Virtual Charter Schools and Student Post-Secondary Enrollment

ABSTRACT

Using student-level data, we analyze the post-secondary enrollment of high school graduates across 29 states from an online charter provider from 2017 to 2020. We estimate the association between virtual charter student characteristics and the likelihood of college enrollment. We find that students who enroll multiple years in the virtual school are more likely to enroll in college. Students who are Black as well as those who qualify for special education services are more likely to enroll in college. We also use parent survey data and summarize the reasons students enrolled in a virtual high school and their college enrollment aspirations.

KEYWORDS:

• charter schools
• online learning
• post-secondary enrollment
• secondary education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2023.2289094.

Notes

1. For example, if a student has three test scores available and was proficient on one but not on the other two, the student’s average proficiency would be (0 + 0 + 1)/3= .33. We create these averages for math, ELA, and a combined measure which includes students with only math tests, only ELA tests, or at least one Math or ELA test.

2. AZ, CA, CO, ID, OH, OK, TX, and WA have at least one virtual charter school specialized in credit recovery.

3. Of the students enrolled in a virtual charter school by the provider, AZ has 47% enrolled in credit recovery schools. WA has 48%, TX has 39%, CO has 35%, OK has 17%, CA has 11%, and ID and OH have less than 1% enrolled in credit recovery specialty schools.

4. The parent survey was administered in spring 2023 to parents of currently enrolled 6^th-12^th grade students. The charter provider also sent the survey to parents of students who were previously enrolled in the virtual high school but transferred to a different school before completing high schools. The survey responses of these two groups were similar, so we combined them into one sample. Parent demographic information was not collected as part of the survey.

5. While the NSC sample includes students in low income schools, students in that sample are more likely to be from urban schools and are a higher proportion of racial minorities than the sample of virtual students in this study. For more information on the NSC sample refer to the High School Benchmarks reports, https://nscresearchcenter.org/high-school-benchmarks/.

6. If a parent marked “other” they were given an option of filling in their reason. Of the 30 parents who filled in the other option, 26 said it was because they wanted their child to make their own decisions and find what path fit them best, and 4 reported other medical or family constraints.

Additional information

Funding

The online charter provider mentioned in the study supplied the data and funding for this project. The provider did not have any role in the design, analysis, or writing of the article.