Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has touted online learning as a school-choice solution for rural America, saying that virtual charter schools provide educational options that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

But in Pennsylvania, an early adopter where more than 30,000 kids log into virtual charter schools from home most days, the graduation rate is a dismal 48 percent. Not one virtual charter school meets the state’s “passing” benchmark. And the founder of one of the state’s largest virtual schools pleaded guilty to a tax crime last year.


As DeVos seeks to expand school choice nationwide, including online options, Pennsylvania serves as a case study in the shortcomings of the virtual charter school model, or cyber charter schools, as they are known there. The state’s 14 virtual charter schools have flourished in rural communities over the last 15 years — so much so that Pennsylvania, along with Ohio and California, now account for over half the enrollment in the nation’s full-time virtual charters, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

But as the virtual schools have expanded, so have questions about their effectiveness. Large swaths of Pennsylvania kids leaving a brick-and-mortar school for one of the virtual charter alternatives went to one with lower math and reading performance, according to research based on the 2009-2010 school year compiled by the Pennsylvania General Assembly’s Center for Rural Pennsylvania.

Success in these schools depends on a child’s ability — or a parent’s enforcement — to stay on task with no teacher in the room, researchers say.

“Here’s what I would say to Betsy DeVos — do those parents really understand what they’re sending their kids to?” said Mark DiRocco, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators.

Pennsylvania school districts with less-educated parents appear more likely to send higher percentages of students to virtual charters, according to research by Bryan Mann, an education professor at the University of Alabama who studied virtual charters while at Penn State.

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Mann said that while some students excel using them, many enroll as a “last-chance option.”

“You feel for those people who have said, ‘I’ve tried traditional schools, this has not worked for whatever reason, my kid is really struggling,’” Mann said. “They are getting bullied or something and they can be desperate, and the only other option they have is something that’s not right for them, either.”

Nonetheless, the schools have a loyal following — particularly among parents who want to home-school their children for religious reasons, who are concerned about safety or bullying problems at traditional schools, or who want flexibility so their children can participate in athletic competition.

“My tax dollars are going to what I actually want my kids to be doing,” said Zoe Hatcher, a virtual charter school enthusiast and a mother of four from Bradford, Pa., who says her two oldest children are flourishing at the University of Pittsburgh after spending all their K-12 years learning this way.

Nikki Dupuis came to see it differently for some of her kids after she enrolled all five in a virtual charter school.

After five years, she feared her three youngest were falling behind. This year, she transferred them to her home school district in Mifflin County, which operates an online school with the option of classroom time. “They won’t get upset if the teachers tell them to do something,” she said.

Despite their track record, Pennsylvania’s virtual charter schools fit in with DeVos’ promotion of school choice, since many rural communities lack brick-and-mortar charter schools or private schools.

Expanding educational choices for families is a longtime passion for DeVos, a firm believer that parents know best. She and her husband invested in virtual school powerhouse K12 Inc. before she became secretary. At least two of the school choice groups DeVos helped found, Great Lakes Education Project and the American Federation for Children, pushed for virtual charters — including in DeVos’ home state of Michigan.

It’s also a message she reiterated during her confirmation process.

“High quality virtual charter schools provide valuable options to families, particularly those who live in rural areas where brick-and-mortar schools might not have the capacity to provide the range of courses or other educational experiences for students,” DeVos wrote to Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Rural school leaders, however, have been among the most vocal critics of virtual charters, and they raise questions about the quality of their education.

Amanda Hetrick, superintendent of the Forest Area School District in Tionesta, Pa., said too often the kids are unsuccessful in virtual charters.

“Then they come back to us, and they’ve lost a year because they are a year behind. They haven’t done well. They haven’t passed,” she said.

Hetrick said her district recently paid for one student to attend his senior year at a virtual charter school three times.

“It wasn’t a good choice for him," she said. "He wasn’t a child with a lot of self-discipline. To be successful in online learning … you really have to be in a position where you have discipline or someone who is willing to sit with you and make sure you’re on task, similar to what teachers do, holding their attention on task in a classroom.”

Rural district officials also complain that virtual charters have pulled millions of dollars from cash-strapped public schools because of how they were set up. Under state law, districts send funds directly to a charter using a rate roughly based on what it would cost the district to educate the student — sometimes $30,000 or more for a special education student, even though district leaders say they can provide an online program for a fraction of that cost.

In the 2009-2010 year, $261 million went from districts to virtual charters — $81.3 million of it out of rural districts’ coffers, according to the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.

One school has provided plenty of fodder for those calling for stricter regulation of virtual charters. The founder and former president of the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, Nick Trombetta, pleaded guilty to a tax crime last year as part of a case in which prosecutors alleged he had shifted $8 million in funds to fuel a luxurious lifestyle. That school continued to enroll more than 9,700 students in Pennsylvania last year, according to state figures.

Last year, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools issued a “call to action” to improve virtual charter schools. It suggested states study creating enrollment criteria and work to determine “responsible” levels of funding for the schools.

“If traditional public schools were producing such results, we would rightly be outraged,” the alliance said. “We should not feel any different just because these are charter schools.”

But the schools’ popularity has made it harder to convince the GOP-led Pennsylvania Legislature to force more oversight of schools or to change the funding formulas.

They are also fighting an uphill battle against the virtual charter schools’ heavy TV advertising and lobbying.

While the virtual charter schools are nonprofit, many have ties to for-profit companies that aggressively push the schools’ interests. Two virtual school management companies alone, K12 Inc. and Connections Education, have spent $1.8 million to lobby Pennsylvania lawmakers since 2007, Ed Week reported last year.

K12 is the company DeVos and her husband had an “investment interest” in, according to paperwork released in 2006 by her husband’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign in Michigan. A DeVos spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the size of the investment, which is not listed as current in her federal disclosure forms.

To be sure, public school superintendents acknowledge that the competition from virtual charters has driven innovation in traditional public schools. Well more than half of all districts now offer their own online schools, with courses such as genetics that they otherwise could not provide.

Some districts have taken it an additional step by making such classes available both by computer at home and in a traditional school setting — sometimes referred to as “blended learning.” That’s what’s happening in Mifflin County, where the district runs online programs — while making six teachers available in a school setting for families who want additional help.

That’s where three of Dupuis’ kids are now enrolled. One older Dupuis child has already graduated from a virtual charter school, and another remains in one. But Dupuis said her three youngest needed one-on-one help, in person, from teachers. She said with the virtual charter schools, the teachers were willing to answer questions by videoconferencing or texting, but there was a delay.

She said she also felt that the virtual school teachers they were communicating with weren’t able to read her kids’ body language to see if they truly grasped something.

“I feel like in face-to-face, you would be able to tell by looking at the child if they really got it or not,” Dupuis said.

John Chandler, chief executive officer of PA Virtual Charter School, said the option schools like his provide is valuable in rural communities — even if it’s not right for all students.

He contends that virtual charters are bringing about change in traditional schools — fulfilling a mission to be incubators of new ideas.

School districts are changing “because we have existed. Because we have done this, parents want this option,” Chandler said. “You have seen local school districts respond to that.”

DeVos is also upbeat. Speaking before a tech-focused summit in April, she said education technology “absolutely” plays a role in helping rural communities.

“Frankly, we’ve just scratched the surface in the role that technology can play in bringing new opportunities to rural populations,” she said.

