Students in virtual charter schools fare significantly worse than their peers in traditional schools, and the picture in Florida looks especially bleak, according to a new study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO).
Virtual charters provide flexibility that might benefit some students, the report concludes, but right now, “Academic benefits from online charter schools are currently the exception rather than the rule.”
CREDO is known for its widely cited studies on charter schools. They use a signature method that compares students in one kind of school to “virtual twins” in another, allowing researchers to control for factors like demographics that might influence academic outcomes.
