BOSTON – State policy is pivotal to the development and availability of online and virtual learning options, and Pioneer Institute’s new Virtual Schools Toolkit provides tactical guidance for developing such policies in the current educational landscape.
“Virtual learning began by serving students who couldn’t attend traditional schools,” said Julie Young, the founding president and CEO of Florida Virtual School (FLVS), who wrote the toolkit with Julie Petersen and Kay Johnson. “But online learning has expanded to address a variety of problems, such as filling hard-to-staff courses, expanding foreign language offerings, and providing access to Advanced Placement.”
Virtual learning is a form of distance education that uses the internet to connect students to a teacher. Hundreds of thousands of American students attend virtual schools full-time, and many more than that attend at least one supplemental online class.
A 2021 federal What Works Clearinghouse evidence review of distance learning programs found that students can learn at a distance as well or better than in traditional classrooms.
“Online courses, content, and schools can be really useful when built carefully to leverage online capabilities,” said co-author Julie Petersen. “The policies that state legislators and offices of education put in place matter tremendously for ensuring that there are quality online courses and schools available that address individual student and family needs directly.”
States generally have four levers for organizing online and digital learning activity:
- Approvals and management: What entities should manage online courses and schooling, which providers can enroll students in supplemental courses or in full- or part-time online schooling, and what limits should be placed on enrollment.
- Funding: How much money should virtual schools receive and in what form? Options include start-up funding to develop programs, annual appropriations for ongoing operations, per-student funding or payments based on the number of course completions.
- Accountability: How should we measure the quality of virtual courses and schools and assess student learning gains?
- Teachers: Who is allowed to teach, and what preparation or ongoing professional development are they required to have?
The editors offer a framework for designing state virtual school policies that cover vision and goals, governance and oversight, funding, quality assurance, and teacher preparation and support. They list key questions, actions to be taken and estimated timelines for each area.
“The strongest states set goals for student needs and desired outcomes, then give families robust options,” said Kay Johnson of ASU Prep Digital, another of the toolkit’s authors. “To maximize the possibility that every learner will realize their unique potential, we recommend building policies that recognize how learning happens anywhere, anytime, and at any pace, and investing in the infrastructure, talent, and accountability frameworks to support individualized learning choices.”
To illustrate the potential for state policy change, the toolkit includes case studies from Florida, Michigan, Colorado, Utah, and Texas, five states that have taken different approaches to achieve successful virtual learning programs.
It also includes a case study on Massachusetts. Although it was one of the first states to address virtual learning, state oversight policies have slowed innovation and participation in online learning by strictly limiting enrollment and who can be a provider.
