Connections Education has heard the mounting criticism of full-time online charter schools, including calls for reform from prominent pro-school-choice organizations.
The company is not happy.
鈥淐andidly, it feels like we鈥檙e being thrown out of a lifeboat,鈥� Steven Guttentag, the president and co-founder of Connections, said in an interview with 澳门跑狗论坛. 鈥淪ome of these groups are clearly making a political decision to sacrifice virtual schools and for-profit education management organizations.鈥�
A division of the global publishing giant Pearson, Connections Education last school year helped run 25 full-time virtual schools, including 16 charters. Together, those 鈥減artner鈥� schools served an average of more than 54,000 students across 25 states.
Company officials say the schools often perform comparably with traditional schools in the same states, but they acknowledge that Connections-supported cyber charters aren鈥檛 immune from the academic woes that have plagued the sector, particularly when it comes to math. And while many for-profit cyber operators have been dogged by reports of corruption or mismanagement, Connections has mostly avoided negative headlines.
The reality of cyber charters is much more nuanced than the public discussion now underway, company officials maintain.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 see a backlash from families and students,鈥� said Connections鈥� senior vice president of school operations, Peter Robertson. 鈥淭hey view this as a lifesaver.鈥�
Addressing Student Attendance, Engagement
During a months-long investigation of cyber charters, 澳门跑狗论坛
spoke extensively with senior Connections officials. The goal was to understand the troubled sector from the perspective of the country鈥檚 second-largest operator of full-time virtual schools. The conversations touched on issues related to academic performance, for-profit management, the nation鈥檚 patchwork regulatory environment for such schools, and the role of private lobbying in the cyber sector鈥檚 continued growth.
But the primary focus was on how Connections is addressing sector-wide challenges related to student attendance and engagement.
That鈥檚 because state regulators and investigative journalists have in recent months begun uncovering disconcerting information about how infrequently students in some full-time online charters log in, use their schools鈥� learning software, and complete their lessons and assignments.
The result is that cybers as a whole function as a black box: Well over a billion taxpayer dollars go in to the sector each year, and overwhelmingly poor results come out. But the public continues to have limited visibility into the most basic aspects of how the schools operate.
Part of the challenge is that few states require cybers to report nuts-and-bolts information on student logins, software usage, and lesson and course completion.
Exactly what types of data should be made public remains a source of contention.
But Connections officials express agreement with cyber-charter critics on one thing: Trying to apply brick-and-mortar accountability models to virtual schools ends up creating headaches for everyone.
鈥淲e report the data that states ask for,鈥� said Robertson, the company鈥檚 school operations chief. 鈥淓ven if it doesn鈥檛 make sense.鈥�
How the Company Measures Success
A big problem, Connections officials say, is that few people have bothered to ask cyber school leaders and operators how they are thinking about student attendance and engagement.
Matt Wicks, the company鈥檚 vice president of data analysis and policy, said the first thing to understand is that you might not know as much as you think about attendance in a regular neighborhood school.
For example: Does a student鈥檚 physical presence inside a brick-and-mortar classroom really indicate that he or she is engaged and learning?
The second point Connections officials make is that there鈥檚 not yet any consensus on which state-level approach to tracking online attendance and engagement is best.
Internally, the company has developed its own system, in addition to what it is required to report in each state.
In response to a request from 澳门跑狗论坛, the company provided data on how the 25 schools it supports perform on Connections鈥� own metrics related to attendance and engagement.
Not included in the information the company provided: the percentage of students at full-time online Connections schools who log in each day or week.
Company officials claimed logins are not a metric they regularly monitor. In part, they said, that鈥檚 because they don鈥檛 believe it鈥檚 useful information for teachers and administrators. There are also technical challenges, they said, as well as some anxiety about how regulators might use such information.
On attendance, Connections schools start by asking each student鈥檚 鈥渓earning coach,鈥� typically a parent, to log the number of hours the child spends on schoolwork each day. Last school year, coaches across the Connections network reported an average of just over five instructional hours per day for their children, according to data provided by the company.
