Senate Bill 19-129, concerning the regulation of online schools, calls for the Colorado Department of Education's Office of Blended and Online Learning to produce an annual report on the number of students who withdraw from Colorado K-12 online schools after the pupil enrollment count date. This report is required to include the dates on which…

Considerable published research explores drivers of parent choice for in-person schools, but few studies have addressed reasons for attending full-time cyber schools, and how student characteristics affect those reasons; hence, this study's unique contribution. Here we use a large national dataset (n= 95,259) to test whether students with…

Access to public charter schools could theoretically reduce school safety problems by increasing competitive pressures, improving matches between schools and students, enhancing discipline policies, and allowing students to relocate to peer groups and cultures that discourage risky behaviors. Using publicly available data from the Pennsylvania…

While K-12 online education and cyber charter schools have existed for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 compelled every professor and teacher globally to participate in this mode of instruction. Four years after the pandemic, many brick-and-mortar K-12 schools have retained cyber or online classes within the curriculum to offer students more…

Based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between a southeastern public university and a state virtual public school in the United States, ten high school teachers from a virtual school who teach Computer Science (CS) online participated in a summer workshop to collaborate through a participatory action research project regarding…

Early evidence indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced public school enrollment in many states. However, little is known about the underlying patterns of these declines. Using new district-level data from Massachusetts, we find that these declines were concentrated in traditional districts while charter, virtual, and vocational…

"Voting with Their Feet: A State-level Analysis of Public Charter School and District Public School Enrollment Trends" shows hundreds of thousands of families switched to charter schools during the first full school year of the pandemic. During the 2020-21 school year, charter school enrollment grew 7%, the largest increase in half a…

The present study investigated the experiences of educators who taught in the virtual world Second Life®. Second Life has shown promise in the field of higher education but identified gaps exist: the identification of a set of best practices, a foundational theory, and educators' experiences using Second Life in higher education. Using a single…

Though K-12 virtual education has been around for decades, the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly increased the number of K-12 schools offering virtual education to their students. This comparative case study's purpose was to explore secondary virtual schools within a public school environment. The focus of the study was to examine how two secondary…

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the American school system into various forms of distance learning, remote learning schools were a small but growing segment of the educational system within the United States. This causal-comparative quantitative study examined demographic variables to assess differences in K-12 teachers' views of their…

Research has found that fall 2020 school district reopening decisions appear to be driven more by politics and teachers unions than by the local presence of COVID-19. But what are the implications of those decisions for enrollment trends? Using recently released enrollment data from the state of Wisconsin, this study goes further to show whether…

Research focusing on the experiences of special education students in online K-12 schools is scant despite growing numbers of enrollments. This study utilized an emailed survey to understand the motivations and experiences of a group of special education students (n = 30) and their parents (n = 29) while enrolled in an online K-12 school in the…

The main purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the challenges faced in teaching, learning, and technology in online geometry classes. The perspectives of online geometry students and teachers provided insights into the effectiveness of online geometry learning. A qualitative descriptive design was used to gain insights into the…

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is required to submit this report to the Legislature regarding the status of existing charter schools, the number of petitions for new charter schools, and the action taken by school boards and DPI on petitions for new charter schools (see Wis. Stat. §115.28 (49)). This report offers the results…

KaiPod Learning is a for-profit company offering students enrolled in online schools the opportunity to learn in a physical location with adult supervision, academic support, and extracurricular enrichment. Tuition is attendance based, with the option of students going two, three, or five days per week. This report discusses how KaiPod Learning…