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In virtual charter schools, 40 percent of students who enroll don’t stay
Dante Hutchinson, 13, has severe anxiety and always struggled with the social dynamics of traditional schools.
His mother moved him to a charter school in his hometown of Rhinelander in 2015, but it closed two years later. With no other local alternatives, Brooke Hutchinson enrolled her son in Wisconsin Virtual Academy, the state’s largest virtual charter school, located 200 miles south in the McFarland School District.
Dante quickly became overwhelmed and fell behind, especially in math. In February this year, the virtual school kicked him out for failing to participate — which landed him back in Rhinelander’s public schools, even further behind.
“It was traumatizing to me and all of us,” said Brooke Hutchinson, who works full-time while raising four kids with her husband. “It’s not that we ignore him, but he needs extra help.”
Dante’s story is not unique.
Between 2016 and 2017, more than 2,500 students in Wisconsin’s virtual charter schools withdrew, got kicked out or dropped out— roughly 40 percent of the total enrollment, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis found.
Worse, the students who switched between virtual schools and traditional schools in that period posted significantly lower math scores the year after the switch. The drop was much bigger for the students who switched into virtual schools.
Across the country, virtual schools have been celebrated and criticized.
They’re a flexible alternative to regular public schools where students can complete their studies online, at home, with a set curriculum and state-certified teachers. But many virtual schools have low test scores and graduation rates, while some private vendors that run them profit handsomely.
Less explored is how virtual schools contribute to enrollment churn as students, many of whom are struggling academically, switch into virtual schools and then switch back to traditional schools, or drop out altogether. The sheer level of turnover raises questions about whether the thousands of students who switch are getting the highquality education they were promised.
And who should be held accountable if they’re not.
Rampant student turnover is linked with lower test scores and increased behavioral problems, research has found. It vexes teachers and fractures critical social ties. Switching in high school is linked to an increased risk of dropping out.
A Journal Sentinel series has documented how high rates of turnover can derail academic reforms and even hold back the students who stay put in highchurn schools.
Districts with virtual schools have high churn
Urban districts tend to harbor the highest rates of churn — up to 24 percent in Milwaukee and 20 percent in Racine, compared to the state average of 10 percent.
But districts that host large virtual schools are a close second.
The Northern Ozaukee School District is similar to McFarland. It has 16 percent turnover, but the churn is concentrated in its virtual school, Wisconsin Virtual Learning, which has nearly 40 percent turnover. More than 96 percent of resident students stay put in the district’s traditional elementary, middle and high school.
“We’ll continue to see mobility rates rise because there are so many options to move between schools,” said Blake Peuse, Northern Ozaukee’s former superintendent and the current superintendent of St. Francis schools. “And if something doesn’t go right, people are apt to switch.”
Virtual schools are authorized to operate by traditional districts, and they’re managed by either district staff or private vendors such as K12 Inc., the country’s largest private operator of public schools.
There are currently 42 virtual charter schools in Wisconsin. About 60 percent of students attend them via open enrollment, meaning they live in a different district.
The Journal Sentinel used state enrollment and test score data to track the movement of virtual school students between 2016 and 2017.
In that time frame, 2,542 students — or 38 percent — switched out of the virtual schools.
Where did they go?
❚ Half switched to a brick-and-mortar school. They landed in 266 different districts.
❚ Another 40 percent disappeared. They might have dropped out altogether, switched to a private school, or pursued home-schooling.
❚ About 10 percent switched to a different virtual school.
Mike Ford, an assistant professor of public administration at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, studied the same data as the Journal Sentinel.
Ford found that between 2016 and 2017, the average student who switched into a virtual school saw a 30-point drop in math scores on the state exam, compared to a 10-point drop for those who left virtual schools. The exam score scale ranges from 0 to about 900.
Ford’s analysis took into account the demographics of the switchers and their prior test scores. Without those controls, the performance was even worse and the gap even larger.
“The data show children transferring into virtual schools are struggling to adjust in their new learning environment,” Ford said. “We need to understand exactly why, to ensure those students are getting the supports they need to be successful.”
Why students switch
Turnover is not necessarily bad. And for virtual schools, sometimes it’s inevitable.
Students may switch to online schools because they’re seeking alternatives, and many have to cross district boundaries to do so. Of the 42 virtual schools, about half will consider students who have been expelled from traditional schools.
“That’s not my problem that they were having a poor experience (at their previous schools) to the point that they and felt they had to pursue another option,” said Rick Nettesheim, principal of eAchieve Academy in the Waukesha School District.
Virtual schools are legally required to enroll students, even if they have weak academic histories. But they don’t have to keep everyone. They can drop students who don’t do anything — the virtual version of not attending school.
More than 460 students were kicked out of virtual schools for failing to participate in 2016-17, according to the state Department of Public Instruction.