Such self-reported, manually entered information is generally regarded as less reliable than logs generated by software programs themselves, which the company did not provide.
When questioned about how meaningful self-reported attendance data are, Connections officials pointed to the company鈥檚 internal verification system, through which teachers can monitor whether the number of instructional hours logged is consistent with the number of lessons students have actually completed.
But just 2 percent of self-reported attendance records were adjusted as a result of that verification process last school year, according to the company鈥檚 data.
Ultimately, Connections calculates an overall attendance rate by dividing the total number of instructional hours logged at a given school (after adjustments) by the minimum number of instructional hours required in that state.
On this internal metric, Connections-supported schools frequently report monthly attendance rates well over 100 percent.
Prioritizing the 鈥楶articipation鈥� Metric
Even Connections officials say they don鈥檛 put much stock in those figures.
Instead, they鈥檙e more concerned with a metric they call 鈥減articipation.鈥� It鈥檚 determined by comparing the number of lessons a student has actually completed with the number of lessons he or she should have completed at a given point in time.
Across Connections-supported schools, reported monthly participation rates range from a low of 83 percent to a high of 144 percent. A rate greater than 100 percent would indicate that students are working ahead, which tends to happen early in the school year, company officials said.
While this metric may be useful for internal decisionmaking, it鈥檚 difficult to use such information to glean much about the overall effectiveness of Connections-supported schools. That鈥檚 because the figures provided by the company only include active students who have not withdrawn or dropped out.
And the third big metric used internally by the company is related to its system for identifying and intervening with students who have fallen behind.
The specifics vary from state to state and school to school. But generally speaking, Connections-supported schools look at a variety of factors, from attendance to participation to how recently each student interacted with a teacher. Based on those data, students are placed in one of three status levels: 鈥渙n track,鈥� 鈥渁pproaching alarm,鈥� or 鈥渁larm.鈥�
Students in the middle tier are targeted with supports and interventions, while students in 鈥渁larm鈥� may face sanctions, including possible truancy proceedings.
Across all Connections-supported cyber schools, about 63 percent of students are 鈥渙n track,鈥� about 17 percent are in 鈥渁pproaching alarm,鈥� and about 18 percent are in 鈥渁larm,鈥� according to data provided by the company. (The remaining 2 percent of students are considered 鈥渆xempt鈥� from the escalation criteria, generally in accordance with an individualized education program.)
The company did not identify individual schools in the data it provided.
Overall, Robertson said, keeping students engaged is a 鈥渃onstant challenge.鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e concerned with anything less than 100 percent,鈥� he said.
鈥榃e Need to Be Accountable鈥�
It seems likely that the policy debates surrounding full-time online charters will continue to gather steam.
In October 2015, for example, Stanford University鈥檚 Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Mathematica Policy Research, and the Center for Reinventing Public Education released a and big management challenges across the sector.
This past summer, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, and 50CAN all issued of the sector.
And the debate over cyber attendance continues to make headlines in Ohio, where the state education department is expected to demand . State officials say audits of the schools鈥� login and software-usage records found they had been paid for thousands of children who did not complete enough work to be considered full-time students. Leaders from the schools are expected to press their case via court appeals. Connections officials say they are 鈥渟crambling鈥� to prepare for a similar audit of the 3,500-student Ohio Connections Academy later this year.
On all fronts, the company says it hopes that lawmakers, policymakers, regulators, researchers, and news outlets will seek the opinions of virtual schools and virtual school operators before officials make new policy.
The devil, said Connections President Steven Guttentag, will inevitably be in the details.
But the bottom line seems increasingly clear.
鈥淪chools should only get paid for students we鈥檙e actively working with,鈥� Guttentag said. 鈥淭here is no argument that we need to be accountable.鈥�
Photo: Connections Education president and co-founder Steven Guttentag, courtesy Connections Education.
Image: Student Engagement at Connections Education-supported partner schools, courtesy Connections Education.
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