Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2017

In the five years since the first National Education Policy Center (NEPC) "Annual Report on Virtual Education" was released in 2013, virtual education has continued to be a focal point for policymakers. Proponents argue that virtual education can expand student choices and improve the efficiency of public education. In particular, full-time virtual schools (also sometimes referred to as virtual charter schools, virtual academies, online schools or cyber schools) have attracted a great deal of attention. Many believe that online curriculum can be tailored to individual students more effectively than curriculum in traditional classrooms, giving it the potential to promote greater student achievement than can be realized in traditional brick-and-mortar schools. Further, the promise of lower costs--primarily for instructional personnel and facilities--makes virtual schools financially appealing to both policymakers and for-profit providers. The assumption that virtual schools are cost effective and educationally sound, coupled with policies expanding school choice and providing market incentives attractive to for-profit companies, continue to help fuel virtual school growth in the U.S. There is, however, little high-quality systematic evidence that the rapid expansion of the past several years is wise. Indeed, evidence presented in the NEPC annual reports argues for caution. Nevertheless, the movement toward virtual schools continues to gather steam, often supported by weak or even dishonest data. For example, as a part of the confirmation hearings for the current Secretary of Education, National Public Radio reported that Secretary Betsy DeVos responded to a written question from Senator Patty Murray using performance data provided by a for-profit corporation that inflated the four-year graduation rates of virtual schools--in some cases by as much as 300%.1 The 2017 NEPC Annual Report contributes to the existing evidence related to virtual education, and so to debates surrounding it. It provides objective analysis of the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools; available research on virtual school practices and policy; and an overview of recent state efforts to craft new policy. In Section I--"Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance," Gary Miron, Charisse Gulosino, Christopher Shank, and Caryn Davidson focus on two specific types of K-12 online and blended learning: