Online Schooling Grows in Colorado, but More Accountability Needed? Part Two

Read Part One

This story by Yesenia Robles and Kae Petrin appeared on Chalkbeat Colorado on October 11, 2022.

Enrollment in online schools in Colorado grew steadily before the pandemic, then surged as schools shut down in spring 2020, despite overall enrollment in public schools dropping.

Of schools that tested enough students to report state CMAS scores publicly this year, online schools tested on average 5 points lower than brick-and-mortar schools on English and 21 points lower on mathematics, out of a 850-point maximum.

Advocates for online schools say that many students who seek an online education weren’t doing well in traditional settings, and may already be starting behind or facing other challenges.

But there also have been questions about the quality of education and how engaged online students are. Back in 2016, an Education Week investigation of GOAL Academy, which at the time was the largest online school in the state, cited internal school data that nearly half of students didn’t log in at all during a typical week.

Bernie Zercher isn’t just a parent. As a local business owner, he was tapped to serve on the board of GOAL as the school made much-needed reforms. He agrees with the need for more oversight.

“The whole charter school world is the wild, Wild West of education,” Zercher said. “I have seen some crazy stuff, and crazy disregard for regulations.”

Renee Martinez, supervisor for the state Education Department’s office of online and blended learning, says the state does its best to provide oversight, but has been limited by multiple changes in the law. Some issues are just relayed back to authorizers.

As it does for all schools, the Education Department audits student course loads and credits to ensure districts receive the right amount of money for students, and to ensure that students aren’t being counted as enrolled in more than one school.

There’s never been reason to believe that any school is falsely inflating their enrollment counts, she said.

But, “of course we operate on best intentions, thinking they wouldn’t do that,” she said.

Martinez said her department was also disappointed in how little data on performance there was for online schools this year. This year, online schools were more likely than brick-and-mortar schools to have insufficient data to earn a state performance rating — a growing problem among online schools.

Zercher agrees schools can do something about this and should be held accountable for it.

For example, he thinks that test participation reflects on the relationship of the school with its students.

In his daughter’s case, he said, she was willing to be at the state fairgrounds at 7:30 a.m. for testing because of the relationship with her counselor.

“She loves her counselor and doesn’t want to disappoint them,” Zercher said.

The elementary school affiliated with Colorado Preparatory Academy, an online school run by K12, a for-profit national provider, this year fell to the state’s lowest rating, known as turnaround status. Before the pandemic it had received the highest rating. But the principal cautioned that this year’s rating was based on 18% of students testing.

“This was the lowest participation I’ve seen,” said Nicole Tiley, executive director for Colorado Preparatory Academy.

She surveyed families who opted out and found the main reason families cited for not testing was concern about health and safety. “We are very proactively thinking about how to improve that,” she said.

The school with the biggest enrollment increase since 2018, Astravo Online Academy High School, is one of eight schools under three brands, all under the umbrella of Colorado Education Solutions and authorized by the Byers 32J school district.

The Eastern Plains school district has made a business of authorizing online charter schools. Less than 10% of its 5,352 student enrollment attend its brick and mortar schools, while the other 90% attend one of its online charters. The district keeps 3% of state per-pupil money before passing on the rest to the schools.

Back in 2014, when the Education Department questioned Byers’ capacity to effectively manage so many online charter schools, Superintendent Tom Turrell wrote in a letter that his district was experienced, and that breaking up big K-12 schools into multiple schools would better help them evaluate how the schools were doing.

Years later, Turrell continues to defend the schools and deny that the large information gaps are problems.

The schools and their operator have existed under several names and brands since they first opened in the fall of 2012. The schools that have websites don’t list their principals or other staff or provide much information about the educational models. There’s just a phone number for a call center and a place to enter your email for more information.

According to a 2016 law, when schools change names, if they aren’t changing authorizers, meaning the district that oversees them, then they aren’t required to seek new state approval, even if they’re making significant changes to their management or learning model.

Since 2019, enrollment in Byers-authorized online schools has nearly tripled and those students now account for 16% of all the online students in the state.

In response to a public records request for the charter application and agreement between Byers and Astravo, Turrell initially said there was no contract. When the contract was provided by the state, Turrell said it had been a miscommunication. When asked again about the original charter applications, Turrell said he believed the application and the contract were one and the same. His school board did vote to approve the schools, he said.

Turrell said as an authorizer of eight multidistrict online schools, he’s not worried about the low participation rates on state tests and doesn’t feel there’s a lack of performance data.

Of the eight online schools authorized in Byers, none had enough data for state performance ratings this year, up from five of nine that didn’t have ratings in 2018. Colorado law requires state education officials to intervene in schools that have low ratings for five years or more, but the state cannot take any action when schools have insufficient data for years on end.

The district’s Astravo Online Academy High School, which experienced the state’s largest increase in enrollment among online schools from 2018 to 2021, hasn’t been issued a performance rating since 2016, in part because of low test participation. The school now has about 1,600 students.

“My kiddos are going to college, they are taking the SAT and PSAT very seriously,” Turrell said.

In fact, only 29% of Byers students pursued postsecondary education or the military after high school in 2021, compared with 55% statewide. Byers has lower-than-average test participation even among other online schools. Each of its online high schools had fewer than 10% of its eligible students take the SAT this year. Turrell said that he’s frustrated that students aren’t allowed to take state tests online.

“It really comes back to that opportunity to utilize an online platform,” he said.

Officials for Colorado’s Department of Education said that they’ve noticed that more schools overall this year had insufficient data to receive a performance rating, but officials haven’t looked into why online schools may struggle most with this, although they may in the coming months as ratings are finalized.

Turrell also doesn’t worry about Astravo Online Academy High School’s high withdrawal rate of 48.3%. In 2019-20, it was the highest in the state. These are students who leave school after the October count day. The school district still collects the money for these students but no longer has the expense of educating them.

The same state report shows that Astravo Online Academy High School also enrolls a lot of students after the state’s count day, even if the school doesn’t receive funding for them. In 2019-20, the school had 231 students withdraw and 622 enroll after count day.

“The data throughout the CDE mobility report are informed by the impact of those late-enrolling students,” Turrell said. “A thorough review of these facts is essential to consider when drawing conclusions.”

The Astravo schools in particular have high enrollment after count day, but most online schools, according to the report, also show enrollment after count day, and it’s also common among other schools.

Colorado Education Solutions has a limited public profile. A lawyer and a consultant for the group answered some questions, but could not point to where the charter network’s school board agendas, members, or meeting dates are posted online for the public.

The group, a charter network, is registered by attorney Brad Miller as a state nonprofit in good standing with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office. The charter network is not a federal nonprofit and doesn’t have to file a Form 990 that would disclose more information about its structure and finances, according to Mary Gifford, a consultant advising the charter network.

Open questions about online schools prompted lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 129 in 2019. The law aims to increase accountability for online schools by requiring that performance ratings follow a school even if it closes and reopens with a new name. It also requires the state to submit annual reports on how often students leave a school after count day, when enrollment for funding purposes is made official.

Martinez said the reports ensure State Board of Education members are more informed about online schools, but they haven’t led to much change.

“We implement the legislation and sometimes when there’s certain things like [Senate Bill] 129, it seemed like it was going to be maybe a game changer,” Martinez said. “In reality the impact wasn’t as significant.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org. Kae Petrin is a data & graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.