The Next Frontier in Public Education: Cyber Charter Schools

Introduction

As we move into the digital age, it follows that technology will be a vital component of the K-12 educational landscape. Technology has expanded to improve educational opportunities for students, and schools and districts have used technology to improve quality and access to the nation’s schools. Parental choice in public education has also increased this past decade in light of requirements of, among others, the No Child Left Behind (2001) legislation. The rapid expanse of charter schools, designed to encourage innovation and competition with public schools, was thought to revitalize traditional public education. Under state charter legislation, an additional advance in school reform has emerged. Combining the convenience of online learning and the innovation of school choice options, cyber charter schools seemingly provide the best of both worlds. Cyber charter schools are publicly funded K-12 schools which operate under a state’s charter school law. The primary differences between this type of learning and learning in a traditional classroom are location and accessibility (Hassel & Terell, 2004). Students are no longer confined to attend a geographically-assigned, brick and mortar school to account for their attendance. Cyber charter schools create “borderless” schools allowing students from various school districts and states to attend.

Today's brick and mortar schools are faced with a number of problems. Many are overcrowded or in deteriorating condition. School districts sometimes struggle to secure funds to repair existing facilities (Odden & Picus, 2004) or build new ones to accommodate a growing student population. In the current age of accountability, schools and school districts are facing tremendous pressure from lawmakers, education officials, and parents to produce students who are competent and able to fully participate and function in an ever-changing society. As a response to these challenges, cyber charter schools have emerged as a workable alternative to traditional forms of public education (Huerta, Gonzalez & d'Entremont, 2006).

The purpose of this chapter is to define and detail the growing interest in cyber charters as a viable option for school choice. This chapter provides a brief introduction to cyber charter schools, describing the history of school reform in the K-12 educational arena and detailing the legal and financial issues that have arisen with the advent of this type of innovative school. The second part of the chapter portrays cyber charters in practice by combining profiles of several currently operating cyber charter schools. The chapter then describes several of the issues and controversies that surround such an atypical form of public education and concludes with suggestions for future research. For purposes of this chapter, the terms cyber charter schools and cyber schools are used interchangeably and refer to an independently operated, public K-12 school that uses technology to deliver a significant portion of its instruction to students.