MorningStar’s Home Education News

Fri, Dec 07, 2007
Ruling puts state’s virtual schools at risk
Appeals court says Wisconsin Virtual Academy violates state law
From eSchool News staff and wire service reports
  Primary Topic Channel:  Virtual schooling / Distance Learning
 
Parents of virtual-school students in Wisconsin fear a court ruling puts online instruction in jeopardy.Online education programs for thousands of Wisconsin students could be in jeopardy after a court ordered the state on Dec. 5 to stop funding a virtual charter school, an advocacy group has warned.

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The ruling could result in other districts having to close their own online charter schools and distance learning programs as well, the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families said.

The warning came hours after the District 2 Court of Appeals ruled the Wisconsin Virtual Academy was violating state law by allowing parents to assume the duties of state-licensed teachers.

The court said the school also has been violating a law requiring charter schools to be located in the district that operates them. It ordered the state Department of Public Instruction to stop shifting payments to the school from the home districts of open-enrollment students, who make up the majority of its more than 600 students.

Attorney Mike Dean, who represents students and families at the school, said the ruling “effectively shuts down the school” and puts many others at risk.

“It’s a huge deal for thousands of parents and students across the state,” he said. “If, in fact, children enrolled from outside the district are enrolled illegally, that will affect most, if not all, of the virtual schools in Wisconsin.”

Dean said he was considering an appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Supporters of virtual schools say they are more effective for some students and far less expensive than traditional public schools. Critics dispute that.

The Northern Ozaukee School District hired K12 Inc., a Virginia-based company that provides curriculum to schools, to create the Wisconsin Virtual Academy in 2003.

Students in kindergarten through eighth grade learn from their homes over the internet under the direction of their parents, who must devote at least four hours a day to their child’s education. Certified teachers who work for the district help monitor student progress.

The Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teacher’s union, filed suit in 2004 claiming the school violates the open-enrollment, charter school, and teacher licensing laws. The Department of Public Instruction, although named as a defendant, switched sides and agreed the school was violating its licensing requirements.

A judge threw out the lawsuit last year. Months later, the district announced plans to expand its online offerings by creating a new statewide virtual high school.

But the appeals court on Dec. 5 reversed the judge’s decision, siding with the teacher’s union on all three claims.

Writing for the court, Judge Richard Brown said the school may be a “godsend for children who would not succeed in more traditional public schools, as well as a welcome new option for parents who want their children to receive a home-based education.

“But it is also a public school operated with state funds, and its operation violates the statutes as they now stand,” he wrote.

Brown said parents are teaching without the state license required of all public school teachers. Even though they are not paid or employed by a school district, they are acting as teachers under state law, he wrote.

“The problem is not that the unlicensed WIVA parents teach their children, but that they ‘teach in a public school,’” Brown wrote.

He also said Northern Ozaukee is violating a law that prohibits school districts from operating charter schools outside of their boundaries. The school’s administrative office is in the district, but the majority of its teachers and students are not, he wrote.

Northern Ozaukee also illegally received open-enrollment money for students even though they are not attending school in the district as required, he wrote. The money pays for the operation of the school, and the district keeps an “oversight fee.”

Lee Allinger, superintendent of the Appleton Area School District, said he was studying the ruling’s impact on its virtual school, the Wisconsin Connections Academy. The 390-pupil school also takes open-enrollment students from around the state, he said.

A person who did not agree enough with his/her own post to put his/her name, wrote on a Yahoo message board:

“Homeschooling is a BAD idea!     20-Aug-99 08:48 pm   

The basic necessities of a child’s education
include BOTH academics (i.e. reading, writing and
arithmetic) AND social development. Adequate social
development can occur ONLY if a child is allowed to interact
on an everyday basis with people outside of home,
including children of his/her age
group.<br><br>Homeschooling may provide the academics of education (i.e.
reading, writing and arithmetic), but it fails to address
the child’s social development. In other words,
homeschooling DEPRIVES the child of a very NECESSARY part of
his/her education. Parents who homeschool their children
are doing them a SERIOUS DISSERVICE!  

Many people believe that the type of “social development” that occurs in most schools is social abuse. In informal discussions with homeschoolers, it appears as though that the social environment in public school is one of the primary reasons they chose to homeschool. In those anecdotes, there is a consistent pattern of bullying, peer pressure towards drugs and “experimentation”, skewed value systems, foul language, and ofcourse violence.

Published Monday, December 10, 2007
Public schools broaden their mission

 Millions of Americans each week watch the televised reality shows. The biggest reality show in the country today involves public schools, and no one can be voted off. Federal and state governments have increased funding for public education in recent years. This funding extends beyond the confines of classroom academics. The new reality in America’s public education is that schools are offering a wide range of social services to students. Student sex education, driver education, and student meals have been common features for decades.

To read the rest of this article from Tuscaloosa News, click here.

Public schools as corporate shills

ABC News.com is publishing a story about McDonald’s effort to market its food through public schools in Florida. Coroporations who worm their way into the minds and pocketbooks of our children is becoming more common in many school districts throughout the nation.

File photo

Corporations have always been present in public schools going all the way back to the Scholastic Book Fairs that were an annual event in my elementary school in the 1960’s and all the way up to the present. Children in public schools are easy and captive targets. Unsuspecting schoolchildren are a marketer’s dream in many respects.

As ABC reported:

According to a study on marketing unhealthy foods in public schools by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, between 26.6 and 30.3 million students are exposed, in school, to marketing by corporations that sell unhealthy foods. Incentive programs, along with fund-raising activities and exclusive agreements, make up the bulk of the campaigns.

About 67 percent of all schools nationwide allow for advertising by companies that sell “foods of minimal nutritional value and food high in fat and sugar conduct the majority of the marketing that is found in schools,” the study found.

The practice of allowing advertisers into the classroom has been condoned under the auspices that they are fundraisers.  However, this may be a ruse. 

…According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study most schools do not receive significant funds as a result of allowing corporate advertising.

“Some 73 percent of schools that have marketing by corporations that sell unhealthy foods reported receiving no income in the previous year. Some 86 percent of schools with food marketing reported that no programs or activities would be cut back if such marketing were prohibited,” the study found.

 What is of concern to me is that the powers that be in our nation’s school districts appear to be co-conspirators by offering their children as captive audiences to the information and messages that for profiteers dream up.

As Loren Steffy wrote in his blog about this issue (and the person who inspired this article) states: “ I’m not surprised that big food companies would want to exploit schoolchildren. What’s truly disturbing is that so many school districts are willing to help them. ”

Edited by Mimi Rothschild