This newspaper has no way of knowing whether they are doing a good job or not. Until last week no one here had heard of COOLs, but it would be unwise to assume that they work simply because someone else had the idea first.
Our history is littered with examples of politicians scouring the world for ideas and adopting the worst of them. In any event, some of us will take a good deal of persuading that the United States' education system has much, if anything, to teach us in New Zealand.
On the face of it learning online might not be a bad idea, especially for children who currently gain their education via Correspondence School.
That institution seems to work well enough, and has done for many years, especially on behalf of children for whom physical attendance at a school is problematic.
There is no reason why online learning would not be a good option for a kid who cannot get to school on a daily basis, or take the only other option of boarding school.
It would not seem to make a great deal of difference whether their lessons are delivered by mail, short wave radio or online.
The existing correspondence school, Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu, is expected to become an "online provider," but this proposal seems to be predicated on the basis that online learning should be available to whoever wants it, even if they live 50 metres from their local school.
The Minister says there will be a "rigorous accreditation process," along with ongoing monitoring to ensure that quality education is being delivered.
One would expect nothing less, but experience tells us that rigorous processes and ongoing monitoring will not necessarily prove to be effective. Or cost-effective, for that matter. And just what is the Minister trying to prove?
It's all very vague and discombobulating at the moment. It has the air of an experiment about it, and education is the last thing we should be experimenting with.
The only benefit suggested so far seems to be that teaching online is innovative (and innovation is rarely all it's cracked up to be) in that it will offer a digital option to engage students, improve their digital fluency and connect them "even more to 21st Century opportunities".
That all sounds pretty flash, although the sceptic might say that the best means of connecting students to 21st century opportunities is to teach them to read, write and count.
There's more to it than that, of course, like developing social skills and inquiring minds, but that too is surely more likely to occur in a school setting than in a child's bedroom.
There is a good deal of detail to come, such as whether online learners will be required to physically turn up at school for part of the week, but the US template isn't encouraging.
Apparently some online tuition there is provided without physical classrooms, students and teachers alike working from home, communicating via email or a web platform.
Meanwhile the Minister's office has promised that COOLs will be available to as wide a range of providers as possible so as to offer the maximum benefits for students.
One of the advantages, it says, would be the ability to develop "specialist niche provisions," such as teaching in Asian languages. Brilliant. Just what we need. Kids whose education is delivered in the language and culture of their or their parents' birth. That should give our much vaunted cultural diversity a shot in the arm.
The NZEI says all the evidence clearly shows that high-quality teaching is the single biggest in-school influence on children's achievement. That would seem to be a given.
The union is also right when it says that education includes learning to work and play with other children, and experiencing growing independence and a range of activities outside the home.
The government knows this. Amongst the yardsticks it uses to define child poverty is lack of access to organised sport. That's the sort of idiotic logic one expects from Wellington, consigning, as it does, countless children of remote families to poverty regardless of their material wealth or other positive factors, and under the COOL proposal thousands more children who have every advantage money can buy but don't go to school will likely join them.
More pragmatically, both the NZEI and the PPTA see the thin end of the privatisation wedge, COOLs creating a golden opportunity for private enterprise to adopt children as a profitable commodity. The PPTA says COOLs offer no new educational opportunity, only a chance for business to "dip its hand into the public purse".
The only real fans at this stage are ACT, unsurprisingly, which has pointed out that there is nothing to stop an existing partnership school from allowing students to learn online, and the Correspondence School's trustees, who say COOLs will give children and their whanau the right to choose the education that best suits their needs, not least in terms of the range of subjects available to them.
Te Aho Kura currently has a roll of around 23,000, about half of those students reportedly benefiting from access to subjects or curriculum adaptation that their own schools do not provide.
Te Kura's support is to be expected. It understands the art of teaching kids from a distance, and appears to do the job well. Adding the opportunities offered to those children by online learning would seem to be a natural progression. For children who can and should be at school it is not.
Dame Karen Sewell, who chairs the board of trustees, says many of Te Kura's students have become disengaged from education and have exhausted all other options. That hints at another potential issue, international evidence reportedly showing that access to online learning increases student movement between providers.
We all know what becomes of kids who move from school to school, and there is no reason to believe that the outcome will be any less negative when lessons are delivered by computer.
There is also a perceived risk that schools could use COOLs to rid themselves of troublemakers.
Without doubt some COOL kids would thrive, but many would not. If they are 'troublesome' for their schools now they are unlikely to become A Grade achievers at home.
Even if they're not troublesome, they will gain much more from learning in the company of others than they will ever get from a computer.
The Minister needs to ensure that every child in this country has the best teachers money can buy rather than seeking 'innovative' ways of changing the way education is delivered.
This time the teacher unions deserve unstinting parent support.
