Tacoma, Washington. Dec. 4: State auditors contend online programs run by three school districts, including two in the South Sound, might owe the state anywhere from $80,000 to $5.3 million for incorrectly documenting the number of students taking Internet classes.

They say the problems cited by auditors stem from trying to track enrollment, learning hours and academic progress in the expanding frontier of online education.

Auditors dinged Federal Way for not having a form signed by those students’ parents saying they understood their children were not being homeschooled, Federal Way chief financial officer Sally McLean said.

She said requiring parents to sign a form in those cases seems bureaucratic. While tweaking that rule would be easy, she said, “Some of the more challenging discussion might wrap around how you measure student progress in an online academy.”

Tags: Internet classes, online education, virtual school programs

This entry was posted on December 7, 2008 at 8:13 am and is filed under Politics, Public School at Home, Public School Participation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.