Technology, Free Appropriate Public Education, and Progress Monitoring: Glows and Grows

• In Event: Chartering New Territory: Cyber Schools, Charter Schools, and Virtual Special Education—Pitfalls, Obstacles, Dilemmas, and Solutions

Abstract

Technology has enhanced the way we educate students. Cyber schools have become the fastest growing form of delivering a FAPE to identified students served under IDEA and ADA. However, conflicts over the extent to which meaningful instruction can be delivered, progress monitoring can be evaluated effectively, and related services provided has expanded the legal framework of IDEA and equally sparked new discussions around FAPE violations. Additionally, cyber schools, unlike traditional brick and mortar charters, are faced with the task of delivering instruction and assessments in the home, or at educational centers, with the parents’ active involvement. This can sometimes complicate teaching and learning or can enhance the delivery of instruction and teaching. Additionally, issues around interventions and progress monitoring have evolved through the growth of cyber charters. For example, responsiveness to intervention, an approach to deliver evidenced based instruction to remediate a learning problem looks very different in some cyber charters than in traditional schools (Fuchs, Morgan & Young, 2003; Kavale & Spalding, 2008) Intervention and assessments, such as RtI can be delivered via live or recorded lessons, in the home or at a satellite sight. Diagnostics and assessments can be delivered at the convenience of the student and recorded for optimum use for students with more severe needs or other limitations. Technology and cyber education through school choice has arrived. However, there are some problems.

Parents may have concerns and questions around the initial evaluation timeline for their child and how these data can be collected without a live body. Additionally, the traditional observation of student learning and performance is left to a pre-recorded teacher with only the completed diagnostic data to capture student behaviors and reactions to instruction. More so, when students have questions about a topic or encounter problems, there may be a delay in the response or no response at all depending on the mode and delivery of instruction and intervention. Overall, cyber parents maintain a positive stance on cyber education, and students continue to enroll at record numbers, making this form of schooling an attractive option to the tradition brick and mortar charter and public school (Finn, Caldwell & Raub, 2006). This presentation seeks to raise critical questions and answers around what is working in the way of delivery of special education, how do we know, and what innovative technologies provide these data? The presenters use an action research methodological framework to share the aforementioned and conclude with glows and grow for the cyber education charter school movement.

Author

• Michele Moser, The George Washington University