Editor's note
About this series: A growing number of states are making school choices funding available to parents, often without regard to their financial means. Over the past two months, CNHI reporters have explored those options, which include education scholarship accounts, voucher programs and tax credits. This series of stories examines how these programs work, how effective they are in improving education and the impact they are having on traditional public education. This special report also looks at how school funding has become a hot-button political issue in the 2024 presidential election.
Virtual schooling has been a good fit for Franklin, Indiana, resident Stacy Taylor and her three children, twins Dimitri and Wyatt, and daughter Sophie.
Her twin sons graduated from Indiana Connections Academy in 2018, and daughter Sophie is now a high school senior through Indiana Connections Career Academy.
The boys attended the virtual program starting in fifth grade, and Sophie since kindergarten. The schools are virtual charter schools authorized by Ball State University.
“The curriculum is very strong,” and the supports are there if students need assistance, said Taylor, a programmer who works from home. Students can also work ahead, and the virtual program has honors classes available.
While the Taylor family has had a positive experience with virtual schooling, the practice has become a topic of widespread debate across the United States, especially as it relates to quality of education and use of taxpayer dollars.
Many types of virtual schools exist, but virtual charter schools — which are tuition-free public schools — draw particular scrutiny, especially those managed by for-profit corporations.
Critics of full-time, publicly-funded virtual schools maintain that academic performance is often poor, oversight is lax and greater transparency is needed.
Advocates cite schedule flexibility and personalized learning as major benefits. Virtual schools serve a need that is unmet by traditional brick-and-mortar schools, they say.
ACCOUNTABILITY CONCERNS
Some high-profile cases involving misuse of taxpayer dollars have raised concerns about insufficient oversight and accountability, particularly focused on virtual charter schools.
This year in Indiana, operators of two former virtual charter schools (Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy) were indicted in federal court for involvement in an alleged scheme to defraud the Indiana Department of Education.
The indictment claimed that as a result of false enrollment reports, the state education department paid more than $44 million that the schools were not entitled to receive. The two virtual charter schools, which closed in 2019, were publicly funded and privately managed.
The case is still pending. In May 2023, the National Education Policy Center, a nonprofit education policy research center, prepared its latest analysis of the characteristics and performance of publicly funded K-12 virtual schools in the U.S.
“Virtual school performance remains poor, little if any research supports the claimed benefits of virtual schooling, and state regulatory policies are still inadequate,” the policy center reported. “Nonetheless, the unsupported claims are widely believed and virtual schools continue to proliferate.”
Michael Barbour, a National Education Policy Center fellow and faculty member at Touro University in California, has studied virtual schooling for 26 years. He emphasizes the need for greater transparency in virtual charter schools so that parents can make educated decisions and policy makers can better decide how to provide and regulate the schools.
GROWING SUPPORT
Virtual charter schools are supported by many statelevel policy makers, said Chris Lubienski, director of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University.
The companies involved in online education “have a pretty strong lobbying arm, so they have been able to access the funding and push back on oversight,” Lubienski said.
But John Watson, founder of Evergreen Education Group, a digital learning consulting firm for districts and companies, says there is a reason virtual schools continue to “proliferate,” as suggested by the education policy center.
“My theory is because students and families want them,” Watson said.
“When a legislature or governor looks at the issues closely, they realize it is abundantly clear there are students who have been left behind by mainstream schools and these other forms of education are meeting the needs of some of these students,” he said.
Watson acknowledges that “bad actors” have tainted the virtual charter school industry.
“We and schools and agencies and companies we work with are completely supportive of fraudulent cases being prosecuted,” he said.
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