Dive Brief:

• Ohio’s largest online charter school, ECOT, is paid based on student enrollment like other charters, but State Auditor Dave Yost wants to change that by tying funding to student performance.
• WOSU Radio reports Yost would prefer to pay the school based on its ability to produce what the state wants — namely educated, numerate, literate students — though state Sen. Peggy Lehner, the Republican chair of the Ohio's Senate Education Committee, says costs beyond just teaching need to factor into any new formula.
• Chad Aldis, The Fordham Institute’s vice president for Ohio policy, says online charter schools provide the benefit of being able to track student performance, and he supports funding that ties into whether students are making progress.

Dive Insight:

In contrast, New Hampshire's virtual charter school is already paid based on student performance. Every class is broken up into specific competencies that students must master to get a passing grade — meaning the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School must ensure mastery to get paid.

In some ways, Ohio has been ground zero for the virtual charter school fight. The fast-growing ECOT has been criticized for poor student performance and for being run as a for-profit. In Ohio, students cannot opt to take just a single class virtually, they must leave their home school entirely, taking away one of the benefits of virtual learning as a tool to help students catch up on material.

That’s another difference with the non-profit New Hampshire school, where the vast majority of students are part-timers. One potential problem with replicating New Hampshire’s much-lauded system, though, is that if students take courses through VLACS, their home schools don’t get any less funding from the state. This facilitates a smooth relationship between the two types of schools, but may be harder to copy in larger states when more money is at stake.