NC charter office: No one on staff to evaluate virtual schools

The state office that authorizes North Carolina’s charter schools has nobody on staff who can evaluate a virtual one, according to its executive director.

The revelation came during the State Board of Education’s Aug. 5 meeting. Board member John Blackburn had asked whether the Office of Charter Schools can review remote charter academies the way it reviews brick-and-mortar campuses.

“We do not have the resources to do academic support and academic reviews,” said Ashley Logue, executive director of the office. “We have too few resources to go to our low-performing schools that… really need that support. But we at least have experience in going into a school and working with leaders and coaching teachers. I don’t have anyone on staff that has experience going to a remote charter academy and trying to understand how to support those teachers or students.”

“As a board member, that’s a concern for me,” Blackburn replied.

Accelerated by the pandemic, virtual schooling is a new wave of school-choice options available to North Carolina families. But some education policymakers are concerned the development is arriving faster than the system built to oversee it can handle.

State lawmakers authorized remote charter academies in 2023. Seven opened in 2024, while 19 will operate this fall. Meanwhile, the Office of Charter Schools, which approves and monitors the virtual academies, has averaged fewer than seven full-time employees since 2009, a stretch in which the number of charter schools in the state grew nearly 122%, according to Logue.

North Carolina’s charter sector will begin the 2026-27 school year with 217 charter public school units, she said, 213 of them with physical campuses. Fifteen of those also run a remote academy, while four are standalone virtual schools with no campus.

“Previously, if someone asked me how many charter schools are there in North Carolina, it was fairly easy for me to say there’s 211, because I have 211 public school units operating under 211 charter agreements,” Logue said. “Now, it is much more complicated.”

Charters enrolled more than 161,000 students last year, 10.5% of the state’s public school population, and 138 schools reported waitlists totaling more than 59,000 students, though the report notes some names may be duplicates. North Carolina ranks fourth in the nation for charter enrollment growth over the past six years.

Logue told the board that demand for online instruction is not going to recede, and that some virtual programs are already working. She pointed to district-run virtual schools serving high shares of economically disadvantaged students while posting solid academic results.

“My question is: What are they doing that’s making it work?” Logue said. “I think we should certainly look into those schools that are doing it well and learn from them, because the demand from parents is not going away.”

Vice Chair Alan Duncan pressed the other direction, on the four statewide virtual charters that enroll roughly 10,000 students.

“I remain deeply troubled by the amount of money that is being sent to [those] four charter schools,” Duncan said. “Their recent track record is extremely poor from an academic standpoint. This board in fact voted to terminate them at one point, and that was later reversed by the legislature in a specific act.”

“That’s come up in our charter board meetings as well,” Logue replied.

The report’s academic findings, first presented to the Charter Schools Review Board in June, showed charters improving on most measures, with more schools earning A’s and B’s and fewer F’s. In addition, the report found fewer schools identified as low-performing. But college and career readiness ran the other way, falling to 38.9%, with every reported subgroup declining. Students with disabilities posted a readiness rate of 10.3%, the lowest of any subgroup.

Asked why students with disabilities are losing ground, Shaun Kellogg, who presented the accountability data, told Duncan he could not say.

“I don’t have an answer to that question. It’s a good one,” Kellogg said. “I would be totally speculating.” He told the board it would help to know whether traditional public schools, particularly those comparable to charters, show the same trend.

Logue said the strongest defense is refusing to approve weak schools in the first place. “If you let a charter school open in a weak position, you are setting it up for failure,” she said.

The board approved the report Aug. 6, sending it to the General Assembly.

The first renewals for remote charter academies are still a few years out. Logue told the board her office is building that process now.

“NC charter office: No one on staff to evaluate virtual schools” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.