Competing for the Virtual Student: As the For-Profit Sector Gets into the Virtual School Business, Public Schools Begin to Vie for the Online Student at the Same Time They Find New Ways to Help Them Be Successful

THE CLOVIS UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT (CA) first considered creating a full-time online school about four years ago. Clovis Unified is as a high-performing district, but it was losing 200 to 400 students ear. In a district with a total enrollment of nearly 38,000, those numbers n t seem so bad, but officials realized only about half of those students were dropouts; rest were opt-outs. What we saw in those statistics was that our students have real alternatives to what our traditional schools have to offer, says Rob Darrow, principal of district's two-year-old virtual charter school. Most K-12 school districts know that they're losing kids who are going to other programs to get their needs met, they know that they're going to have to offer some kind of online program to meet those needs if they're going to survive. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Using term survive seems a bit like hyperbole until you consider some broader statistics: About 45,000 K-12 students in United States took an online course in 2000; by 2009 that number had already grown to more than 3 million. In their book, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change Way World Learns, authors Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, Michael B. Horn predicted that 50 percent of all high school courses will be delivered online by 2019. Earlier this year market researchers at Ambient Insight published a report predicting that between 2010 2015, online learning in K-12 market will grow at a compound annual rate of 43 percent--warp speed for even most dynamic industry. Of course, K-12 districts haven't exactly been sitting on online-learning sidelines. In fact, says Hall Davidson, director of global learning initiatives at Discovery Education, by pioneering online learning proving its effectiveness, K-12 districts have unwittingly broadened market for for-profit schools. very clear that online learning has found its time place, he says, and it lies at heart of some serious competition between traditional brick-and-mortar schools entrepreneurial proprietary schools that are taking advantage of charter movement. It's just so easy in many states now for an online entity to come in take enrollment. Here in California, can enroll my daughter in an online program through a charter school in another county with a few mouse clicks. Some districts realize how heavy competition is--that there's competition now for attendance dollars that were safer in past--and some don't. think educational community in general needs a Paul Revere to sound alarm. Davidson, a former teacher producer of educational television, sounded that alarm during his presentation (Build It or They Will Go: Community vs. Enrollment Erosion) for June 2011 ISTE conference in Philadelphia. He told attendees that districts must recognize the phenomenon of proprietary innovation, essentially same kind of disruptive technological change that has rocked newspapers, photo processing industry, music business. They must find a way to own online learning technology space aggressively identify move forward with benefits of educational technology. If they don't, he warned, for-profit schools will, enrollment erosion will begin a hollowing-out of K-12 district pupil populations that will be difficult to reverse. Looking at online learning programs as something that provides a competitive advantage makes some people uncomfortable, as though we're being too capitalistic turning students into customers, says Matthew Wicks, vice president of strategy organizational development at International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit membership association. I feel that way, too, sometimes. But it has resulted in administrators thinking of ways to better meet student needs. …