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We need to be smart about cyber schools
House vote near on uncapping cyber charters
Stop SB 619 and put kids ahead of profits!

Dear Friends,

You've heard from us about "cyber" charters before, but you may not know where things stand today. Senate bill 619 would remove nearly all limits on the size of entirely online "cyber" charter schools in Michigan. Fully online K-12 charter schools have only been in operation here for a year and a half, and the jury is still out on their performance. The experience of other states, which have had online charters for longer, is not promising. (See sidebar.)

On top of that, these schools currently receive the same per-pupil funding as other, physical, public schools, even though their expenses are much lower. The major operators of these schools are private, for-profit, companies whose first priority is to their investors.

Why should we turn our children into a business opportunity?

Current Michigan law calls for a progress report on the two experimental cyber schools at the end of this year. The report will analyze both their performance and detail their true expenses. This approach is sensible and fiscally prudent. Why toss it all aside?

Take action now to put the brakes on this bill! Contact your State Representative today!
To call your Representative, click here.
To send a message to your Representative, click here.

When it emerged from committee, proponents made some changes that they described as compromises: the bill would keep some limits on the number of online charter schools and how many students they can enroll. But guess what? The limit would eventually go up to 30 schools (from the current 2), and each one would be "limited" to about 33,000 students! This is a limit? No, and it's not a compromise, either. Read our coverage of the bill here.

Cyber school proponents argue that many families want access to these schools. Perhaps, but it can't be because of their track record, because they don't have one in Michigan and the stories from other states are hair-raising. How, precisely, do you do online kindergarten? How do you ensure kids are making progress? Since these cyber charters require "learning coaches" at home for students, who do most of the actual teaching, why should the online company pocket the entire state funding?

Sure, online learning is here to stay, and "blended" programs offered by our established local public schools can meet the needs of many students who would have difficulty taking traditional classes. Why pull resources away from our proven, and community-governed, local public schools just to pad the bottom line of the latest fad growth stock?

Please contact your State Representative today and ask them to shut down SB619! Let's focus on making sure our local schools have what they need to do right by our children!

Steven Norton
Executive Director
Michigan Parents for Schools
Shouldn't we be paying close attention to the experience of other states? Investigative reports from Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania and elsewhere raise serious concerns with the major online charter chains. Here are the findings from an investigative report in Colorado, involving some schools run by the same firms (K12, Inc. and Connections Academy) who currently operate in Michigan:
  • Half the online students wind up leaving within a year. When they do, they're often further behind academically than when they started.
  • Online schools produce three times as many dropouts as they do graduates. One of every eight online students drops out of school permanently -- a rate four times the state average.
  • Millions of dollars are going to virtual schools for students who no longer attend online classes.
  • The churn of students in and out of online schools is putting pressure on brick-and-mortar schools, which then must find money in their budgets to educate students who come from online schools mid-year.
What about the idea that cyber schools work mostly with drop-outs or struggling students? The report found: 

...[A]nalysis of state data shows that most online school students do not appear to be at-risk students. Only about 120 students of the more than 10,000 entering online programs last year were identified as previous dropouts returning to school, and only 290 entered online schools after spending the prior year in an alternative school for troubled youth.

In addition, most are not struggling academically when they leave their traditional schools. Among the 2,400 online students who had taken a state standardized reading test in a brick-and-motor school the year before, the analysis showed that more than half had scored proficient or better.

The analysis also looked at dropouts -- those students who leave school permanently. In Colorado's online schools, dropouts outnumber graduates by three to one. That's the reverse of the statewide average, where graduates outnumber dropouts by three to one. 

Sobering findings, which Michigan would do well to consider seriously. You can read the full report on the Education News Colorado web site; our thanks to Julie Mack and the Kalamazoo Gazette for bringing this to the attention of Michigan citizens. For more reports on cyber charter schools, see the list we included with our committee testimony here.