Today, with thousands of federal agents targeting Minnesota schools, bus stops, day care centers and other places where immigrant parents gather with their children, remote learning options have been revived in numerous districts, with varying degrees of success. And, unlike the pandemic-era emergency measures, the steps schools are taking to keep kids safe are anything but uniform. 

In many schools — especially those that enroll diverse student bodies — who can show up and who can’t changes by the day, forcing teachers to improvise continually. Still confronted with the absenteeism, mental health crises and lost learning of the pandemic shutdowns, educators know what’s being lost — and exactly which children are going to suffer the disproportionate impact of an emergency now in its ninth week.   

Two St. Paul Public Schools teachers recently gave The 74 glimpses inside their classrooms. In his 18th year on the job, John Horton teaches at Barack and Michelle Obama Montessori, where classes contain multiple grade levels and the student body, as he puts it, “looks like the people that live in St. Paul.” So far, all 28 of his first, second and third graders have been in school, every day.

Across the city, in the equally diverse Como High School, 31-year veteran Eric Erickson teaches a host of subjects where current events are inescapably relevant: AP Psychology; a University of Minnesota College in the Schools government course; and U.S. history, co-taught with an English learner instructor. 

As improbable as it sounds, the families of Horton’s pupils want them physically present in class and have moved mountains to get them there safely. But the divides in in-person attendance in Erickson’s classes are illustrative of a deepening inequity. He knows that a persistent chasm of unequal opportunity is likely to yawn wider. 

Until the abduction of a child or violence at or near their school forces them into the spotlight, most Minnesota educators have been too fearful to speak out, using their names and those of their schools, about what it’s like in classrooms right now. Yet Horton and Erickson, both of whom have been Minnesota Teacher of the Year finalists and/or semifinalists, told The 74 they want people to know what school is like in this unprecedented moment. 

These excerpts from conversations with them have been edited for length and clarity.

Who’s in class in person, and who isn’t

Horton: Children really, really thrive on structure, routine, predictability. The problem that’s different from COVID to now is that during COVID, even though things were upended, there were still some structures and routines and things in place. But with the way things are heading right now, those things aren’t present anymore. 

Our school has some teachers that have been reassigned to take on virtual learning. They’re pausing their in-person job and moving to the online school. They’re teaching children who haven’t ever been to online school. So it’s a whole new program and a whole new mode of instruction.

My classroom has 28 kids normally, and I have 28 kids still here. I have a very good relationship with a lot of the families, and they really wanted to stay in person as a community. There’s definitely some fears and anxiety, but for young children, that predictability is really important. 

We are fortunate to have a community of volunteers keeping watch around the school. We have precautions in place for children who don’t feel safe waiting for the bus. There’s been a lot of community- and school-level action that has helped mitigate the fear. But there’s a lot of anxiety about leaving the house. 

Erickson: The students who are not here tend to be students with brown skin and black skin. And in many ways, this division along race and ethnicity makes this version of virtual learning feel a lot more like battles we thought we had overcome in the Civil Rights Movement, and with equal access to opportunity and education.

The difference in who’s here and who’s not can be seen in the difference between a U.S. history English-language cohort and a senior-level, University of Minnesota college-level government course. I’ve got 95% of my seniors in college-level government present, and about 30% of my co-taught U.S. history classes are online. But our English-learner classes, some of them are less than half in attendance in person. 

(Students are) not able to listen to their (in-person) peers and process what’s happening. They’re living in isolation with their family and social media as connectors, as opposed to the support of peer-to-peer and caring adult interaction. 

We are still their teachers. They are still on our class lists. We are pushing out lessons, videos, documents and assignments to students in their homes. But there’s no substitute. Students who miss live instruction and interaction with peers and their teachers cannot obtain the same quality of education.         

What they’re hearing from students 

Horton: The challenges the kids are experiencing at home and in the community are real. Children talk openly about the immigration crackdown. They’re making posters and expressing their frustration. A couple of my kids have been to protests. A few of my kids have had knocks at the door and agents enter their homes.

And, of course, a lot of children are aware of what’s going around the community because of parents’ stress. In a lot of ways that’s very similar to COVID, where families are trying to isolate children from everything that’s going on and yet the children know something is going on.

I don’t know if I can share all my stories. There was an incident at a child’s house a couple weeks ago. And that was scary. The child was scared, the family was scared. I was shook. They called me Sunday at 6:50 in the morning to tell me what was going on. Some of the people in our community are going through a lot, and they don’t have a lot of people they might be able to know or connect with or trust.

I’ve worked with these families for three years in a row, and I have good relationships. There’s a lot of blessings with that and also heartbreak. It’s really hard to hear what’s transpiring, but I’m also really surprised by the outpouring of love. 

When they’re struggling through traumatic events — and our city has been through so many over the last few years — children also need a sense of hope and joy. To see their friends, to have things they know how to do, be it an art project or something. Having those things, those distractions, those avenues are really important. The children that have been coming to school have been very happy in my class.

Erickson: When we are debriefing the current events in the news cycle, Minneapolis and St. Paul are at the center of a federal surge that has drawn the attention of the world. It’s imperative that we’re able to discuss, analyze and evaluate the impact of the situation surrounding us. I take pride in listening to my students, taking their questions and helping them think critically about what we’re experiencing in relationship to what we’ve studied with the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. 

They ask appropriate questions. They see injustice. They observe an overreach of federal power. They notice that the guardrails are off with regard to checks and balances. Congress is not holding the Executive Branch accountable. Court decisions are not necessarily checking the expansion of presidential power. They wonder if it’s their time and place to exercise their First Amendment rights.

