The number I wish we knew

On a recent radio interview, I was asked how many students are learning online. I tried to reframe the question, not entirely successfully, to talk about students in various forms of digital learning. I’m using this post to delve further into this question and determine if my answer seems about right, or if we can crowdsource a more accurate number.
 
The question: How many students are enrolled in online schools in the United States?
 
I think the better question is how many students are attending schools that:

  • Allow them to learn outside a school building, and

  • Don’t require them to spend much time inside a school building.

In other words, how many students attend online or hybrid schools?
 
Note that this framing of the question includes schools that students often don’t think of as online or hybrid.
 
My estimate during the interview was two million. Thinking about this further:

  • For our latest Snapshot we counted 650,000 students in full-time, statewide, online schools.

  • About 250,000 students are enrolled in California independent study programs, the vast majority of whom fit our hybrid definition.

  • These numbers are a year or two old (fall 2020 or 2021), but given the pandemic it’s hard to say whether they have increased or decreased. For simplicity let’s assume they are unchanged as of 2022.

 
Those numbers together get us to 900,000. It seems likely that there are many additional students in these schools, but how many, and where are they?
 
The main element not included in the above data points is all the district schools and programs that are primarily serving students who live within district geographic boundaries. These are the district virtual academies (many of which are actually hybrid despite their names), alt ed, some CTE programs, some early college high schools, and others. There are also schools run by intermediate units, BOCES, county education offices in California, and similar regional public agencies.
 
We’re not aware of anyone who has counted these schools and programs well. Compounding the difficulty of counting is that some of these aren’t even schools as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). In some cases, students are officially enrolled in another, traditional school, even if they are learning from the hybrid school.
 
We have estimated based on several sources that about 1,000 districts started or significantly grew online/hybrid programs during the pandemic, with the intent of keeping these schools operating post-pandemic. Perhaps 500 district programs existed pre-pandemic. An average of 500 students enrolled in each of those 1500 schools would sum to 750,000 students.
 
Another way to think about this is about 4% of students in California are in independent study. This suggests a level of demand from students that is showing up in other states via the district programs including alt ed. Without an offering as well-known as independent study, it’s reasonable to think that students in other states are taking part in programs similar to independent study at about half the California rate, which would be about a million students.
 
So after thinking about this a bit further—but still of the back-of-the-envelope variety—my prior guess of two million may be on the high side. Perhaps a range of 1.75 – 2 million is a better answer.
 
Does this seem roughly accurate, low, or high? I would love to hear from anyone who has data, insights, etc. If responses change my estimate, I will publish an update. Send your thoughts to DLC@evergreenedgroup.com!


DLC member Ray Rose passed this note along for anyone interested in commenting:

Intent to Amend Regulations Implementing Section 504 Disability Civil Rights Law

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced its intention to propose regulation amendments to the Department’s regulations at 34 C.F.R. pt. 104, implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This announcement includes a call for public written comments addressing how to improve the current regulations. Comments must be submitted by June 30, 2022 and sent to Section504@ed.gov.

If you do this as a representative of your institution be sure you’ve dealt with the policy issues of making a statement – some institutions have policies about representing the institution. But you should be able to make comment as an individual with knowledge and/or experience regarding 504 issues.

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