Guest Commentary: Competition Best Way to Provide Students Online Opportunities

A Florida House committee was recently treated to a high-level discussion of digital learning that included the likes of former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise and national education reformer and Liberate Learning blog contributor Tom Vander Ark, but the showstopper came from a different duo with a jaw-dropping accord.
The policy director for the nation’s leading public virtual school and the president of a leading private virtual education company told lawmakers that competition is the best way to give students new online opportunities.
No, we’re not making this up.
Sitting around that committee room table were Holly Sagues, chief policy officer for Florida Virtual School, and Barbara Dreyer, president and CEO of Connections Academy. Florida Virtual is far and away the nation’s most successful public virtual school, whose 213,926 courses last year represented three times the rate of the next closest state. Dreyer and one of her own private competitors, K-12 Inc., have found common ground with Florida Virtual on a plan that would introduce statewide private providers for all forms of online learning.
Click here to read the rest of a post and discussion that education policymakers should note.