The local school committee that runs the state’s only online public elementary and secondary school has voted to shut it down rather than allow it to be subjected to state regulatory oversight.
The Massachusetts Virtual Academy, or MAVA, which was operated by the Greenfield Public Schools, will close on June 30, the town’s school committee decided by a 7-0 vote.
Students at the school, which costs Massachusetts taxpayers almost $2.5 million a year, score far below other students in the state on standardized assessment tests, and half quit during the academic year or fail to return the next year, the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) found.
Under a new law approved in January, the school would have been subjected to state regulatory oversight for the first time, had it continued to operate.
MAVA’s students come from 148 Massachusetts school districts, which pay Greenfield $5,000 per year, per student. Greenfield, in turn, contracts with a Virginia-based company called K12 to provide instruction and other services. Under the supervision of a “learning coach”—usually a parent—each student interacts an average of four times a week online with a teacher, according to the district’s superintendent, Susan Hollins.
Supporters of the virtual school contend that its students score so poorly on assessment tests because they arrive performing below grade level in math and reading. But internal reports obtained by NECIR show that the proportion of students at the school who required special education was far lower than the state average. In addition, the reports indicate that fewer than one in five MAVA students enrolled because of a medical condition, fear of bullying, or other safety issues, one student because she was pregnant or parenting, and 28 percent because they were taking advanced courses, not because they were behind.
In spite of this, state and local records reviewed by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting show that MAVA students scored lower on Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests in math than their counterparts at all but four other schools or districts in the state, including a charter school in Springfield that is on academic probation.
Thirty percent of the MAVA students received the lowest rating of “warning/failing” on the MCAS in math and 20 percent in English language arts—double and almost double the state average.
Twenty-five percent dropped out last year, and, each fall, another 20 to 30 percent have not come back.
Supporters of the school will have a chance to appeal its closing at the school committee meeting Thursday.
Should the shutdown proceed, however, students now enrolled at MAVA will have to find some other type of schooling in the fall, drop out, or return to their home districts.
In other states, students returning to conventional schools from virtual ones were disproportionately behind their classmates, putting additional pressure on the districts to bring them up to speed.
