News and reports roundup
There’s been quite a bit of digital learning in the news recently. This post highlights and comments on a few articles and issues that may be of interest but don’t call for a fuller treatment.
Funding online students
Let’s start with a simple note for the policy wonks: the Education Commission of the States has a new policy brief on how students are counted for funding purposes. It explores how online students are funded on page six. The brief is a useful primer on all sorts of student count and funding issues, which provides the baseline for any discussions about how funding systems should address online students.
Education meets the metaverse
It’s been four months since Facebook announced its rebranding, catapulting “the metaverse” into myriad news stories—which means we’re right on schedule for the articles about how the metaverse is going to transform education.
Newsflash: the metaverse is not going to transform education—not in the foreseeable future, anyway. Why am I so sure? Because no technology has ever transformed education quickly, and the technologies that take hold in education tend to be relatively simple, which the metaverse is not.
To be fair, much of the article from Brookings is an exploration of how tech developers should be thinking about the nexus of technology and education. But the title and opening paragraphs risk spurring the hype cycle, especially as the hyping types don’t usually read past the first page.
UNICEF study touts digital learning
Maybe I was still annoyed by the metaverse article, but as I was reading Digital Learning for Every Child: Closing the Gaps for an Inclusive and Prosperous Future I kept wondering when I was going to get to something useful. But I was fooled by the unfulfilled promise of the title, because the report never makes a compelling argument for why digital learning is valuable.
You might wonder, then, why am I mentioning it? The first reason is this report is representative of a line of thinking that goes something like this:
We need digital learning
Why???? (unstated)
Because. Now let’s talk about closing the digital divide.
It’s a bit like the “profit” scene in South Park.
In addition, the digital divide is a serious concern, especially on a global scale as this report addresses. But a report at the level of UNICEF should put some thought into explaining why, including addressing the OECD study saying that computers don’t make a difference in education.
Moving on to a topic that I don’t fully understand, but probably should….
Cybersecurity in education has received quite a bit of recent attention, including:
These articles and others mostly discuss cyberattacks on mainstream school districts, which makes sense given that most districts have critical technology infrastructure and are larger than most online and hybrid schools. But I wonder if online and hybrid schools are paying as much attention as is warranted given that a cyberattack would be completely crippling. My guess is that the major providers are, but perhaps the smaller online schools are not.
On a related note, the tech director of a state virtual school stopped by as DLAC was wrapping up to suggest that we add more sessions that would be of interest to the tech directors of online and hybrid schools, supplemental course providers, and so forth. Such topics have not been our focus, but if of interest please let me know!
Horry County (VA) dropping its online school, for now at least
We know that many districts opened an online school for the first time, or greatly expanded existing online schools, in the past year. It’s not a surprise that some of those districts haven’t experienced success, but it’s perhaps a surprise that the first articles I’ve seen on this topic have been from an experienced district—Horry County. Two articles describe how Horry considered dropping its online school, and then went ahead with the closure decision.
The key reason: “41% of high school students in virtual learning were failing one or more classes,” compared to 22% of students in physical schools.
Advocates for keeping the online school open argued that taking away the online option for the 60% of students who are passing didn’t make sense.
The key question, unanswered in the articles, is whether anyone is tracking whether the students in online schools are representative of the students across the district, or are disproportionally students who were not doing well in school regardless of modality. This is, of course, the question that has launched seemingly endless debates in print and conference panels.
Seeing the news that a district is ending its online school isn’t a surprise; in fact, it’s more surprising that I’m not seeing more of these. Articles about the growth of district-run online schools are still far more common in my news feeds.
Have you seen a worthwhile article or report that we should add to a future blog post? Let us know by emailing us at dlc@evergreenedgroup.com.