The New Home Schooling

By Connie Langland

Like many Pennsylvania children, eight-year-old Venus Kennedy has just begun third grade, but not in a new and unfamiliar classroom. She is doing all of her schooling from the comfort of her family home near Temple University.

Kennedy is among the thousands of youngsters in the Philadelphia region for whom the start of school this year means pulling up a chair in their living room, dining room or bedroom and logging on to a computer.

They are attending virtual schools - a fast-growing trend in K-12 education, enrolling about 175,000 students nationwide and estimated 23,000 in Pennsylvania.

It is a new and popular iteration on the old idea of home schooling, especially since most cyber schools are also charter schools and tuition is paid by the state and local school districts.

In Philadelphia, the number of students enrolled in cyber charters - as these virtual schools are called - has doubled in the last five years. The Philadelphia School District said there were 3,613 city students enrolled in cyber charters the school year that just ended and expects the number to climb to over 4,000 September. In the suburbs, the number of virtual home schoolers is estimated by the state at 2,500.

These numbers are still small compared to children enrolled in traditional bricks-and-mortar schools. In the city, about 155,000 students attend public schools, another 35,000 are enrolled in bricks-and-mortar charters and about 16,000 attend private schools. In addition, an unknown number of parents - they probably number in the hundreds - home school without public support.

This new version of schooling -- one that barely existed a decade ago -draws families for a myriad of reasons, It puts the focus on the individual student, and challenges not just the child but the parent to meet homework and assessment requirements and advance through the curriculum.

"We decided, let's give this a chance. It has worked out really well. She's never stepped foot in a public school," said Venus' mother, Lori Bartolomei, whose two older daughters, now grown, had attended public schools.

The decision of Bartolomei and her husband, Leonard Kennedy, was influenced by their lack of confidence in the city schools, and she said conversations with other cyber families echo her own concerns. "Overcrowded classrooms ... violence in schools ... police in and out of the buildings - those were our concerns," said Bartolomei. "Plus, we would have the opportunity to teach her on our own with the help of teachers."

Venus is enrolled in the Commonwealth Connections Academy, one of the 11 cyber charter companies in the state.  She studies an average 51/2 hours a day - just like her peers in public schools. She logs on for live lessons with her teacher, whom she can see and hear; and she can hear, but not view, classmates who also have logged on. The child's teacher typically calls every two weeks to review lessons - and to make sure the child, not the parent, is doing the work

There's an icon on the computer monitor screen for Venus to click to let the teacher know she's in class, and another to click if she leaves the room for awhile. If she misses the live session, she can still get the lesson, since the session is recorded. She has made friends with classmates that she has met on school-sponsored field trips. Some work is online, plus there are also pencil-and-paper worksheets and projects. "It's fun," said Venus.

Like all charter schools, cyber charters are independently run but publicly funded, with local districts and the state underwriting the cost of operating charters, including the virtual variety. For Philadelphia, it's a huge bill--$442 million was spent during the school year that just ended. 

Annual reports filed by the cyber schools with the state show that some students enroll, then drop out. Reasons for the departures include difficulty staying focused or just failing to log on for an extended time.

According to the educators, virtual schools are proving attractive to students who feel bullied or who just don't fit in; students who have fallen behind or have moved far ahead of classmates and their local school is unwilling or unable to accommodate them; and students who have medical needs - or career plans - and need more flexibility in terms of daily schedules.

The program does require a parent or guardian's supervision, at least in the early and middle grades, impacting the parents' work and other commitments.

While many families cite dissatisfaction with local schools as a deciding factor in opting for at-home cyber education, virtual schools have had troubles of their own. All but one of the 11 cyber schools operating in Pennsylvania have had trouble meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks under the federal No Child Left Behind law.