Over the past two and a half decades, digital technologies and virtual education have moved quickly to the top of the K-12 public education reform agenda. Proponents, including business leaders, school reform organizations, foundations, and for-profit and nonprofit service providers, argue that virtual technology will revolutionize teaching and…

Online learning for primary and secondary students has expanded significantly in the United States during the last two decades. In addition to the sustained growth of online learning, many schools and districts used online learning to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. As school leaders and policymakers move more students into online courses,…

This action research explores how to develop a sense of belonging during an atypical transition to a new school with a group of young people in state care and a group of adults from a small multi-disciplinary team working with schools to raise educational attainment of children in care. Appreciative inquiry was employed to gather participants'…

The audit objective for this report was to determine whether the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PA Education) and selected Pennsylvania local educational agencies have sufficient internal controls to ensure that individualized education programs (IEP) are developed in accordance with Federal and State requirements for children with…

The impacts of the 2018 elections were felt in the 2019 state legislative sessions across the country. While charter school supporters continued to rack up legislative victories on increasing funding and facilities support, strengthening accountability, and protecting autonomy, they also faced political climates in several states that were…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe teacher experiences of teacher-to-student technology-mediated communication (TMC) in secondary virtual school (VS) environments in Alabama. The central research question for this study was: How do virtual school teachers in Alabama describe their experiences of…

Among the many factors that impact student performance in traditional K-12 settings, parent involvement (PI) is consistently identified as critical for student success. However, less is known about parent involvement for full-time virtual schools, where most learning takes place asynchronously in a Learning Management System (LMS). The present…

America has a long history of small-school environments, such as one-room schoolhouses and homeschools. But in recent years, other models have developed, giving students more intimate settings for learning and enabling their families to play a larger role in their schooling. Microschools are a leading example of this growing sector that also…

Written expression is used throughout the education system and is significant to student success, However, many students express difficulty in this area. The problem is what instructional methods are used to address written expression difficulty within a virtual elementary school environment. Instructional methods used to address this problem are…

The privatization of public funds for education through school choice programs has fueled the expansion of virtual online charter schools. This redirection of funds contributes to the idea that virtual school success is comparable or even superior to the performance of traditional public schools. The schools most adversely affected are the schools…

While virtual and online schools for students in grades K-12 gained in popularity before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and served a wide variety of student populations, including students with disabilities during the pandemic virtual teaching became the reluctant norm. As online school sites have begun to welcome students with…

School choice is a long-standing tradition in the United States. New to the options available to K-12 parents are full-time virtual schools, and this option is an even more recent development for parents of students with disabilities. Very little research exists on why parents are choosing full-time virtual education for their school-aged…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many American schools to hastily transition to online learning. I assess how the online learning experience of students enrolled in brick and mortar schools that transitioned to online learning in Spring 2020 compared to the experience of students who were already enrolled in virtual schools when the pandemic began.…

In Utah, deaf and hard of hearing elementary school students can access their education--in American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken and written English--from their devices at home. Many secondary students can access online coursework as well. This is thanks to a four-year project undertaken by the Utah School for the Deaf (USD). The goal was to…

Autistic children comprise a large group of young people who are looked-after by their local authority and for whom educational outcomes are amongst the poorest of all children in care. Virtual School Heads (VSHs) in England have a statutory responsibility to improve the educational outcomes of children in care following the implementation of the…