Texas tied its own hands on online education
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the closing of schools across America — some for the rest of the school year. Public school leaders are scrambling to come up with ways to keep learning on track during this education shutdown. Like thousands of parents across Texas, Ted and I have been thrust into the role of part-time teacher. Unfortunately, some states have the ability to provide more resources to hardworking K-12 educators and parents than Texas does right now.
In Texas, we are hampered by a law enacted in 2013 greatly restricting full-time online education to just six of the state’s 1,254 school districts and charter schools. Correctly, in response to the current pandemic, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath quickly issued a waiver overriding the 2013 moratorium. However, the state begins this battle with a small infrastructure of providers and courses.
The state of Texas created the Texas Virtual School Network, TXVSN, in 2007 and robustly funded its early development to spur the review and approval of providers and courses. In the 2010-11 biennium, the state of Texas funded the TXVSN at $10.5 million a year so they could review and approve new courses. However, in 2013, the state effectively banned new providers of full-time virtual education, including almost all of the state’s public school districts.
This year, the state provided only $400,000 for the TXVSN, a number the Texas Education Agency says is not enough for them to review and approve new courses. As a result, the course offerings by online providers in Texas are much more limited than in other states. Not surprisingly, course enrollments have dramatically fallen from their 2010 peak.
Unfortunately, despite all of the technological improvements of the last decade, Texas is less prepared to offer online education during this crisis than we were 10 years ago.
The public universities of Texas have provided a model for K-12. Over the last six years, public universities in Texas have developed their online capacity for educating students. When the coronavirus hit Texas, and students were sent home, the state’s public universities already had a robust set of classes available online and quickly shifted the rest of their classes online to help students stay on track. Meanwhile, the state’s K-12 schools are still scrambling to make this happen — and the TXVSN is of little help because there is very little existing infrastructure to build upon and quickly ramp up.
In contrast, a state like Florida is outpacing Texas. The state is rapidly ramping up virtual school training for teachers. The Florida Department of Education is working with the Florida Virtual School to offer all school districts student support and teacher professional development tailored to the online learning environment. The state is offering $200 stipends to teachers who complete the training with an immediate goal of training an additional 10,000 teachers statewide. In addition to teacher training, FLVS is increasing its server capacity to educate 470,000 full-time students by April 17 and 2.7 million students by May 4.
When the Texas Legislature returns, one of its priorities should be the elimination of the 2013 moratorium on new online education providers. The Legislature should look to provide more funding for the approval of providers and courses as well as training for teachers across the state in how to educate students online — and make sure there is accountability in all virtual providers.
Texas is the best state in the Union, and there is no reason we cannot be on the cutting edge of virtual learning. It’s the right thing to do for our kids, our educators and hardworking parents across the state.
Cruz is chairwoman of the Texas Federation for Children, a project of American Federation for Children, a 501(c)(4) organization, which is the nation’s leading organization seeking to empower families, especially lower-income families, with the freedom to choose the best K-12 education for their children.