After an explosion in enrollment at virtual, online schools, data indicates kids are performing far worse than their demographics would normally indicate and their in-person counterparts. Though virtual schools are often touted as catering to struggling students, research suggests they’re not even doing that well. Now, as the virtual instruction sugar high of the pandemic fades, some districts are slamming on the brakes.
The pandemic dramatically reshuffled education. Overnight, most districts shifted to virtual learning to slow the spread of Covid. It was a messy, chaotic transition, and years later, the evidence suggests that shift was disastrous.
Districts saw chronic absenteeism skyrocket as students’ connections to their schools were severed. Longstanding trends of enrollment decline accelerated and widespread learning loss set in. San Diego Unified, for example, had a half decade of test score gains wiped out. The district is still trying to dig its way out of that educational hole.
But for many parents, the pandemic opened them up to new educational options. For some, that meant giving homeschooling a try, or sticking with the virtual and hybrid options they’d become accustomed to.
From the 2018-19 school year to last year, enrollment at district-run virtual schools shot up more than 600 percent, as many districts scrambled to create new virtual options to meet parent demand. Enrollment at virtual charter schools also increased, though the rise isn’t as eye-popping.
The numbers, based on Voice of San Diego’s metric that controls test scores for income, are striking. The metric allows us to unmoor test score data from poverty levels, factors that are closely correlated. This gives us better insight into how well schools are educating students and whether test scores being high or low are simply a function of the school’s demographics.
A score of 0 on the metric is the baseline, a score above or below that means a school is either exceeding or underperforming. Overall, students at district run schools that are primarily virtual scored an average of -55, while primarily or fully virtual charter schools scored a -24. Both are well below the average district-run schools and charter schools.
When you zoom in on fully virtual schools in San Diego County, which deliver instruction exclusively online unlike their primarily virtual counterparts, the numbers are even more distressing. Those schools, all of which are charters, on average scored a -71. Of the 26 primarily or fully virtual schools in the county, only four had positive scores on our metric.
One fully virtual charter school authorized by Warner Unified, Pathways Academy Charter School, scored a -330, the lowest of any school in the county. Officials for the school did not respond to an interview request. That’s nearly 120 points lower than the next closest school, which is also a virtual school.
But low performance may, in some instances, come with the territory. Many virtual schools attract students who have already fallen behind. That’s especially true at district-run virtual schools, which are often focused on credit recovery programs for struggling students.
That’s also the model of Pivot Charter School, said Jayna Gaskell, the executive director of Pivot Charter Schools. The San Diego County location is authorized by San Marcos Unified School District, but Gaskell oversees four Pivot schools across the state.
“The majority of our kids are coming to us because they got behind in skills, grade levels and credits,” Gaskell said. “Our whole focus is to pivot kids’ education because something wasn’t working in the past … so by default our whole mission is to find kids who are behind.”
That’s why it’s not surprising to her that the school scored a -85 on the income vs. test score metric, the second lowest score of any virtual charter. Pivot’s small enrollment and strategy of trying to catch kids up and then transition them out of the school, meaning whatever growth they may have experienced doesn’t show up on future tests, are likely contributing to the low score, Gaskell said.
Despite only offering in-person instruction a couple of days a week, Gaskell said Pivot doesn’t want to be thought of as a virtual school. They try to encourage kids to take advantage of those in-person opportunities and offer activities like science experiments and PE, Gaskell said.
“We want to get kids socializing and engage them … because being on a computer 24/7 isn’t always healthy for kids,” Gaskell said.
Ultimately, however, Gaskell said the best way she’s found to catch kids up is to offer engaging, flexible and individualized instruction, which she said is more easily achieved through virtual approaches.
The latest report from the National Education Policy Center on virtual schools found that claim doesn’t always line up with reality.
“Virtual schools have dismal academic quality records,” the report reads. “These
struggles are compounded for at-risk students. Virtual schools remain a last resort for at-risk students who have struggled in other settings. A way to improve this reality is providing students who are struggling in the brick-and-mortar classroom setting with more in-person support rather than moving them to a virtual school.”
Bryan Mann, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Kansas, wrote that section of the report.
