Tom Vander Ark: 10 Strategies to Improve the Quality of Online Education

Most of the 100 advisers that contributed to the 10 Digital Learning Now recommendations mentioned an interest in quality education and actively debated measures to ensure it as online learning continues to expand.
However, creating the ideal policy set that encourages both innovation and quality is no small feat. Neither likely state policy environment is attractive—a free-for-all or a web of bureaucratic barriers. It will be hard to strike the right balance between encouraging innovation and ensuring quality. “Without rigorous oversight, a thousand flowers blooming will also yield a lot of weeds,” warned Erin Dillon and Bill Tucker in Education Next.
Let’s start by acknowledging that we currently have a system with highly variable quality and with lack accountability despite a decade of federal efforts to crank up the heat and bring up the rear. Online learning makes it an additional challenge with innovative instructional strategies, multiple providers, and new staffing patterns.
Statewide online learning providers can cost effectively add full and part-time options for students but the expanded and unique demands of approving statewide online providers requires states to add capacity and expertise. Quality standards, in the process of being updated, from International Association for K-12 Online Learning provide specific recommendations for states reviewing program proposals.
As online learning continues to double every two or three years, the majority will be provided in and through public school districts. As a result, quality and accountability measures should apply to the whole system rather than treating online learning as an interloper
Click here to read my complete post and my list of the 10 points to create a quality online and blended learning agenda