National Charter School Body Advocates Hybrid Learning Arrangements

Teacher Shawn Abernathy (R) teaches math concepts using a modern computer projection board at Harlem Success Academy, a free, public elementary charter school in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

In the Gem Prep charter school system in Idaho, high school students earn autonomy to pursue independent learning activities at their chosen times and locations if they perform well enough in online middle school classes and homework assignments.

At the Charter School of San Diego (CSSD), at-risk children split time between remote learning and classroom instruction at one of 19 facilities across the city. Under that arrangement, CSSD won the nation’s highest presidential honor for academic quality in 2015 and again in 2021.

And at the Arizona State University Preparatory Academy charter school system, each student is paired with a personalized learning adviser who helps them customize instruction arrangements that blend in-person classes, remote instruction, family learning time, and field trips.

These three examples are cited in the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools’ (NAPCS) most recent research report, “In Our New Hybrid World, Where Do Public Charter Schools Fit?”

The study, released earlier in July, precedes the start of an academic year in which the vast majority of U.S. states will allow some form of school choice. In the past year alone, five states created new school choice programs and five other states expanded their existing programs, according to EdChoice, a nonprofit agency that promotes educational freedom.

Learning Outside the Classroom

The concepts and examples of flexible learning options noted in NAPCS' report are not commonplace yet, but they could see growth across the country in the future if charter school systems continue to perform well and garner support from local and state governments, said Christy Wolfe, the organization’s senior vice president for policy, research, and planning.

With a customized education, she said, students will be more engaged, and chronic absenteeism rates will drop.

“There’s better engagement with variety,” Ms. Wolfe told The Epoch Times. “It’s not just the same six classes daily.”

Moreover, she added, with the increasing number of students who need a nontraditional school arrangement to accommodate intensive training schedules for elite-level sports or performing arts programs outside of their local public-school systems, the demand for flexible and blended learning will grow.

Those programs are also better suited for children with autism or other disabilities that require a greater degree of parental and family participation for their social and intellectual development, she said.

The report identifies a build-your-own education model that offers choices like “micro-schools” (one-room schoolhouses with about 15 students), hybrid-homeschool splits, learning pods for small groups of young students in which parents rotate supervision duties and hire a teacher, independent studies, blended learning mixes of remote and in-person learning, and non-classroom based (NCB) learning where students spend less than 80 percent of their time in a classroom but are also not expected to complete all of their remote learning tasks at home.

The report notes that in California, NCBs are designated as a state-funded, free public school option where parents sign an agreement with local NCB administrators. They serve 213,000 students.

Charter schools receive public school tax dollars and are required to follow state curriculum requirements led by state-certified teachers, but unlike traditional public schools, some states require charters to maintain certain student performance levels to remain eligible for continued funding.

Ms. Wolfe said many states will presumably face challenges in categorizing blended and flexible learning arrangements to meet government regulations and funding requirements. There is plenty of lawmaker guidance for public and private schools, but not for a combination of the two.

“People tend to be very narrow in their categories,” she said.

More Freedom for Students

The Gem Prep charter school system in Idaho offers a “Learning Societies” program where online instruction is supplemented with in-person lessons for small groups of students in rural areas. The idea is to provide quality in-person learning opportunities but also give students online access to electives, college-level courses that are paid for by the state, and specialized teachers in urban areas, said Jason Bransford, Gem Prep’s CEO.

Gem Prep was established in 2004, but the blended learning options for students in kindergarten through third grade were not offered until 2022. Only 18 percent of the students in those four grades could read when the program began in 2022, but by the end of that first academic year, the literacy rate increased to 58 percent, Mr. Bransford told The Epoch Times.

The older students are required to participate in all standardized testing and also take weekly quizzes and monthly assessments, as their individualized learning plan is watched closely. If their performance is acceptable based on those metrics, the students are free to pursue a mix of in-person and remote instruction, internships with local employers, career exploration opportunities, and community service projects that could even include teaching younger students in the same school district, Mr. Bransford said.

“We don’t micromanage every minute of their day and every class period,” he said. “That doesn’t mimic real life.”

Mr. Bransford shared the example of his son, who graduated from a Gem Prep high school program last year. He was able to balance schoolwork with personal pilot training and a part-time job that paid for the flight instruction and license fee.

“If you keep meeting your deadlines, you can keep working out there where you want and on what you want. A lot of learning happens offline,” Mr. Bransford said. “This arrangement gave him a leg up to do that.”