Entrepreneurs have long predicted that innovations will revolutionize virtual schools and lead to more engaging and effective instruction, he said.
“But it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s been a long time,” Mann said.
Still, virtual schools have become ingrained in the educational world, and though NEPC’s research shows enrollment in them has begun to flatten, they’re not likely to disappear completely.
“I think virtual schools are going to be a part of the landscape, and knowing that more people are using them, it really heightens the need to figure out how to make them do a better job,” he said.
Locally, some districts that jumped into the virtual game have begun walking it back. Last year, San Diego Unified abruptly announced the closure of most of its virtual school iHigh, which blindsided parents, teachers and students.
When district officials finally explained their reasoning, they attributed it to two things: high cost and low performance. More than 70 percent of iHigh students in the classes of 2024 and 2025 were not on track to graduate, according to district data. They also received a disproportionate number of failing grades compared to other district schools.
On top of the low performance, district officials said the per-pupil cost for High students was nearly three times higher than the district’s average. But compared to other virtual schools in the county, iHigh’s -7 score on the income vs. test score metric was fairly good.
South Bay Union School District also opened a district-run virtual school in August of 2020. Its rating of -62 was the second lowest of any district-run virtual school. Less than four years later, though, the district’s virtual experiment may be ending. The district’s board is set to vote on whether to kill the SBUSD Virtual Academy Thursday.
In an email, Assistant Superintendent Pamela Reichert-Montiel wrote that district staff are recommending the closure of the school based on “projected enrollment.” She added that last year, the school was identified by the California Department of Education as needing comprehensive school improvement.
Sweetwater Union High School District was less willing to engage the question of whether its virtual school, Launch Virtual Academy, was up to snuff. The school, launched in 2021, scored a -210 on Voice’s income vs. test score metric. That’s the second lowest score of any of the more than 700 schools in San Diego county, only trailing behind Pathways Academy Charter.
In an email, Sweetwater’s communications director Nadege Johnson replied, “The Sweetwater District is committed to continuously improving all programs district wide.”
Though some researchers and educators have touted the potential benefits of virtual education, most have been sounding the alarm on virtual schooling for years.
Gary Miron is one of them. He’s a professor at the University of Western Michigan and has, for nearly a decade, worked with the NEPC on yearly reports on the state of virtual education. Miron said report after report, including the most recent NEPC research brief from last year that he worked on, have shown that there are myriad problems with virtual schooling.
The most recent NEPC brief identified that students in virtual schools perform significantly worse than those at in-person schools and the sector lacks important regulatory accountability measures. It also found that virtual schools have failed to fulfill many of the promises advocates have made, like offering personalized learning, high-quality instruction and additional supports.
None of these results should be surprising, Miron said.
“The first big research studies (on virtual schooling) were coming out in 2011 and 2012 and they were disastrous. Those results haven’t changed,” Miron said.
Miron said that when he first began studying virtual schools in the early 2000s, he found one school that was doing innovative and promising work. The key, Miron said, was the school’s small class sizes, which allowed teachers to work with students individually and in small groups.
But over the years, those models have largely been ditched in favor of much less costly approaches that lead to overworked teachers, ballooning class sizes and minimal student support. Those models are particularly ubiquitous in the charter world, where minimal oversight can sometimes allow for-profit companies to juice taxpayer dollars while providing little instructional benefits. Those kinds of virtual charter schools with sprawling networks have time and time again become embroiled in scandals.
“It’s important to say they’re not doing well, but the evidence also suggests, they’re never going to do well. The model itself is so severely flawed,” Miron said. “With virtual schooling, we need to go back and redesign it, and I don’t think we should bring the corporations to that meeting when we talk about a new model.”
No surprise here.
In your title about the virtual schools not being all right, it’s two words–all right. It’s not correct to use “alright” this way. Ask a teacher. Or maybe not.
some kids get tired of being berated by the system [i.e., low-performers and the ‘uninterested’]. my son was one of the high-performers and he remarked that he didn’t learn very much in school. diverse primary reading sources make learning interesting and they’re easier to find at home. your schools are a cultural wasteland, with all due respect.