Colorado Springs Gazette (CO)

Our View:  Pull the plug?

Cyberschools need oversight but deserve support

Sunday, December 17, 2006

The rest of the world is going "cyber," thanks to the Internet, so it only makes sense that public schools have, too. Online schools are just one of the new options available to parents who aren't happy with, or can't send their children to, conventional public schools. But Colorado's experiment with cyberschools suffered a potential setback Monday, when a report from the state auditor raised questions about how effective and well-managed they are.

Until some of the problems identified in the report can be addressed, the audit team recommended that a hold be placed on new cyberschools. We think that's an overreaction. And as believers that parents need more education choices, not fewer, we hope these shortcomings won't be used as an excuse to pull the plug on the programs.

There's nothing that would please teachers unions and other elements of the public school establishment more, since they see any innovation that reduces their influence or diverts resources away from conventional schools as a threat to their monopoly. We're betting they'll use these findings to try to put the brakes on cyberschools, now that Democrats, who carry water for the unions, are firmly in control at the Statehouse.

The report "described a booming online education system with poor student performance, sloppy accounting and lax oversight of taxpayer dollars by the Colorado Department of Education," according to one news story. One school district received $630,000 for online education over a two-year period, for what turned out to be regular, off-line home schooling programs. In another case, public funds were commingled with those from a private religious school.

That's nothing to shrug about, but we wonder what misallocations of funds a similar audit of conventional schools would turn up, and doubt that this would become an argument for declaring a halt to enrollments. Conventional schools can squander money with impunity. They can have students that lag behind state norms. But rarely does the cry go up for shutting them down. School-choice detractors will seize on any financial irregularities or performance problems as a reason to pounce on alternative schools.

It's not happenstance that the audit was requested by a Democrat (State Sen. Sue Windels of Arvada) or that Democrats are blowing its findings out of proportion. The audit clearly was meant to arm teachers union lackeys with ammunition when they go gunning for cyberschools in the 2007 legislative session.

Legislating a solution might be tricky, however, given that the ultimate responsibility for administering these programs - and fixing them - lies with local school districts. "Local control of schools" is a principle evoked selectively by both parties. But Democrats were not long ago cheering when a judge used the local control argument to kill off an experimental statewide voucher program, so they may be less-than-convincing arguing for a stronger state hand in administering or overseeing cyberschools.

Auditors can sometimes make too much of bean-counting technicalities, but given the growing popularity of online schools - enrollment numbers more than tripled between 2003 to 2006, from 1,900 to about 6,200 students, and funding has risen to $32.8 million from $8.4 million - it would probably be wise to iron out the wrinkles now.

Advocates for the schools say the auditors focused too much on the negative. "The auditors, though they made sincere effort, did not have meaningful data which would support the conclusions they made concerning online education as a whole," according to Kathryn Sneckner of Woodland Park, whose two children attend the Colorado Virtual Academy. "Their data supported action against individual schools, but certainly not the segment of education as a whole." She and others point out that online schools, like charter schools, often serve kids who struggle in conventional schools, which may account for lagging test scores. "I do not want to see these audit results affect online schools that do serve their students and parents well, achieve acceptable test scores and provide a choice in education for satisfied parents and kids," Sneckner wrote in an e-mail message.

We don't want that either. And we hope some constructive thinking will be devoted to addressing these glitches, before anyone even talks about pulling the plug on cyberschools.

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