Yesterday I wrote about the reasons usually heard for regulating correspondence schools. I made the case that statewide correspondence schools (SWC) require regulation because they have no statewide oversight. In-district schools have sufficient local oversight.

Here are the typical reasons given to not regulate the two different types of correspondence schools. As before, my opinions are in italics.

Stated Reasons SWC’s Should Not be Regulated

• Parents should be allowed to spend the money however they want on their own kids’ education. In practice, this is a voucher. Alaska’s constitution clearly states this is not allowed.
• SWC students should be treated equal to in-district students. The 2 types of schools are very different and thus cannot be equal. In many ways they may appear similar but they are very different. This is a big picture concept.
• Homeschool kids do better on testing and so parents should have the freedom to spend however they like. This is clearly false based upon data presented in last September’s work session. Homeschool kids perform comparably to students in traditional classrooms.
• SWC’s provide choice for parents. This is true. However, this is not the path to choice given by the legislature. The legislature determined that charter schools are the way to provide choice and wrote very strong statute to support it. Much greater freedom is obtained with a charter. SWC parents should enroll in one in their local district or start a new one if they do not like the restrictions placed on SWC’s.
• Homeschooling is cheaper and therefore extravagance with public funds is justified since it is still cheaper than educating a student in a brick and mortar school. No matter the dollar amount, unacceptable use of public funds is still wrong.

Reasons In-District Programs Should Not be Regulated

• No specific need or inappropriate practices for regulation stated. The Board’s Memorandum states only that there has been "much public comment." Is that all that is necessary to change regulations and increase the State’s  oversight and to ignore adequate local control.
• Motivation for the proposed packet is unstated and unclear. We don’t know who wrote the proposed regs. Stakeholders had no input into regulation development process as was the case with the current regulations.
• Local School boards already provide LOCAL oversight. This cannot be overstated. LOCAL SCHOOL BOARDS PROVIDING LOCAL OVERSIGHT ALIGNED WITH COMMUNITY STANDARDS AND NEEDS!
• Proposed regs have apparently been written without regard for local policies. In many cases, standards are lowered by state reg. Part of the current regulation was taken directly from Frontier’s Charter. I think we can state the case that an unintended result will be to restrict in-district programs from being creative and innovative.
• SPED services are already provided by local schools for in-district programs.
• Many in-district programs are charter schools approved by the State Board and Local Board. The proposed regs produce de facto charter changes. There is a path to change a charter and it is collaborative not regulatory. This is my big beef. The State Board already blessed our charter now they want a do-over without negotiation or collaboration or grounds and without input from the ASD Board with whom they also have a contract. These regs will likely have the unintended consequence of causing charter schools to close. Again, charters are the path to school choice and curricular freedom granted by the legislature. This Board would ignore that to give favor to districts who want to enroll statewide without legal authority.

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