Four school districts on Florida’s east coast are joining with Indian River State College and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the world's largest publisher of educational materials, to form a regional virtual school to compete with the Florida Virtual School (FLVS). Florida recently passed a law requiring every student to pass an online course to graduate and Florida districts are worried they’ll lose revenue if students meet this requirement by taking FLVS courses. We want “to keep the resources within the region,” said St. Lucie Schools Superintendent Michael Lannon.
After years of trying to protect their market share by denying parents choices, Florida school districts are increasingly acknowledging that parental choice is the new normal and they’ll need to improve their programs if they’re going to keep parents in district schools. Hopefully this greater emphasis on customer satisfaction will benefit students, educators, taxpayers and parents.
While we don't typically cover higher education, the latest announcement from U.S. News & World Report that the publication will begin to collect data from all online bachelor's and five master's degree level education programs in the United States does reflect the growing appetite for information on this burgeoning form of education delivery. Below is an excerpt from a letter U.S. News editor Brian Kelly sent to college presidents to inform them of his project:
Dear ________,
I'd like to ask for your help. Later this year, U.S.News & World Report will be publishing an expanded directory of online education programs with more detailed information including rankings and other searchable data. With the rapid growth of online programs in higher education, prospective students are asking for more, and more useful, data to make informed choices. We are creating a site that will bring the same quality of information to online consumers, and the same opportunity for schools to connect with those students, that we've brought to brick and mortar institutions over the last three decades. I'd like to make sure that we're able to represent your school with the most accurate, updated information.
A Florida House committee was treated Tuesday to a high-level discussion of digital learning that included the likes of former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise and national education reformer Tom Vander Ark, but the showstopper came from a different duo with a jaw-dropping accord. The policy director for the nation’s leading public virtual school and the president of a leading private virtual education company told lawmakers that competition is the best way to give students new online opportunities.
No, we’re not making this up.
Sitting around that committee room table were Holly Sagues, chief policy officer for Florida Virtual School, and Barbara Dreyer, president and CEO of Connections Academy. Florida Virtual is far and away the nation’s most successful public virtual school, whose 213,926 courses last year represented three times the rate of the next closest state. Dreyer and one of her own private competitors, K-12 Inc., have found common ground with Florida Virtual on a plan that would introduce statewide private providers for all forms of online learning.
They have agreed to a plan that is animated by two basic objectives. First: “To provide students throughout Florida with as many quality online education options as possible and to make those options available to every student regardless of where they live or whether they attend a district school.” Second: “To bring more consistency in the qualifications, funding, and accountability applied to all public and private providers.”
House K-12 Innovation Chairwoman Kelli Stargel is showing clear interest, and substantial legislative groundwork has been laid. Some two dozen online advocates worked collaboratively over the past eight months around those objectives and were able to avoid the acrimony and division that has characterized previous efforts. Their product could make Florida a national model in the arena of online education and includes:
The implications for legislation in this state this year are obvious, but the example being set by the Florida Virtual School is something that deserves its own form of awe. This is an innovative public school that has developed markets in other states and nations, and it is showing a disarming level of institutional confidence. At a time when many public educators are conditioned to see private options as an assault on their turf, Virtual School president and chief executive Julie Young is saying, essentially, bring it on. Maybe her real savvy is simply to make sure they all play by the same rules, but her moxy is something to behold.
