Government Attacks K-12 Public Education in Virginia – Chapter 3: The Elusive Costs of the Government Option
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14 responses to “Government Attacks K-12 Public Education in Virginia – Chapter 3: The Elusive Costs of the Government Option”
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Not a bad gig for a school teacher. Pay is good. Stipend for extra degrees. Benefits and VRS. Partridge in a pear tree not included.
https://www.virtualvirginia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/VVA-Teacher-Salary-Scale-2021-2022.pdf-
Applicants have to compete for these jobs. They have the pay and benefits of teaching without any of the hassle, including commutes and meetings. As demand grows, supply of teachers will never be a constraint. The commercial companies even offer regular schools virtual subs.
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Jim, can you calculate a cost per student based on identifiable costs for Virtual Virginia? How does that compare to what the state pays Virtual Virginia’s competitors?
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Too hard. An accountant will have to do it.
One of my recommendations in my final chapter will be that the General Assembly commission an audit of the complete costs of both the VDOE and privately-run options.
A second will be that the General Assembly commission an assessment of the quality of educations provided by both. We have never seen an accounting of the SOL scores of the Virtual Virginia kids. But we know that those scores for MOP-educated kids are terrific even thought they take all applicants regardless of need.
Finally, we know the demographics of the MOP student bodies have the same percentage of Black kids as do the public schools as a whole. We don’t have corresponding information on the VDOE Virtual Virginia student body.
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Government does not want peons and serfs knowing the true cost of bloated government programs. They might get upset and vote with their pocketbooks and logic instead of their emotions.
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This is a common complaint made by advocates of privatization. It is that the true cost of the government program is not transparent because it does not include overhead such as HR, accounting, etc, which the private vendor must reflect in its fee if it expects to make a profit. The complaint has some legitimacy. I tend to think it has less legitimacy in this case. The school district has to provide those non-instructional services even if some of its students are enrolled full-time in Virtual Virginia.
I am just catching up on this series, so I apologize if you have covered any of this in your previous posts. Are full-time students enrolled in Virtual Virginia or a privately-run program included in a school division’s ADM? Does DOE have a fee schedule for students enrolled in Virtual Virginia? How much does it charge a school division for each student enrolled? Can students take single courses in Virtual Virginia? What is the cost? I know that home school students are not entitled to take Virtual Virginia courses without charge. How much is the charge for a home school student to take one course? What are the comparable charges by the private vendor?
A few other questions. What is the is for your statement that the school division uses its state basic aid funding and not local funds to pay for Virtual Virginia? I don’t think school divisions have separate accounts for state money and local money. The funds are fungible. And, even if that is the case, what does it matter?
Finally, the rapid growth of Virtual Virginia would seem to indicate that there is a demand for it and parents are generally satisfied with it. If parents don’t have to pay for it, as they would have to pay a private vendor, that seems to be a benefit.
Is the money that local school divisions pay DOE for Virtual Virginia money that it would have received from the state in any case? If so, it might be that local school divisions are being shortchanged. They have to pay for Johnny, Sue, and Bob to be enrolled full-time in Virtual Virginia, but having three fewer kids in the brick and mortar school does not reduce their costs any.
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Dick, You ask excellent questions. For the answers to most of them, see the first three episodes in the series:
https://www.baconsrebellion.com/government-attacks-on-parental-choice-in-virtual-k-12-public-education-in-virginia-chapter-2-the-regulatory-state/ ;
https://www.baconsrebellion.com/government-attacks-on-parental-choice-in-virtual-k-12-public-education-in-virginia-chapter-1-teacher-shortages/; and
https://www.baconsrebellion.com/government-attacks-on-parental-choice-in-virtual-k-12-public-education-in-virginia-a-prologue/.The questions you pose that may not be answered there I will answer below. I rolled this series out in that manner to try to build understanding coming up to this one and especially the next, which will offer solutions to rationalize publicly funded virtual K-12 education in Virginia.
Lots of things need fixing, starting with the fact that VDOE runs Virtual Virginia and regulates Virtual Virginia’s competitors.
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It is the complexity and lack of transparency of this “system” of virtual public K-12 education in Virginia that needs to be fixed, whatever one’s political views on how things ought to be.
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This is a common complaint made by advocates of privatization. It is that the true cost of the government program is not transparent because it does not include overhead such as HR, accounting, etc, which the private vendor must reflect in its fee if it expects to make a profit. The complaint has some legitimacy. I tend to think it has less legitimacy in this case. The school district has to provide those non-instructional services even if some of its students are enrolled full-time in Virtual Virginia. The school district is not asked to provide these services to students enrolled in the MOPs. So they represent a significant differential cost driver for Virtual Virginia.
