Tom Vander Ark: Digital Learning Now for Charters

With less funding than traditional schools, charters have more incentive to find solutions that can boost achievement and reduce operating costs. They usually have more flexibility to implement solutions. But they often have limited capacity and get cut out of deals that benefit districts and students in traditional schools. Despite the mixed bag, we’ll see lots of blended learning innovation in the charter space this fall.
I had the good fortune to participate in a session at the National Charter School Conference (#NCSC) in Atlanta with two of my favorite people, Susan Patrick, CEO of iNACOL, and Mickey Revenaugh, EVP Connections Learning. We reviewed the 10 Elements of Digital Learning, a project of the Foundation for Excellent Education and chaired by former governors Jeb Bush and Bob Wise.
The session was full and I thought the Q&A would focus on blended learning implementation, but instead the focus was on the policy details behind this framework including administering a competency-based learning system, ensuring assessment security for online learning, selecting high quality content, and creating incentives for providers to serve at-risk students.
Most charters will need a phased plan and some assistance to shift from print to digital and from teaching age cohorts to serving individual students.