth was driven by only four statewide schools. Today, we revisit performance and student mobility and their relationship to e-school enrollment.

Ohio performance indicators for 2010-11 Continue Reading »