Ohio needs competition and high standards to elevate its digital learning marketplace

One could argue that 2011 has been the year of “digital learning” across America but in fact digital learning has been big business in Ohio for more than a decade. Lessons from that experience should inform the Buckeye State’s approach to new digital learning opportunities that are generating excitement and optimism.

In September, the White House announced its “Digital Promise” campaign, while a number of states have been embracing initiatives and campaigns in this realm, aided and encouraged by the Digital Learning Council, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, and Fordham itself (via our “Creating Sound Policy for Digital Learning” series.)

Ohio’s biennial budget launched the Digital Learning Task Force charged with ensuring that the state’s “legislative environment is conducive to and supportive of the educators and digital innovators at the heart of this transformation.” There have been many conferences this year on fresh digital-learning possibilities and prominent innovators in this field – people like Sal Kahn, Tom Vander Ark, John Chubb, Rick Hess, Susan Patrick, and John Danner—have been much in demand to offer insights and share possibilities with Ohioans. 

Education visionary Paul Hill captured the opportunities when he wrote for Fordham:

Capacities like these open up vast possibilities for improved instructional delivery. Students who do not want to attend school can access entirely self-managed online learning. Self-managed ‘virtual’ schools can match a student’s interests, learning rate, and even work schedule. Students can also take advantage of blended or hybrid schooling that uses computer-based and online resources to deliver some coursework while also providing in-person teacher-student interaction, and relying on teachers to act as diagnosticians and mentors. These ‘blended’ schools can also individualize instruction while assuring parents that a responsible adult is keeping an eye on their children.

Digital learning opportunities offer ways to help teachers and parents do a better job of educating children AND at less cost.

But those promises have been on the table for a long time. Indeed, it was this dual promise that encouraged lawmakers in Ohio and other states to birth statewide e-schools in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The best known of these is the Florida Virtual School, which now educates over 120,000 students from across Florida and 49 other states.

Ohio took a different approach than Florida. Instead of a single statewide e-school, it created a marketplace of e-schools. That sector is now made up of 27 on-line schools serving some 33,000 students. Most of them are small charter schools, authorized by their districts and focused on drop-out recovery. But five large e-schools dominate Ohio’s e-school marketplace with more than 75 percent of the students enrolled. Because the state currently has a moratorium on new e-schools that isn’t set to be lifted until 2013, this quintet is likely to continue dominating Ohio’s e-school market for students and the funding that follows them for at least the next two school years. 

Table 1 lists Ohio’s big five e-schools by enrollment and state funding in 2010-11.

Table 1: Ohio’s Big Five E-Schools by 2010-11 enrollment and state funding

Source: Ohio Department of Education: Final Received for FY11

 Ohio Department of Education: Interactive Local Report Card

 If all 33,000 children currently enrolled in e-schools in Ohio were in one school district it would make up the state’s third largest school district just after Columbus and Cleveland. The for-profit ECOT is itself the state’s 15^th largest school district while the for-profit Ohio Virtual Academy is 19^th. As Table 2 below shows, when it comes to per pupil expenditures both ECOT and the Ohio Virtual Academy spend far less than do traditional school districts. In fact, their per pupil expenditures are about half of what urban districts like Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati spend.

Table 2: Ohio’s 20 Largest School Districts by enrollment in 2010-11 with Per Pupil Expenditure and Academic Designation

Source: Ohio Department of Education: Interactive Local Report Card

Ohio Department of Education: 2011 District Preliminary Ranking List.

E-schools have the obvious advantages of not having to pay for buildings and all of the associated maintenance expenses. Nor do they have to pay for the daily busing of students or for lunches and security. Done well, e-schools can plow their spare resources into things like content, technology, and expert supplemental teaching. Despite their promise, however, Ohio’s e-school performance has been mixed. Some do well on the state’s academic measures year after year while others have struggled to perform any better than moribund district schools long criticized for failing students.

As they’ve grown and profited, e-schools have naturally become adept at politics. E-schools, like district-centered teacher unions and professional associations, fight hard for their self interest (see yesterday’s Washington Post story on this subject.) In Ohio, for example, William Lager, ECOT’s founder and CEO of Altair Learning Management, has donated more than $1 million to candidates (in both parties) in the last decade. Ask any politically astute person in Columbus and they will tell you that e-schools are now formidable political players in Ohio’s education and budgetary debates, and that their influence goes beyond just issues of digital learning.

The fact is that e-schools in Ohio have become big business. This has allowed them to compete effectively against other major education players like teacher unions, the school board association, and other established interest groups. Unfortunately, they also appear at times—like so many other one-time-pioneers-turned-vested-interest—far keener to protect their own turf, jobs, and money, than they are in seeding and pushing a second wave of digital learning reforms. 

Ohio’s e-school space doesn’t need protectionism. It needs competition matched with high standards for academic performance. Ohio, like other states, is on the cusp of a second wave of digital learning opportunities and innovations, if these efforts are given the encouragement and space to operate and flourish. For this to happen, Ohio needs to proceed with opening up its market to quality outside digital providers while also drafting or incorporating high quality performance standards for all– current and future – digital learning programs. If Ohio gets this balance right it could become the nation’s leader in creating a high-performing digital learning environment for the state’s children in coming years and decades.