Student Enrollment Patterns and Achievement in Ohio’s Online Charter Schools

Abstract

We utilize state data of nearly 1.7 million students in Ohio to study a specific sector of online education: K–12 schools that deliver most, if not all, education online, lack a brick-and-mortar presence, and enroll students full-time. First, we explore e-school enrollment patterns and how these patterns vary by student subgroups and geography. Second, we evaluate the impact of e-schools on students’ learning, comparing student outcomes in e-schools to outcomes in two other schooling types, traditional charter schools and traditional public schools. Our results show that students and families appear to self-segregate in stark ways where low-income, lower achieving White students are more likely to choose e-schools while low-income, lower achieving minority students are more likely to opt into the traditional charter school sector. Our results also show that students in e-schools are performing worse on standardized assessments than their peers in traditional charter and traditional public schools. We close with policy recommendations and areas for future research.

Growth and performance of fully online and blended K-12 public schools

“…2 The fact that minority and low-income families may have less access to technology may help to explain underrepresentation of these groups, even though most virtual schools loan their students computers and often pay for internet access. There are other possible explanations for the overrepresentation of white students in these schools that appear to be consistent with the growth of white homeschooling, explained in part by a desire to evade racial integration in schools (Ahn & McEachin, 2017;Mazama & Musumunu, 2014). Figure 4 displays the demographic composition of students enrolled in blended schools.…”

“…Thirty-six percent of all charter school students are White, 29.2% are Black, 27.2% are Hispanic, 3.5% are Asian, and 3.2% are classified as "Other." 3 A recent study by Ahn and McEachin (2017) shows that homeschooled students are also more likely to be White than the general population nationally. substantially higher than in public schools.…”

Educational Manifest Destiny: Exclusion, Role Allocation, and Functionalization in Reservation Bordertown District Admission Policies

“…Unfortunately, research suggests most school choice efforts fail to result in increased achievement for most students (Ahn and McEachin 2017;Figlio and Karbownik 2016;Mills et al 2016). Furthermore, such initiatives can encourage increased racial segregation (Frankenberg et al 2017;Knoester and Au 2017;Phillips et al 2015;Stein 2015).…”

“…almost entirely absent a specific engagement with how school choice intersects issues relevant to Indigenous youth and tribal nations" (Castagno et al 2016, 228). This work is especially timely given the rise of calls for expanded school choice initiatives, which-despite their claims of expanded opportunity for youth of color-tend to encourage segregation (Ahn and McEachin 2017;Knoester and Au 2017;Phillips et al 2015;Stein 2015). Finally, this study calls for increased institutional accountability to Indigenous communities.…”

Self-Reflection and Math Performance in an Online Learning Environment

“…Several studies (e.g., Woodworth, Raymond, Chirbas, Gonzalez, Negassi, Snow, & Van Donge, 2015;Ahn, 2016) showed that virtual school students had lower average state assessment scores in math for all grade span than their counterparts in brick-and-mortar schools and that the gaps between student groups were greater for higher grade levels.…”