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Online Schools: An Essential Choice

“Online schools play essential role”
Opinion
by Sarah DeHerrera
Denver Post
December 25, 2011

There are few choices parents will make that are more important than how to educate their children. That is why it is essential that they actually have a choice in the first place.

Online schools should remain a valid option in our public education system.

After my oldest struggled in a traditional school, I explored other public options for my second child. For us, having the option of a public online education has made a world of difference.

Thousands of other Colorado families make use of public online schools for a wide variety of reasons. Their children have been freed from a host of bad influences or obstacles to their ability to excel academically.

Some online students have done poorly on standardized tests and some have dropped out of online schools. That can and does happen in any educational program and, of course, is a major problem at many conventional schools. However, students of online schools in Colorado account for less than 2 percent of the total public school student population. If policymakers are truly concerned about waste, they should audit all public schools.

Currently, Colorado counts the number of students seated in each district on a single date in the fall and then hands out funding for the entire school year based on that snapshot. This contrasts with a majority of states (26) that have modernized their system so that students are counted throughout the school year. Colorado’s overly simplistic approach means that most districts are either over-funded or under-funded at any given moment. The single count day approach also misses the opportunity to offer financial incentives to districts to retain students after the count day.

It’s illogical for any school — whether traditional or online — to get funding for a student who has left. Therefore, Colorado should move away from the antiquated practice of a single count day as a means for determining how much funding a school receives for a year and move toward a model that acknowledges that students move frequently for a variety of reasons. But online schools shouldn’t be treated differently than any other type of school in this regard.

Piling on additional regulation just for online schools — which are already held to the same accountability standards as every other public school — simply increases the administrative burden and limits a school’s ability to serve its students.

Almost all the children who enroll in online schools did so because they were not being served by traditional public schools. Let’s not single out these students, their parents or the educational options that work best for them for unfair and punitive treatment.

Sarah DeHererra of Commerce City is a parent of a Colorado online public school student.