The long awaited and hotly debated "disruption" of public education may finally have begun. Technology, the force that has transformed one industry after another, from the industrial revolution through the information age, is on the cusp of reshaping schools fundamentally. This is heady talk. Historically, schools have been quite adept…

Education has long been considered merit good; however, inequitable distribution has made it more akin to a toll good. This was most recently demonstrated by Henry, Fortner, and Thompson (2010). Choice requirements designed to remedy the inequitable distribution of education, have largely been confined to brick and mortar schools. Subsequently,…

Background: Online learning in K-12 education has grown rapidly in the past decade. Cyber charter schools (CCSs) have been a particularly controversial form of online school, but there is very little scholarly examination of these new organizations. As CCSs expand, policymakers and stakeholders have a critical need to understand how to evolve the…

This study explores the instructional leadership skills required from online principals, as defined by one state's (Idaho) adaptation of the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards (1996) as a requirement for professional certification. Specifically, this qualitative study examined six sets of paired online principals and…

Would anyone in your network be aware of any states that might provide differentiated funding for virtual programs based on the model used--for example, curriculum-in-a-box vs. one with high student-teacher interaction? Are you aware of any research that examines what factors to consider when developing this type of differentiated funding? This…

America's system for financing K-12 education is not neutral about innovation and the use of new technologies. Indeed, that system is stacked against them. To remedy this, our education-funding system needs to shift dramatically. Instead of today's model--which rigidly funds programs, staff positions, and administrative structures, instead of…

Online education has grown in popularity as a choice option over the past decade. A variety of studies exist on methodologies for content delivery and on the impacts of online education for specific communities. However, few works have considered the utility of online educational choices in comparison to physical schools. Using an expected utility…

This Evidence Based Education (EBE) request asks for information relating to funding for virtual schools. The EBE Request Desk was asked to provide a scan of states for information on how they fund virtual schools and what the current funding levels are (most current year for which such data is available). This paper provides answers to this…

This article presents findings from a case study related to the risks associated with the choice of traditional, tenure track faculty to teach online. Education offered at a distance via the World Wide Web is on the rise; so too is the demand for university faculty members who will teach those courses. While traditional academic and professional…

School and district leaders are commonly faced with diverse student needs and interests that could be effectively addressed with a course that is not currently offered in local schools. Virtual schools have grown up over the past 15 years in different policy and budget ecosystems, but most online course programs can be classified in one of six…

As digital tools proliferate and improve, solid instruction in the basics will eventually become "flat"--available anywhere globally--and the elements of excellent teaching that are most difficult for technology to replace will increasingly differentiate student outcomes. As a result, teacher effectiveness may matter even more than it…

Building and sustaining a school and district culture that has a technology "growth mindset" and the implementation of processes that support a technology-specific culture in which, "the role of the leader is to ensure that the organization develops relationships that help produce desirable results," would ensure that teachers and principals…

Variation in policies virtual schools use to calculate course completion and retention rates impacts the comparability of these quality metrics. This study surveyed 159 U.S. virtual schools examining the variability in trial period and course completion policies--two policies that affect course completion rates. Of the 86 respondents, almost 70%…

Virtual schooling is a rapidly growing and, to many, an increasingly troubling phenomenon. In a decade, online education has grown from being a novelty act to an established mode of education, consisting of asynchronous, computer-mediated interaction between a teacher and students over the Internet. Although exact figures are hard to come by,…

Virtual learning is not for every student, but it's not science fiction, either. Right now in Michigan, it's being used by thousands of students in hundreds of virtual courses in urban, rural and suburban school districts. In fact, Michigan has been seen as a national leader in virtual learning. This study analyzes the financial costs and academic…