Government is often criticized for jumping at the chance to smother industry with burdensome regulations and bureaucracy. Unfortunately, it waited too long to fully regulate online learning in Colorado.
The result: An online school must repay the state $2.8 million for shoddy accounting and improper spending, and the tiny district that chartered it must pay $470,000. The combined $3.3 million payment is the largest demanded from a school district that anyone can remember.
Ideally, the problems won’t be repeated.
While we certainly don’t want Colorado’s burgeoning online education system bogged down with unnecessary regulations, it’s been proven that the existing education system was never built to handle the recent crush of online students. Last school year, 14 districts had 18 online programs that served 6,200 students scattered across the state – a 226 percent increase from 1,900 students in 2003.
After two scathing audits detailing low test scores and sloppy accounting practices in online schools, a better accountability system is now thankfully being implemented. State lawmakers stepped in this past spring and approved a bill designed to provide some oversight to a system that was spiraling out of control.
Senate Bill 215 set up a four-person online division in the Colorado Department of Education and charged it with creating quality standards for online programs. New education commissioner Dwight Jones, making perhaps one of his most important hires, recently tapped Pamela Hoppe Ice, coordinator of the West Virginia Virtual School, part of the West Virginia Department of Education, to head the new department.
She has her work cut out for her.
She’ll need to direct the online division and a new online advisory board as they work with the State Board of Education to devise “quality standards” for online schools. The standards should guide everything from curriculum to how the schools are governed.
The panels also will establish new rules for programs that operate in multiple districts. Many of the recent accountability problems have developed because school districts were approving programs for students who live in far-flung areas outside of the district. Obviously, that’s one of the benefits of this new technology, but with teachers often hundreds of miles away from their students, it’s possible the schools need to be held to an even higher standard.
The state’s new online division will be paid for with money recovered from audits, such as this most recent one that found Hope Co-Op Online Learning Academy and Vilas School District were overpaid $3.7 million by the state based on student counts and transportation. (The lower $3.3 million payback was negotiated.)
We’re pleased most Colorado officials – there are a few lawmakers who still need some convincing – have embraced online learning as a valuable tool for the 21st century. Now it’s up to the state board and the new online division to ensure that the new quality controls are implemented in such a way that they don’t snuff out innovation.
