Additional US DOE grant documents, and a clarification on funding online courses
Our last post about the Education Stabilization Fund-Rethink K-12 Education Models mentioned some confusion around how the “coronavirus burden” would be calculated. Since we drafted and published the post, Elizabeth LeBlanc of the Institute for Teaching and Leading directed us to a Coronavirus Burden Table from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. The table appears to account for 20% of the total points that may be awarded to a state based on the scoring rubric, so understanding it is valuable for state agencies who are applying for the grants, and any organizations working with them.
The scoring rubric assigns up to 20 points out of a possible 100 to each state based on this table. Each state is placed into a percentile based on four factors related to broadband access, poverty, COVID-19 cases per capita, and percent of students in rural areas. States in the 81st to 100th percentile are awarded 20 points (the highest possible), states in the lowest percentile receive four out of 20 points, and other states receive eight, 12, or 16 points.
A quick review of the table suggests that many of the states receiving the most “burden” points are in the southeast (Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina) or northeast (Maine, New York, Vermont). States receiving the fewest points tend to be western (Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Washington), with exceptions (Rhode Island).
This scoring would appear to put some states at a significant disadvantage in that they are unable to score higher than 84 out of 100 total possible points even if everything else they submit is highly rated. However, another 20 points are assigned based on "high burden based on factors that the applicant identifies," so there is room for an applicant to show pandemic impact aside from the burden table.
A clarification on course funding
This line from the earlier post appears to have created some confusion:
“If a course choice program was well designed and could overcome political opposition, it could achieve much greater impact at much lower cost to the federal government than a state virtual school, by shifting the way state education dollars are allocated.” (emphasis added)
Although the statement is correct as it was originally written, we probably should have bolded the “cost to the federal government” text in the original as a quick reading might have made it seem that we were saying the course choice programs are a lower cost option to offer online courses to students in physical schools.
In fact, there is no reason to believe that course choice programs are less expensive than online courses offered by state virtual schools or by private providers. As explained in the DLC report on course choice, one of the key elements of course choice programs is that a “significant portion of the student’s public education funding (pro-rated to the per-course amount of funding) flows to the provider of the online course.” This funding is therefore no longer available to the student’s enrolling district. The point of the post was that if the federal government goal was to increase online course options at the lowest cost to the federal government—which would seem in line with the current administration’s goals—then a course choice program would likely be favored. This line of thinking doesn’t touch on a variety of related issues, including course quality, and whether course choice programs have achieved their enrollment goals. Some have, some have not, and for many states the data are not readily available, as explored in much more detail in the report.