I confess I approach the question of virtual education with more than a little skepticism. Kids spend enough time staring at screens, and I’ve developed a reflexive distrust bordering on cynicism for all things ed tech, which has a reliable history of overpromising and underdelivering. And, of course, student outcomes from virtual schools have been awful. But about a year ago, I was at a conference in which Ian Kingsbury of the Educational Freedom Institute and Ben Scafidi of Kennesaw State University presented on virtual learning. Their work challenged several of my preconceptions and left me thinking that we may have fundamentally misunderstood both the promise and the problems of virtual schooling. So I invited them to reprise their presentation last week at a webinar series that I host at the American Enterprise Institute, along with Amy Johnson, executive director of the Arkansas Virtual Academy.
For starters, virtual schooling is here to stay. As of the 2021–22 school year, well over half a million students were enrolled in 726 virtual schools across the United States, roughly six-in-ten of which are online charter schools. Much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the poor performance of those schools stems from a 2015 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. That report, and its subsequent updates, paint a bleak picture. The study’s most damning finding was that, compared to 180 days of learning for students in brick-and-mortar traditional public schools, the average online charter student advanced only 122 days in reading; in math, it was even worse: 56 days per year. In other words, CREDO found virtual students learned only a third of what their brick-and-mortar school peers were learning.
But there are serious questions about the validity of these comparisons, which Kingsbury suggests are based on a flawed understanding of the differences between virtual and traditional students. As Scafidi put it, “When your child is born, what percent of Americans say, ‘I can't wait till they grow up and we send ‘em to a virtual school!’ Probably close to zero, right?” His research shows students in virtual schools are far more likely than their brick-and-mortar school peers to report incidents of bullying, trouble with teachers, or their academic needs not being met at their previous school. “So virtual schools are often for people who need a safety valve,” Scafidi observes.
Kingsbury agreed, “Virtual schools are often a last resort for students who have struggled in traditional settings.” This suggests that studies, which try to match similar students in both settings, are comparing apples to oranges. These differences are a stark daily challenge for Johnson, who raised concerns about the way student achievement is assessed in virtual schools, arguing that accountability systems and standardized tests don’t adequately capture the challenges virtual schools face: “There are times that it’s a win for us just to get the student to the computer to take the assessment,” she said. Kingsbury also noted that virtual school students are typically required to take state exams at designated testing centers, a practice he describes as “psychometrically problematic.” In other words, students sitting for state tests in completely different settings than where they learn adds up to artificial testing conditions and deflated scores. When students were allowed to test from home during the pandemic, he observed, their scores jumped dramatically, wiping out much of the achievement gap identified in the CREDO studies. A skeptic might immediately argue: “Well, sure. That’s because when virtual school students take tests at home, they can easily cheat, which artificially inflates scores.” While acknowledging concerns about cheating on at-home tests, all three panelists insisted that the technology was now robust enough to address those issues through rigorous proctoring and security measures.
Kingsbury and Scafidi also attacked the common notion that virtual students are more affluent than average (thus, by implication, putting low student outcomes in even sharper relief). Researchers use free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL) as a proxy for income status; when those forms aren’t submitted, the assumption is that they are ineligible. But Kingsbury points out parents have no reason to submit those eligibility forms, since virtual schools don’t serve lunch. Scafidi’s research suggests virtual students are no less likely to be low-income than traditional students, further complicating researchers’ efforts to evaluate results. “They’re matching low-income virtual school students to high-income brick and mortar students because they’re not capturing the free and reduced-price lunch [eligible students],” Scafidi explained. “They're matching kids who have social and emotional problems to kids who don't.” Both comparisons disadvantage virtual schools.
Less easily addressed is the issue of screen time. The three panelists acknowledged it was a valid concern and that any honest appraisal of virtual education had to wrestle with the downsides of students spending even more time in front of computers. But Johnson noted that well-designed virtual schools don’t simply replicate a traditional school day in an online setting: “We don't have students sitting in front of a computer with a teacher on the screen from eight o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon.” Instead, virtual learning is built around structured blocks of instruction, with plenty of opportunities for students to engage in offline activities.
Some years ago, Mike Petrilli and Dara Zeehandelaar, leaning heavily on the CREDO study, expressed concern that the academic performance of students in online charter was dragging down the sector at large. Writing in Education Next, they suggested exempting virtual schools from laws that require them to accept all students, allowing them to be more selective in their admissions. For his part, Kingsbury thinks admission screens are “a bad idea” for a couple of reasons. Outside of a very small number of selective high schools, he notes public schools, including charter schools, are open access. But more pertinently, he explains, “it problematizes one of the best features of virtual schools: that they are a refuge for at-risk students.” If virtual schools accept only those most likely to succeed “they’ll deny admission to the students in greatest need of access.” It’s a persuasive point that compels me to rethink my inherent skepticism about virtual education. But it doesn’t resolve entirely the problem of public dollars continuing to support non-participating virtual students, which Mike describes, not incorrectly, as “subsidizing truancy.” The virtual sector “broadly seems to be in favor of enforceable engagement laws whereby truant or disengaged students are unenrolled,” Kingsbury responds. “That’s the appropriate solution here.”
