By SARAH ROSS
Updated at 5:38 PM on Dec. 8, 2011
Photo by bionicteaching/Flickr.com
PORTLAND, Ore.- Enrollment in Oregon’s two largest virtual charter schools has jumped, following the removal of a legislatively imposed enrollment cap that limited the number of students each school could accept.
The Oregon Virtual Academy (ORVA) has more than doubled its number of students since the cap previously held enrollment at 600 students. ORVA now has over 1,300 students and two additional grade levels, 9th and 10th grades. The school was previously capped at 8th grade.
The Oregon Connections Academy (ORCA) has reached a student enrollment of 3,000 students, with 700 to 800 students who are pending enrollment or who have started the enrollment process. Last year, the school was capped at 2,574 students.
Laura Dillon, an elementary school teacher and the outreach liaison at ORCA, said that not all students pending enrollment will finish the process for various reasons.
Dillon and Jim Moyer, head of schools at ORVA, both agreed that lifting the enrollment cap on virtual charter schools directly affected the increase in students experienced by each school.
“Families know that they are not going to be put on a waiting list and they don’t have to wait to be enrolled in our school,” said Dillon.
Both Moyer and Dillon agreed that an increase of such magnitude is unlikely to be repeated over the next few years.
“I don’t think we’ll continue to grow next year as we did this year,” said Moyer, adding he would be shocked if the school’s enrollment grew as much in the next year.
While the legislative enrollment cap placed on virtual charter schools in 2009 was lifted in a legislative session earlier this year, there is still a cap on school districts.
Each school district is limited at sending 3 percent of its student body to an online charter school. Once this 3 percent limit is reached, students must seek their home districts approval to attend an online school.
For ORVA, lifting the cap was not the only contribution to an increase in students. Another part of the legislation passed earlier in the year allowed parents to withdraw their children from their home school district without that district’s approval. Moyer added that this probably had a larger impact on the school’s enrollment than the actual cap did.
Around one percent of public school students in Oregon attend a full-time online charter school, according to Dillon.
Time will tell if virtual charter schools actually work as advertised. In two or three years time, let’s see what the actual graduation rates look like. Better yet, hopefully there will be a follow up on the graduates on how they do as they migrate into higher education.
This gives the children to exercise their initiative and concentrate on their studies: not teacher propoganda. Property taxes should be reduced for those that enroll because they are using less resources
than the normal govt. school
Mark,
ORCA opened in 2005.
Time has told and they get far more scrutiny tham most bricks and mortar charter schools.
Not everyone that attends an online public charter will graduate from that charter. Some end up attending community colleges or enter the military before graduation. They may end up choosing another school, so how can the graduation rate be accurately reported? I didn’t know that all private schools and all bricks and mortar schools track their graduates. I would love to see in time what my local bricks and mortar produces!