Enrollment in public virtual schools has exploded over the past decade, no doubt accelerated by the pandemic and families looking for alternatives to traditional classrooms.
But this month, one of the state’s largest online public schools, with some 12,000 students, abruptly shut down, leaving families scrambling, teachers out of work, and raising new questions about whether the pace of growth in virtual ed has outpaced accountability.
Elizabeth Sander, who covers education for the Houston Chronicle, said the closure of the Lone Star Online Academy was announced when its partner district, Roscoe Collegiate ISD, decided not to extend its contract with the private company that ran the virtual school.
“Roscoe Collegiate ISD is a public school district in West Texas — a pretty small district,” Sander said. “It only educates about 700 students in person, but they have around 12,000 virtual school students through their partnership with Stride K-12, which is a private company that runs virtual schools around the country.”
Online learning options are often touted for providing more flexibility for students.
“There are different models. There’s asynchronous, which means students can do classes at their own pace. And there’s also synchronous learning, which is basically like a regular school day, but in front of your computer instead of in a classroom,” Sander said. “And these public schools that we’re talking about, they’re virtual and they’re free because they’re funded by taxpayer money through their partnerships with school districts.”
But despite the popularity, the Lone Star Online Academy had an F from the state’s accountability rating system every year since they opened in 2021. Meanwhile, Roscoe Collegiate ISD had A and B ratings in its in-person schools.
“They were struggling academically and there are a few possible reasons for that,” Sander said. “Virtual school is different from regular school… It tends to have a more transient student population. Students might be coming in partway through the year, (or leave) before the year is over, which has historically provided a little bit more of a barrier to academic success for virtual schools.”
Sander said the decision to close the online school came as a surprise to families.
“I spoke to one parent who said that as of the last day of school, they had no reason to believe they weren’t going to be going back to school at the same online program that fall,” she said. “It is not the same as a regular school closing in the sense where it’s not a brick and mortar building. There’s maybe no transportation changes. But these parents and these children will end up in a different program in the fall.”
Representatives from Stride K-12 told Sander they’re trying to place all of the students from this public virtual school in one of their other public virtual schools in Texas.
The closure of Lone Star Online Academy provides another data point in a fairly new landscape when it comes to virtual schooling.
“These schools are fairly new. The structures and systems that (we’re) seeing on a large scale, it’s still something that is being researched and studied,” Sander said. “When something is growing so fast, it is important to make sure that there are conversations about what accountability looks like when it comes to virtual schools.
Should they have different metrics given that they’re not in person, given that their student population can be more mobile? I think a lot of those conversations are happening, but in this case, I don’t think they happened before the school eventually closed.”
