Facing thorny challenges of online education

Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, December 5, 2013.

State audits aren’t conducted to make public officials look bad but, nonetheless, that’s the result for Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson and her department after State Auditor Beth Wood’s audit of the N.C. Virtual Public School.

The online school is designed to provide educational variety and efficiency. By offering some 150 different classes to 50,000 public, non-public and charter students, the school has brought courses to students who probably would not have had the chance to take them, otherwise.

Wood’s auditors found that the school had lax standards regarding enrolling, tracking and reporting on students. The audit report found errors of over-reporting and under-reporting enrollment, and poor processes for teacher evaluation and student registration.

While the audit did not refer to any criminal situations, it said that the system was so loosely constructed that had teachers sought to inflate enrollment as a way of increasing their pay, they would have stood a pretty good chance of being able to do so.

To her credit, Atkinson responded to the audit positively, saying that remedies to the problems were already being planned and implemented.

The importance of this audit goes beyond the virtual school and both its lax administration and record-keeping. It goes to the legislature as a blueprint of how things can go wrong in online education.

Below the collegiate level, North Carolina does not have much experience with online education, especially its business and administrative sides. Yet proposals to institute K-12 online education more widely have been floating around the Legislative Building for several sessions.

Some legislators see online education as a way to save money, or to bring the best teachers and advanced courses to remote areas of the state. Others see online as a way of diversifying the approaches to curriculum in a parallel to charter education.

No matter why they support online education, legislators must realize that running a virtual education program requires administrative skills different from those at a brick-and-mortar school. This audit points to some of the problems expanded online education might pose.