Guest Commentary: Rick Hess on 'Quality Control in K-12 Digital Learning'

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, with the support of the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, has commissioned six papers that, it is hoped, will address some of the policy issues surrounding the growth of digital learning.
The first one is out and written by Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute. He tackles quality and how to ensure that digital learning provides a quality education.
"Digital learning poses an immense dilemma when it comes to ensuring quality. One of the great advantages of online learning is that it makes 'unbundling' school provision possible—that is, it allows children to be served by providers from almost anywhere, in new and
more customized ways. But taking advantage of all the opportunities online learning offers means that there is no longer one conventional 'school' to hold accountable. Instead, students in a given building or district may be taking courses (or just sections of courses) from a variety of providers, each with varying approaches to technology, instruction, mastery, and so forth," Hess writes.
According to the Fordham Institute, "Hess makes a groundbreaking contribution by exploring the pros and cons of input regulation, outcome-based accountability, and market signals as solutions to the quality challenge. In the end, he recommends using all three approaches in careful combination so as to leverage their strengths and offset their weaknesses. In practice, that means demanding transparent financial information from providers, holding them to account for student achievement gains whenever possible, and developing 'crowd-sourcing' reporting systems to help educators, parents, and students identify the most effective purveyors of online learning."
Fordham adds that future papers in the series will tackle questions surrounding funding, governance, and the educator’s role in the digital learning arena. The papers are set to be released on a rolling basis later in 2011, the institute added.
Click here to read Rich Hess's Quality Control in K-12 Digital Learning: Three (Imperfect) Approaches.
Click here to read Liberation Learning Blog Contributor Tom Vander Ark's first impressions of Hess's work.