But online learning has been with us for years before the coronavirus pandemic in the form of virtual schools, many of them operated by for-profit organizations. The growth of these schools has been tracked since 2013 by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), a nonprofit education policy research center located in the School of Education at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
This post, written by Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger, explains the findings of a new report about the state of virtual schools that was released Thursday by the NEPC, titled “Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2021.”
The report finds virtual school enrollment growing despite a persistent lag in student performance as compared with brick-and-mortar schools. It examines the characteristics and performance of full-time, publicly funded K-12 virtual schools and reviews relevant research on virtual school practices.
Molnar is a research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the NEPC publications director, as well as co-director of the NEPC’s Commercialism in Education Research Unit. Boninger is the NEPC’s publications manager and co-director of the Commercialism in Education Research Unit.
(I ordinarily don’t publish footnotes, but I am in this case because the blog is based on a report that includes them and you may find them useful.)
By Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger
“Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2021,” a report released on Thursday by the National Education Policy Center, finds that: New report provides reality check on virtual schools - The Washington Post