There is a new conversation taking place in public education on creating systemic incentives through school finance to encourage schools to innovate and be rewarded for positive student outcomes and performance. What if education funding was not based on seat-time, but on rewarding student performance? Performance-based funding is a term that…

Public schools in the United States operate under state accountability systems that vary by state and are meant to measure individual school performance against criteria determined by state policymakers. The purpose of these systems is to hold each school accountable for increasing student performance. However, it has become clear that a single…

Many reports on rural education give little attention to digital learning. At most, they tend to note either infrastructure needs or the potential of remote course access, with little focus on instruction, outcomes, or exemplars. This report intends to begin correcting that imbalance by connecting the dots between rural regions, rural education,…

"Keeping Pace with K-12 Online & Blended Learning" (2013), the 10th in a series of annual reports that began in 2004, examines the status of K-12 online education across the country. The report provides an overview of the latest policies, practices, and trends affecting online learning programs across all 50 states. In this 10th…

"Keeping Pace with K-12 Digital Learning" (2014) is the 11th in a series of annual reports that began in 2004 that examine the status of K-12 online education across the country. The report provides an overview of the latest policies, practices, and trends affecting online learning programs across all 50 states. It summarizes that at a…

Online learning has steadily become a more integral strategy for schools and districts in their efforts to offer students greater access to the courses they need. Where in the past, much of the online learning activity happened at the state level or regional level, more and more schools are exercising greater control over their online and digital…

Online charter schools are one key subset of the K-12 online education landscape, which also includes state virtual schools, district-level online programs, private providers of both individual courses and entire schools, and others. As of late 2010, online and blended charter schools existed in more than 20 states, serving more than 100,000…

Online learning continues to grow rapidly across the United States and the world, opening new learning opportunities for students and families. Informed estimates put the number of K-12 students in online courses at over 1 million, as parents and students are choosing online courses and schools for a variety of reasons that grow out of their…

This is the eighth annual "Keeping Pace" report. When the authors look back on 2011 from some future year, it may be clear in retrospect that 2011 was the year that online and blended learning went digital, transcending their distance-learning or computer-based instruction origins and taking root in classrooms and schools across the…

"Keeping Pace" has several goals. First, it strives to add to the body of knowledge about online education policy and practice, and make recommendations for advances. Second, it serves as a reference source for information about programs and policies across the country, both for policymakers and practitioners who are new to online…

The literature on Web-based instruction (WBI) is reviewed, focusing initially on the terminology, history, and commentary (pro and con) related to the topic. The advantages and disadvantages associated with WBI are then discussed and an overview of the empirical work on WBI, paying particular attention to studies on student satisfaction and…

Most educators, parents, and policymakers think of "online learning" as a subset of distance learning (where the students and teacher are geographically separate), in which content delivery and communication are achieved primarily through the use of computers connected by the Internet. However, online learning can be either distance…

In at least 44 states across the country, students are logging in to learn at all times of the day and night--accessing courses they might otherwise be unable to take, interacting with students they might otherwise never know, and working with highly qualified teachers they otherwise could not access. In these and countless other ways, online…

"Keeping Pace" has several goals. First, it strives to add to the body of knowledge about online education policy and practice and make recommendations for advances. Second, it serves as a reference source for information about programs and policies across the country, both for policymakers and practitioners who are new to online…

Researchers studying socialization in online learning note that definitions are quite broad, suggesting that "Socialization is about people being able to mingle and establish connections on one or more levels. They speak[with] one another; share ideas and information and confirm the connections made through an agreed upon means." More broadly,…