MI could see more cyber charter schools

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Michigan could see more online or "cyber" charter schools under a plan that passed in the state Senate this week.

"It's like a regular school, it's real teachers with real students," said Jim DeKorne, of Grand Valley State University's charter schools office. "It uses technology for that connection between those two people."

Michigan Virtual Charter Academy, an online school in Grand Rapids authorized by GVSU, is in its second year of operation. Some teachers' lessons are recorded, school leaders said, and others are in real time. Sometimes students are working through material on their own.

There are even online field trips, but kindergarten-through-8th-grade students never set foot inside the school. Some high school students do.

"It really is serving people who we believe would not necessarily be optimally served by the current system," DeKorne said.

Darius Washington came to Michigan Virtual from a traditional high school. There, he said, he was goofing off. Now the 17-year-old said he's doing better.

"Because I'm doing more of my work and I'm paying attention and I can access all the work at my own pace," Washington told 24 Hour News 8.

The school has a waiting list roughly 990 students long, DeKorne said. He said the students cannot join the school because of a state cap on the number of students that can attend cyber charter schools.

So the GVSU charter schools field service representative said the office would like to see the change proposed in Lansing become law. It would lift the student cap and allow more online charter schools.

But critics, including the Michigan Association of School Administrators, argue the proposal does not offer any guarantee of school quality.

Rockford Public Schools Superintendent Mike Shibler said he has similar concerns.

"I think more research has to be done to find out just how effective [online charter schools] are instead of just sudduenly passing legislation -- at least at the Senate side -- in order to require unlimited access to this," Shibler said.

A report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado concluded that there is little or no research looking at the results of online charter schools.

A U.S. Department of Education analysis found more benefit to blending online and traditional learning than either type alone.

Shibler is not opposed to online learing as a whole, he said.

"Students certainly can benefit from cyber education or learning online, whether it be credit recovery or whether it be courses that are difficult to get otherwise from their local high school," the Rockford superintendent said. "But they also, I think, can benefit ... from actual 1-on-30, 1-on-25" relationships with teachers.

A spokesman for the Michigan Association of Public School Acadmies, the state charter schools organization, noted that the new online charter schools -- like any charter schools -- would need to be authorized by a university, community college or intermediate school district. He pointed to a report from the Ohio charter school association that concluded students in "e-schools" are improving at a faster rate than students in the state's urban districts.

The changes would need to be passed by the state House and signed by Gov. Rick Snyder before they could become law. Some critics argue, in part, that the push is happening too quickly.