Bill Bennett’s sleazy plan to get home schooled students back into the public schools is succeeding in part, at least in Arkansas. Bennett’s K-12 schools are, according to Bryan Flood, spokesman for K-12, “run by a government entity; [its] accountable to take standardized tests; there’s a set curriculum. By almost any objective standards, this is a public program.”
Some (not too bright) parents think they are home schooling under the Bennett virtual schools K-12 program. The truth is that their kids are in public school, just “at home.” Big difference, as experience from other states reveals.
It pays Bennett to obfuscate the true status of these schools, but even Randall Greenaway, the head of the Arkansas Virtual School states that home schoolers have been the objective all along. Greenaway notes that “this is a new public school choice that brought students back into the local school system.”
As a choice for public schoolers who lack better alternatives, virtual schools may be a fine idea. Bennett’s disingenuous efforts to snag huge government grants for the program, and then market them as some kind of home school option, however, are the classic Trojan Horse fraud. I suppose it’s “buyer beware.”
Note: the “sleazy plan” is the same Education Week article that Roy’s earlier blog cites. KP
