How does virtual education affect student achievement? Which students benefit? How can it work better?
Those are among the questions a team of researchers from three universities plans to tackle, drawing data from both virtual and brick-and-mortar schools in Florida.
Some recent studies have suggested virtual school students can keep pace with their peers in traditional schools.
However, in a press release sent out Wednesday by Stanford University, researchers said there are still huge gaps in what is known about virtual education’s effectiveness.
They’re setting out to fill those gaps with a three-year, $1.6 million federal research grant that will allow them to probe a decade of student achievement data and survey students and teachers at Florida Virtual School and the Miami-Dade school district.
“As online learning options multiply, little is known about how well such courses serve K12 students,” Stanford professor Susanna Loeb said the press release. “Our project will explore how access to online courses affects students’ test scores, course grades and progression.”
Loeb will be joined in the study by the University of Michigan’s Brian Jacob and Brian Rowan, and by the University of California, Davis’ Cassandra Hart, who has previously studied the effects of the other Florida school choice programs.
