Quality crackdown

If the state's newly released high school graduation rate report serves just one purpose, it should be as impetus for a crackdown on virtual charter schools, including one which more than doubled in size after graduating only 22 of its 1,009 seniors last spring.

Senate Bill 183 would serve as a check on Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy, which posted a graduation rate of 2.18 percent, compared with a state average of 88.1 percent. The legislation would terminate the charter for Indiana Virtual Pathways and Indiana Virtual School at the end of their current terms and would limit the enrollment of other online schools.

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, cited the Indiana Chalkbeat investigation during a June congressional committee hearing on charter schools, calling out Indiana Virtual School as an example of the failed promises of online charter schools. Her remarks followed comments by Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, R-3rd, who boasted of Indiana's charter school laws as a model for other states and praised the schools for creating more opportunities and lifting academic achievement.