Online schools and courses are seeing a fall semester enrollment surge
With the fall semester underway, it’s clear that online school enrollments have surged. Some examples are listed below. Numbers are year-over-year increases unless otherwise noted, and where no link is provided, we received the numbers in direct and unpublished communications from these schools.
Florida Virtual School (FLVS) Full Time is up 64%.
K12 Inc says it has experienced 40% growth, to about 170,000 full-time online students.
Compass, an online school in California, has a waitlist of over 2,000 scholars which would have been a 50% increase. However, due to the passage of SB 98, and its hold-harmless language for all public schools in California, the school has had to cap its enrollment for the first time in its history.
Epic Charter Schools’ enrollment in Oklahoma is nearing 60,000 students, making it larger than any district in the state.
Online charter schools in Pennsylvania are filling—or in some cases have been full since early August.
Google is reporting results from surveys and search queries that help explain this surge, as parents seek new online options. For example:
“Since the start of COVID-19 43% of parents have actively researched sending their child to an online K-12 school or are already enrolled.”
Terms that have seen an increase in query volume include “homeschool” and “online school.” “Cyberschool” has not been used as a query term nearly as much, reflecting that the term is common in Pennsylvania and perhaps a few other states, but not nationwide.
Google also reports that only “23% of parents were dissatisfied with the online learning experience” from the spring, which seems like a lower number than expected, but perhaps reflects that caregivers were understanding of the challenges that mainstream districts faced. In addition, the main hurdles that parents perceived with online learning, such as “balancing job with learning oversight” and “reduced salary or hours during COVID-19,” would not necessarily be more easily addressed by experienced online schools than by mainstream districts shifting to remote learning.
Further supporting the shift to online learning is an evolution of parents’ views. In April, 33% of parents said they were considering or open to considering enrolling their children in online schools. By August, this number had increased to 57%. Interestingly, the number peaked at 75% in June, suggesting that between June and August some parents who had considered online learning decided that a full-time online school was not the best option.
The Google report has quite a bit of additional information that’s worth reviewing for those who are interested. One key takeaway is the reminder that as online schools and course enrollments are surging, the percentage of students in online schools remains small. Given that fewer than 1% of all students were enrolled in online schools pre-pandemic, even a doubling of that number would still mean that only 2% or so of students are in such schools.
Another important data set describes the increases in online course enrollments separate from full-time online schools. A variety of state virtual schools provided us the numbers below. Except where noted, these enrollments are in online courses in which the state virtual school provides the teacher.
VirtualSC reports a 368% increase in enrollments, driven by an especially large increase in "franchise program" enrollments where the district provides the teacher.
Michigan Virtual reported more than 37,000 virtual course enrollments in fall of 2020, a 184% increase. MV also now offers content that districts can use with their own teachers, and reports 30,000 enrollments in this category.
FLVS has seen a 52% increase (more than 147,000 new course enrollments) in FLVS Flex since July 1.
Enrollments at Illinois Virtual School are up by 84%.
Georgia Virtual School has had a 70% increase in overall enrollments. Advanced Placement enrollments have increased 89%, and middle school enrollments have increased 260%.
Wisconsin Virtual School is up by 130% for grades 6-12 enrollments. Content used by districts with their own teachers is up by more than 9x.
Montana Digital Learning Academy is still enrolling students and is currently up by 31%.
Virtual Arkansas Fall Semester enrollments are up 50%.
Indiana Online is up by 203% for regular courses, and 320% for dual credit.
Finally, the Wisconsin eSchool Network, which has a variety of course types, is up 400% to more than 100,000 enrollments.
Many private providers offer online content and courses as well. We are not aware of any public data on increases in their usage, but privately we are hearing of growth among most, if not all, online course and content providers.
A key question arising from this data is whether we expect these numbers to drop to pre-COVID levels once the pandemic has passed, or even earlier if mainstream districts shift back to face-to-face instruction during the fall semester. At this time, the range of possible outcomes is very large, so we are going to wait for additional data instead of making any predictions.