State policy should not influence instructional modality

(This blog post expands on testimony that I gave to a working group of the Texas Virtual Education Commission last week.)
 
How students in online and hybrid schools should be funded, and at what levels, has been a topic of debate for as long as online schools have existed. The Digital Learning Collaborative (DLC) has touched on these issues in our recent funding report and blog post, and will explore these issues further in an upcoming webinar.
 
Prepping for the Texas Commission hearing, however, got me thinking about a simple way to state my belief on this issue:
 
“The state should not put its 'thumb on the scale' regarding instructional modalities that are available to students.”
 
I believe in the above statement because as of fall 2022:

• most students and teachers experienced a form of online learning during the remote learning of the pandemic,

• we have seen increases in enrollment in online and hybrid schools,

• more college students than ever are taking at least one online course,

• and plenty of evidence exists that online learning can be successful.

With all these elements in place, decisions as to whether students will learn online, f2f, or in combination, should be made by students, families, teachers, and educators. State policy should be neutral on this topic.

What does this mean in practice? In part, it means that the state should not be influencing the decisions being made by districts to offer online and hybrid schools by either:

• Funding students at these schools at lower levels, or

• Creating friction with difficult student accounting procedures, in particular those that ignore that students are often choosing these options for their time flexibility.

These first principles don’t cover all potential questions, of course. Although funding students at the same level regardless of modality is fairly easy conceptually, accounting for student funding purposes quickly runs into challenges when shifting from face-to-face to online.

But a lot of questions come up that are easily addressed by adhering to the first-order principle that the state should leave instructional modality decisions entirely to families, students, teachers, and schools.