I am just catching up on this series, so I apologize if you have covered any of this in your previous posts. Are full-time students enrolled in Virtual Virginia or a privately-run program included in a school division’s ADM? They are included in the ADM of the school division if they are enrolled in Virtual Virginia. They are enrolled in the ADM of the school holding the MOP contract, regardless of where they live, if their parents enroll them in a MOP. That has been by far the most popular parental choice until this year. Does DOE have a fee schedule for students enrolled in Virtual Virginia? Yes. How much does it charge a school division for each student enrolled? See https://www.virtualvirginia.org/fees-k-5/ Can students take single courses in Virtual Virginia? Yes. What is the cost? See https://www.virtualvirginia.org/fees-6-12/ I know that home school students are not entitled to take Virtual Virginia courses without charge. How much is the charge for a home school student to take one course? ibid. What are the comparable charges by the private vendor? The private vendor charges are not comparable to Virtual Virginia charges because of the reasons cited in the article above.
A few other questions. What is the is for your statement that the school division uses its state basic aid funding and not local funds to pay for Virtual Virginia? That is the reason that Virtual Virginia has the sliding scale. At the high end of ability-to-pay, say Loudoun, the school district would have to dip into local funds to pay the full tuition, much less the non-instructional costs. At the low end, Lee County would pay those costs and have state money left over. But on a statewide basis, the state share should cover the tuition costs of Virtual Virginia. I don’t think school divisions have separate accounts for state money and local money. The funds are fungible. And, even if that is the case, what does it matter? It matters because neither Virtual Virginia nor the MOPs wants districts faced with having to use local taxpayer funds for virtual education.. That is why the MOPs have to find districts with which to contract that have high enough state shares, which follow the child, to host out-of-district kids and make a profit on the transaction. Or at least not lose money.
Finally, the rapid growth of Virtual Virginia would seem to indicate that there is a demand for it and parents are generally satisfied with it. Read my article on the artificial suppression of the supply of MOP “capacity” for this calendar year, which caused them to have to deny admission to 4000 students. That coincided with the vast expansion of Virtual Virginia. If parents don’t have to pay for it, as they would have to pay a private vendor, that seems to be a benefit. Parents pay for neither option. The choice, assuming they are aware of it, is between
– enrolling their kids in the local public school and asking for virtual instruction, which will be evaluated and decided by the school, and if they agree, the school will apply to Virtual Virginia. This is the only option they will be offered by the local school unless that school district runs its own virtual school, and a few do.; and
– enrolling their kids directly with a MOP, which will provide that education to as many enrollees as they can under their existing contracts with school divisions to accept out-of-district kids.Since the MOPs have decades of experience doing this and the local school is not part of the equation, parents have for years overwhelmingly chosen the MOP option.
That option was foreclosed in 2021-21 for the 4000 kids mentioned above by the sudden cancellation by Richmond Public Schools of a contract with the leading MOP which had been in place for years.
Is the money that local school divisions pay DOE for Virtual Virginia money that it would have received from the state in any case? Yes. If so, it might be that local school divisions are being shortchanged. They have to pay for Johnny, Sue, and Bob to be enrolled full-time in Virtual Virginia, but having three fewer kids in the brick and mortar school does not reduce their costs any. It reduces their costs by not having to provide a teacher and a classroom for those kids. It does not reduce the rest of their costs.
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It is the complexity and lack of transparency of this “system” of virtual public K-12 education in Virginia that needs to be fixed, whatever one’s political views on how things ought to be.
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JS, I look forward to your recommendations, It appears to this layman on the sidelines, with adult children well past the need for secondary education of any kind, that this issue ought to demand attention from anyone interested in good government. I hope your recommendations end up providing (as they already have with the series thus far) a roadmap for the incoming Aimee Rogstad Guidera, Secretary of Education, who it has been noted is the founder and former CEO of the Data Quality Campaign.
The subject of providing effective, efficient virtual secondary education should attract attention from all sides of the current political divide, especially now with so much concern about alternatives to bricks-and-mortar school education. This is an opportunity for the new Gov to show that he’s for common sense simplification and transparency in one of Virginia’s most hide-bound bureaucracies.
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I understand that issue has the attention of both the new governor and of Ms. Guidera.
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You choose the latter… Why not both?
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[…] school are undefined. Virtual Virginia costs are so multifaceted and murky that they took their own Chapter in this series to partially […]
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