The Impacts of Virtual Charter High Schools on Secondary and Postsecondary Outcomes

Opening Up the Black Box

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9730623
AutoresJoseph J Ferrare (0000-0002-8170-7643, University of Washington Bothell, Bothell, WA, autor correspondente), R Joseph Waddington (0000-0001-9291-4253, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN), Ron Zimmer (University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY), Mark Berends (0000-0002-1281-8649, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN)
Ano2025
Volume54
Fascículo8
Páginas449-460
Data de publicação2025-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEducational Researcher (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-189X • E-ISSN: 1935-102X
EditoraAmerican Educational Research Association (AERA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3102/0013189x251337417
OpenAlexW4410374254
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas28

As demand for virtual schools continues to grow in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a pressing need to understand how these schools influence long-term student outcomes. Utilizing administrative data from Indiana, this article estimates the impacts of virtual charter high schools on high school graduation, dropout, and college enrollment and contrasts these results to the brick-and-mortar charter high schools in the state. Using a matching cell fixed-effect design, we find that students who switched from a traditional public school in eighth grade into a virtual charter high school experienced large, negative impacts across all these outcomes. A mediation analysis found that variation in class size and school-level course-taking patterns explain a substantial portion of these impacts

Black box · Black male · Charter · Charter school · Higher education · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Political science · Postsecondary education · Sociology · Computer Science · Education Systems and Policy · Gender Studies · ICT Impact and Policies · Law · Psychology · School Choice and Performance