Colorado's Cyber Charter Schools: The Challenges of Regulation in a Virtual Space

Abstract

Cyber charter schools have proved difficult for states nationwide to regulate, and Colorado has not been immune to this difficulty. The unique issues associated with regulating cyberspace are particularly challenging in the field of education, in large part due to its long-established real-space norms. Colorado’s legislative efforts to remedy its cyber charters’ poor performance have not shown a distinction between the ways in which regular and cyber schools are regulated, which has contributed to stagnant and, in some cases, even declining academic performance by those schools. There are other states, notably Pennsylvania, whose legislation has been more successful in creating new regulatory norms for cyber charters, which has produced far better results in those schools. Colorado’s current efforts to create a new regulatory regime for its cyber charter schools are promising, and this progress would be furthered by learning from the successes of other states in the field of online education. Cyber charter schools in Colorado are performing poorly due to their lack of cyberschool-specific regulatory standards, and this could be remedied by 1) implementing more pre-authorization regulations and 2) facilitating a support role by cyber charters’ authorizers by lessening post-authorization regulatory requirements.