BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 2007
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Date of Hearing: April 30, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Joan Buchanan, Chair
AB 2007 (Grove) - As Amended: March 28, 2014
SUBJECT : Virtual or online charter schools: Average daily
attendance
SUMMARY : Authorizes a virtual or online charter school, in
specified circumstances, to claim independent study average
daily attendance (ADA) for a pupil who resides outside of the
geographic boundaries in which the school is authorized to
operate. Specifically, this bill :
1)Authorizes a virtual or online charter school to claim, for
apportionment purposes, the independent study ADA for a pupil
who is a resident of a county outside of the geographic
boundaries in which the school is authorized to operate under
either of the following circumstances:
a) The pupil is enrolled in the virtual or online charter
school and moves to a residence located outside of the
geographic boundaries in which the virtual or online
charter school may operate and continues enrollment in the
school; or
b) The pupil transfers to another school because he or she
moves to a residence located outside of the geographic
boundaries of the virtual or online charter school, and
reenrolls in the charter school within two years of his or
her transfer while continuing to reside in an area outside
of the charter school's authorized geographic boundaries.
2)Defines "virtual or online charter school" to mean a charter
school in which at least 80% of teaching and pupil interaction
occurs via the Internet.
EXISTING LAW : Provides that charter schools can claim ADA only
for pupils who are residents of the county in which the virtual
or online charter school is authorized, or who are residents of
a county immediately adjacent to that county.
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
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COMMENTS :
Online instruction has not been shown to be effective . The use
of online instruction has grown in recent years, but there have
been few well-controlled studies of its effectiveness with K-12
students. This is the main finding from a review of the
research reported by the U. S. Department of Education (USDOE)
in September 2010 ("Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in
Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning
Studies"). The USDOE report contains the findings of a
meta-analysis of research on online learning, which concludes
that "on average, students in online learning conditions
performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face
instruction." However, the report cautions against generalizing
this finding to the K-12 population, because only five of the 45
studies in the analysis involved K-12 instruction. (The others
involved medical training, higher education, and other non-K-12
instruction.) All of the five K-12 studies involved blended
instruction, in which online learning is combined with
face-to-face instruction. Because blended instruction often
includes additional instructional time, the positive effects
observed with this approach may be the result of the additional
time on task, and cannot be attributed to the media, per se,
according to the USDOE report.
More recent studies indicate online instruction alone is not as
effective as regular classroom instruction:
A 2011 study of charter school performance in
Pennsylvania by the Center for Research on Education
Outcomes at Stanford University found that each of that
state's 8 online charter schools ("cyber schools")
significantly underperformed brick and mortar schools and
regular (non-virtual) charter schools in reading and math.
A review of virtual schools in Wisconsin by the Gannett
Wisconsin Media Investigative Team found that students
receiving online instruction "often struggle to complete
their degrees and repeat grades four times as often as
their brick-and-mortar counterparts," and they "trail
traditional students in every subject but reading."
A 2011 report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor
in Minnesota reported that full-time online students were
more likely to completely drop out of school and made less
progress on state standardized math tests than students in
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traditional schools.
A 2011 report from the Ohio Department of Education
rated only three of Ohio's 27 virtual schools as
"effective" or "excellent."
A 2006 performance audit by the Colorado Department of
Education of that state's virtual schools found that, "in
the aggregate, online students performed poorly on the CSAP
(Colorado State Assessment Program) exams and had higher
repeater, attrition, and dropout rates."
The Florida Virtual Academy, a statewide virtual school,
reports that 81% of its students who complete their courses
receive a passing grade. However, the Tampa Bay Times
reports that the Virtual Academy's records show that
two-thirds of students who enroll in a course don't finish
it. When dropouts are included, the actual pass rate is
28%. The Times was unable to get Virtual School Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test scores from either the
Virtual School or the Florida Department of Education.
One of the largest providers of instructional software is K12,
Inc., a private, for-profit publicly traded corporation. K12,
Inc. materials are used extensively in California, primarily by
charter schools. The NCAA recently announced that it will stop
accepting coursework from 24 schools nationwide (13 in
California) that use the K12, Inc. curriculum at any Division I
or Division II college or university, because "their courses
were found to not comply with the NCAA's nontraditional course
requirements." Other K12, Inc. schools are currently being
evaluated by the NCAA for compliance with its "core course and
nontraditional course requirements."
Oversight of geographically distant schools. Currently, a
virtual or online charter school may not receive ADA for the
instruction of pupils who do not reside in the county where the
school is chartered or in a county adjacent to that in which it
is authorized. This bill would allow a charter school to receive
ADA for students served through its independent study program,
regardless of the student's place of residence, as specified.
When considering this bill , the committee may wish to consider
the benefits of continuity of instruction for a pupil weighed
against the potential difficulty of oversight by the charter
authorizer. One could argue that oversight of charter schools
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is an essential element of success for both the charter school
and for California's public school system as a whole.
Geographic proximately to its authorizer ensures that a charter
school can be properly supervised by its authorizer. To allow
children to continue to enroll in a charter school that may be
separated from its authorizer by nearly 1,000 miles would make
meaningful supervision nearly impossible. This bill could be a
slippery slope that makes it more and more likely students will
be unable to access a credentialed teacher due to distance.
Further, the committee may wish to consider whether this opens
the door to students attending schools that have no relationship
to the community in which the student is living.
Continuity of a child's education. One could argue, that based
on research demonstrating increased mobility of a child between
schools negatively impacts that child's performance and
likelihood of graduating from high school, this bill is
necessary to minimize the need for students to change schools
when he or she moves. Students who transfer between schools,
for reasons other than grade promotion, often encounter lower
achievement levels due to discontinuity of curriculum between
schools, behavioral problems, difficulty developing peer
relationships, and in the end, face a greater risk for dropping
out.<1> While a student who transfers between online schools may
avoid some of the social or behavioral issues, this bill
addresses those students who are required to leave an online
school and enroll in a brick and mortar school as well as
addressing the academic concerns that will follow the student to
any new school in which he/she enrolls.
Committee Recommendations . In an effort to address the need for
continuity of education for pupils, but being cognizant of the
difficulty of overseeing a geographically distant school, staff
recommends an amendments to allow the virtual or online charter
school to collect ADA for an enrolled pupil who moves out of the
geographic area in which the school is authorized but only until
the pupil completes the course or course in which he or she is
enrolled, or until the end of the school year, whichever occurs
first. This amendment also ensures that while a student will be
allowed to complete the work he or she started, the state will
not be placed in a position where it must pay ADA to both the
virtual or online school and a new school in which the student
---------------------------
<1> Student Mobility. August 4, 2004. Education Week.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/student-mobility/ . Accessed on
April 14, 2014.
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resides.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
None on file
Opposition
None on file
Analysis Prepared by : Jill Rice / ED. / (916) 319-2087