<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div>As echoed by local . . . </div><div><br></div><div>teachers (February 21, 2011) . . .</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com/ForThePeople/EducRally_022111">http://www.MoscowCares.com/ForThePeople/EducRally_022111</a>.</div><div> </div><div> . . . and students (March 4, 2011)</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com/ForThePeople/MHS_Protest_030411.htm">http://www.MoscowCares.com/ForThePeople/MHS_Protest_030411.htm</a></div><div> <br><div>Seeya later, Moscow.</div><div><br></div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Spokane, Washington</div><div><br></div><div>"If not us, who?</div><div>If not now, when?"</div><div><br></div><div>- Unknown</div></div><div><br>On Jan 6, 2012, at 6:27 AM, Art Deco <<a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/education/students-of-virtual-schools-are-lagging-in-proficiency.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23&pagewanted=print#">Reprints</a></li></div><br></div>
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<div class="timestamp">January 6, 2012</div>
<h1>Students of Online Schools Are Lagging</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/jenny_anderson/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Jenny Anderson" class="meta-per">JENNY ANDERSON</a></h6>
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The number of students in virtual schools run by educational management
organizations rose sharply last year, according to a new report being
published Friday, and far fewer of them are proving proficient on
standardized tests compared with their peers in other privately managed <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/charter_schools/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about charter schools." class="meta-classifier">charter schools</a> and in traditional public schools. </p>
<p>
About 116,000 students were educated in 93 virtual schools — those where
instruction is entirely or mainly provided over the Internet — run by
private management companies in the 2010-11 school year, up 43 percent
from the previous year, according to the report being published by the
National Education Policy Center, a research center at the University of
Colorado. About 27 percent of these schools achieved “adequate yearly
progress,” the key federal standard set forth under the <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_left_behind_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="More articles about the No Child Left Behind Act." class="meta-classifier">No Child Left Behind</a>
act to measure academic progress. By comparison, nearly 52 percent of
all privately managed brick-and-mortar schools reached that goal, a
figure comparable to all public schools nationally. </p>
<p>
“There’s a pretty large gap between virtual and brick-and-mortar,” said
Gary Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement and research at
Western Michigan University and a co-author of the study. </p>
<p>
“E.M.O.’s” — educational management organizations, a term coined by Wall
Street in the 1990s — now operate 35 percent of all charter schools,
enrolling 42 percent of all charter school students, according to the
report. “Charter schools are publicly funded and they are serving public
school students,” Dr. Miron noted. “But they are increasingly privately
owned and privately governed.” </p>
<p>
Some of the management companies are nonprofit organizations — the
largest is the KIPP Foundation, with 28,261 students — while others are
for-profit companies (K12 Inc. leads this sector, with 65,396). The
report focuses on those that have full-service agreements to run
schools, as opposed to vendors that offer ancillary services like
curriculum development. </p>
<p>
The number of schools — virtual as well as brick-and-mortar — managed by
for-profit E.M.O.’s dropped 2 percent in 2010-11 from the previous
year, but the number of students leaped 5 percent to 394,096. In the
nonprofit sector, there was a 12 percent increase in the number of
schools to 1,170 and a 62 percent increase in students to 384,067.
Nonprofit E.M.O.’s have a better track record of academic success than
for-profits, and smaller E.M.O.’s in general perform better than larger
ones, at least defined by the federal standard of adequate yearly
progress — a metric Dr. Miron called “very crude.” </p>
<p>
Data was not available for about 10 percent of the schools run by
for-profit E.M.O.’s and 20 percent of those run by nonprofits. Among
those that did provide data, 48 percent of the schools run by
for-profits met the federal standard, as did 56 percent of those run by
nonprofits. About 52 percent of traditional public schools meet the
standard. </p>
<p>
Among large for-profit E.M.O.’s — those that manage 10 or more schools —
43 percent met the federal progress standard, compared with 62 percent
of the schools run by E.M.O.’s with one to three schools. Among
nonprofits, 63 percent of those with four to nine schools met the
standard, compared with 52 percent for organizations running 10 or more
schools and 56 percent for those running one to three. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank"><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a></a><br>
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