Homeschool, correspondence students lag those in public schools; Mat-Su has a solution

Homeschool students studying through correspondence courses lag their counterparts in public schools in high school graduation rates, data from the state Legislature’s research division shows.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District is no exception. In 2024 86% of Mat-Su high school seniors graduated compared with 74% of students in correspondence programs, according to a report by Jennifer Pemberton, a legislative research analyst.

The report was made available to the Legislature’s Joint Education Task Force, which has been meeting this fall to gather recommendations for improvement in schools. Results from 27 school districts in the study showed correspondence students lagging those in public schools. Results in the state’s other large school districts, including Anchorage, Fairbanks, Kenai and Juneau, matched the Mat-Su results, according to the Legislature’s study, which relied on information from the state Department of Education and Early Development.

Mat-Su school officials are aware of the problem and are taking steps to address it with two responses underway this year. One is the opening of Mat-Su Central, a school district facility that serves home-school students with traditional classes and programs. A second is the Mat-Su Hybrid Learning Academy, a program that combines correspondence study at home with traditional classes in “brick and mortar” schools at Mat-Su Central with some courses, like career and technical studies and physical education, being taught at other Mat-Su schools.

“Statewide, correspondence programs tend to show lower four-year graduation rates than traditional schools, and Mat-Su Central follows the same pattern. This is something we are continually working to improve,” said John Notestine, the Mat-Su schools’ public information officer.

Lack of engagement with other students and support services appears to be a key part of the flagging graduation rates for correspondence students, who work mainly at home and outside regular public schools. Mat-Su Central and the school district’s hybrid leaning program are attempts to extend support services and engagement with other children to those in home-schooling.

While the hybrid program is in its first year it is exceeding expectations, Mat-Su school superintendent Randy Trani told the Legislators in comments submitted for its meetings.

“We anticipated 480 course enrollments (in hybrid learning) in the first year, but we received over 1,800. The model is working both educationally and financially. It will generate over $2 million in annual revenue that directly benefits students,” Trani said in his comments to the Legilature.

The bump in revenue results when students take classes in the regular schools, including Mat-Su Central, which results in more state funding support for those classes than courses taken by correspondence study, according to Notestine, the district’s public information officer.

Homeschooling increasingly popular in Mat-Su, and over the last decade more than 2,000 public school students in the district have switched to home-schooling and correspondence study, Trani told legislators. Given strong support for home learning the school district is working through the hybrid learning model to give students and parents the advantages of flexibility with both, home-school and in-school learning.

But there are certain financial penalties being impose by the rising number of homeschool and correspondence students. One is that the district does not receive state funds for school buses that comes to support students in traditional schools. Because school transportation has fixed costs like fuel, maintenance and drivers’ wages, the fewer students bussed to public schools represents lost funds.

“We cannot reduce bus routes or fixed costs so we must absorb these expenses with funds from our general education budget, at the expense of classroom resources. This creates a cycle of diminishing support that affects both brick-and-mortar and homeschool students,” Trani told the legislators.

One solution, he said, is to equalize the state funding disparity between students in traditional schools and correspondence study. A traditional student is given a full 1.0 count in terms of state funding, which is based on enrollment, while correspondence students are only counted at 0.9, which means less money.

If the two were the same it would help offset the loss in transportation funds, which will strengthen the district’s finances. That will enable it to expand services to correspondence and home-school students. That will address the funding disparity that appears to be one cause of the lower graduation rates among correspondence students.