“Can you see me?” asks a little girl with braids in her hair, sitting outside on her picnic blanket. It’s a sunny day. Uplifting music plays in the background. The clip cuts to a boy flipping through books in a library. “What do you see when you look at me?” he asks.
Ads like this one seem to be working. In the 2016-2017 school year, full-time online learning programs enrolled around 300,000 students nationwide. Almost half of those students are enrolled in schools powered by two for-profit companies: Connections Academy (owned by Pearson Education) and K12 Inc. Obtaining charters from the state, As the music builds, kids of all ages play outside, model these education management organizations, or EMOs, clay sculptures, or laugh with operate their online friends. All of them ask variations schools, hiring principals As a whole, however, full-time online on the same questions: “Do you and making calls on schools are proven to be ineffective for see what makes me unique? curriculum. Do you see what makes me the vast majority of students. Virtual brilliant?” But the true picture of students spent the same amount of time cyber schools may not with a teacher in a week as traditional In this commercial, K12 Inc., the be as sunny as their public school students did in a day. country’s largest cyber education advertising suggests. company, paints a compelling While the most recent picture. Asking the audience to academic reports show consider what makes each child improvement in their “uniquely brilliant,” they offer up their tuition-free, online ratings, cyber schools have proven ineffective for the vast public schools as a space for that brilliance to thrive. With majority of enrolled students. its abundance of sunshine and smiles, the ad makes virtual education look like an experience worth buying into. A 2015 report published by three independent research institutions, including Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO), indicated that some
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