Virtual Charter Schools and Home Schooling By Carol Klein

Assumptions

It is assumed that honesty and integrity were exercised by those participating in the study. The researcher piloted the survey instrument with home schooling contacts beforehand to examine whether or not clarity and intended meaning of survey items had been achieved. These contacts had the opportunity to record the length of time needed to complete the survey and to make comments concerning the instru-ment. On the basis of these results, the survey was revised and edited before administering it to the sample group of parents. Surveys and questionnaires were completed only by volunteers and were self-administered so that participants would be free to express themselves without prying or intrusion. Interview prompts were open-ended, again to encourage freedom of expression. These procedures were followed to promote honesty and integrity throughout the study.

Significance

Virtual charter education is a whole new approach to public education that takes advantage of contemporary technologies to provide instruc-tion that is available anytime and anywhere. This can address the needs of home schooling families and other independent learners. Addition-ally, it presents an option that is highly structured, standards based, and tuition free for K-8 students. Because of its individualized approach, it is a model that exemplifies the essence of the No Child Left Behind Act in that it provides instruction at each child’s level and moves the children forward at their own pace in a sequenced fashion towards mastery. Since little research has been completed on this new approach, there is a need to answer questions about its functioning and performance. These questions were answered by seeking perspectives from school personnel and parents. This research attempts to address this need by adding exploratory, descriptive data to the existing educational knowledge base.