Another 300 students dropped out that year. Many landed back in their home districts.
“It’s a lot of stress on the teachers,” said Kim Schroeder, former president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association union. “Some students will never catch up.”
Last year in Milwaukee, a new student appeared in teacher Norma Mortimer’s English class at Marshall High School.
Mortimer was told the junior had come from a virtual school. But that wasn’t the whole story. The girl said she had intended to enter a virtual school, but balked when the school wanted to charge a fee for online materials.
She then sat at home for a month before deciding to attend Marshall in October. Mortimer never found the girl’s records.
A counselor placed the girl in Mortimer’s Advanced Placement Language class halfway through the school year, but her skills were limited to summarizing what she read. She never learned to actually analyze it.
“She missed a great deal of foundational material by missing the first semester,” said Mortimer, who retired at the end of last year. “On sheer talent alone, she could have been a shining star.”
Students who excel in cyber schools
On the other end of the spectrum, virtual schools work well for thousands of students. Facebook parent groups are filled with success stories, especially for students with anxiety or mental health issues, or for those who are highly motivated and need to move at a faster pace.
In Appleton, Chandos Vander Wielen enrolled her 7-year-old daughter in Bridges Virtual Academy, authorized by the Merrill School District and located about 120 miles away.
Vander Wielen liked how she could customize her daughter’s education. She said the school lets parents pick the books and some of the curriculum.
Maggie Papka, a former Pewaukee High School student, switched to Waukesha’s eAchieve Academy between her sophomore and junior years. The flexibility allowed her to ride horses during the day and travel the country competing on the hunter-jumper circuit.
Today Papka is a senior at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. She’ll graduate next year with a degree in biomedical engineering with a concentration in mechanical design.
“I thoroughly enjoyed having the independence from the traditional schedule because it let me work on one subject at a time if I wanted to,” Papka said. “I was able to focus more on truly understanding what I was doing in one class before moving on to the next.”
Papka said the most successful students she met in virtual schools were highly motivated like her and her sister, who also did well at eAchieve.
But because students have to act independently, Papka said, teachers weren’t always immediately aware of those who were struggling.
Who will be successful?
A key problem for K-12 virtual schools is that it’s difficult to tell who will be successful.
Three years ago, the state flagged 93 students at eAchieve Academy as having a high or moderate chance of dropping out. But 81 of them stayed put, according to eAchieve. The next year, 88 students were flagged and 79 stayed.
At the same time, 60 of eAchieve’s 600 high school students dropped out in 2015-16, and 36 did the same the next year.
Its graduation rate was 57 percent in 2016 and 61 percent in 2017. Both of those were lower than the four-year graduation rate in Milwaukee Public Schools.
When open enrollment students exit virtual schools, they’re supposed to return to their home districts while part of the money for their education follows them. Resident districts can count virtual school students for the purposes of property taxes, but then a set payment — last year it was $7,055 — is transferred to the student’s virtual school. The payment is pro-rated if students leave mid-year.
But many never show up back in their resident districts.
At Wisconsin Virtual Academy in McFarland, 174 students dropped out between the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years. Only eight re-enrolled in their home districts.
Nicholas Sutherland, the principal of the school, pointed to the home districts as the problem, saying they aren’t doing enough to re-enroll students coming back from virtual schools.
“If I don’t do everything to hang onto them, no one else is going to,” he said.
Several virtual school teachers said parents also need to understand the expectations.
Kate Henn is a speech and language pathologist who has provided specialeducation services to virtual school students in their homes. She said she’s seen parents who were disconnected from what their children were doing for their online studies.
“I know virtual schools are open to everybody, but I think there needs to be some sort of a vetting procedure,” Henn said.
Better supports for virtual students
Some virtual schools are trying to decrease rampant switching and dropouts.
JEDI Virtual School, which serves a consortium of districts in central Wisconsin, administers an online literacy course to students before classes begin. Teachers must also complete weekly progress reports for each student.
Some districts are trying to provide more in-house virtual programs to resident students instead of watching them transfer to a virtual school.
The Racine Unified School District recently launched a virtual program with a full-time option for high school students. Another option: Students can alternate each day between studying online at home and coming to school for face-to-face classes.
All the teachers are from Racine Unified.
James O’Hagan, Racine’s director of digital and virtual learning, said counselors screen students for the program. For the first 14 days, teachers watch students closely and act as mentors to help them set goals and learn how to work independently.
If the students fall behind, they are encouraged to drop right away — before they get farther off track.
“A lot of the churn you see in virtual schools is based on knee-jerk decisions,” O’Hagan said. “We can do a better job of limiting those.”
Kevin Crowe contributed to this story. Erin Richards can be reached at (414) 224-2705 or erin.richards@jrn.com or on Twitter at @emrichards.