How students are expressing themselves   

Horton: This is a Montessori school, and we believe in honoring children’s voices. The posters children have written are very simple. They say “ICE out.” Or, “Leave our friends alone.” “You are not welcome” is one of my favorite ones. The kids are expressing themselves through art. Having that outlet is so important. 

The kids started a food shelf in the classroom. And they’re collecting money for the [a St. Paul nonprofit that helps refugees and immigrants resettle]. Two children are carrying around a box, collecting change. 

Families have donated gift cards to support other families. To see all the people coming together, that makes me hopeful.

Erickson: We saw a highly organized, peaceful student protest on Jan. 14, a week after Renee Good’s killing, where students from across St Paul high schools — mostly public, but also peers from private and charter schools — converged on the state Capitol to call out the injustices they’re seeing and to ask for human decency from the federal government. 

We were fearful as a school community about what might happen to them if they exercise their freedom of speech and freedom to assemble. We were inspired to see them advocate for themselves. We, of course, did not attend or endorse the student walkouts. But parents and community members coordinated to serve as unofficial marshals and watch over the routes they were taking to the Capitol, and to be there for support, to be observers of their constitutional rights. 

There were three students in the room with me, the other 20 were at the rally. We were able to watch a livestream. And as we observed democracy in action, two of their classmates gave speeches on the steps of the Capitol. One addressing the humanity of all people and immigrants being the backbone of this country, and another addressing the impact of ICE’s actions. They were articulate messages — positive and hopeful in tone — while also criticizing the overreach of the federal government.

Their own mental health

Horton: Well. Oh boy. That’s a doozy of a question. My job is to make sure the children are safe and secure, and sometimes that means that you have to co-regulate with them. You have to show them what calm, caring and compassion looks like. And also anxiety. You need to model it: “I’m feeling this way, and this is how I can deal with it.” It’s almost like you’re teaching as you’re feeling, which is tough. 

And then my own children. You know, what they hear when I talk at home. I’m trying to be a really good role model, and that comes first. Sometimes as an adult and a parent and someone in the community, you just have to put aside your own preferences for the good of the group. 

Talking to children about hard things is important, but they can only take so much at a time. As a teacher, and especially a teacher of young kids, having difficult conversations is part of life. But they really need time to process things. Talking briefly about these incidents and then giving them an opportunity to have a say and have some hope and have some joy in their life is very important.

The hardest thing for me is I know the impact it’s having on our families. That’s really hard. And I also know it’s impacting staff. There’s staff that carry around documents now, and they’re scared to go out. 

I keep using the word “community,” but I really have found a lot of comfort in that. You know, comfort with the children, the families, the staff. But to say it’s easy would be a lie. 

It’s a relief in some ways that they can be together. Just being in community is such a powerful thing for the people out protesting — even in our classroom.

Erickson: As much as I pride myself on teaching from a non-partisan perspective and analyzing political issues and the role of government with objectivity, seeing the harm to our students and families has caused me to choke up more than once in class while listening and guiding discussion on these matters. 

Yes, it has taken an emotional toll on teachers. Teachers love and care for all of our students. To have 30% of them not be able to reach school and go to your class where they belong is a cruel and sad injustice.

Inserting brief quiz questions into an online lecture can boost learning and may reduce racial achievement gaps, even when students are tuning in remotely in a distracting environment.

Nearly 15% of school-age children in the Meade School District — 504 students — are enrolled in alternative instruction instead of attending a state-accredited private or public school.

Because state funding is partially based on enrollment, those children would bring roughly $3.5 million in funding to the district if they attended a public school.

That’s money that could cover staff salaries and resources, maintenance and repair of school buildings or extracurriculars, said Heath Larson, executive director of Associated School Boards of South Dakota.

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Bridget Bolder sent her daughter, Mia, to kindergarten at a neighborhood public school. After all, it seemed the “normal, regular thing to do.”

But Bolder started to worry that some of her daughter’s classmates were exposing her to inappropriate topics. Early in the school year, Mia had to tell a teacher about a boy groping some of the other girls.

“I’m like, she’s a baby,” Bolder said. “Bring her home a little while longer before I throw her to the wolves.”

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Brian Wilson and his wife homeschooled three of their children last year. They struggled to juggle home life, both parents’ jobs and teaching the kids.

The family briefly switched to in-person school, but Wilson said it only validated the parents’ theory that the individual attention the kids got at home had been working.

“They seemed like head and shoulders above all the other kids when it comes to learning,” he said. “My son, Aaron — he’s the youngest — he was actually helping kids in his class.”

Both families have turned to the new Brookside Virtual Academy so they could keep their kids at home and still rely on professional teachers to lead their schooling.

The academy is attached to Brookside Charter School and bills itself as Kansas City’s only virtual program where teaching happens on live, interactive video calls.

Online school isn’t widely popular. It’s been blamed for some of the learning loss that set kids back during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kansas City Public Schools closed its virtual academy for kindergarten through fifth grade this year because of shrinking enrollment, district spokesperson Shain Bergan said in an email.

But for a girl with severe social anxiety? A boy with leukemia? A young athlete with a rigorous training and travel schedule?

Leslie Correa, who helped design the KCPS program, said certain students and families need the option. So she found a home for the program at Brookside, where she’s now the virtual academy principal.

“The students that virtual works for, it works really well for,” she said. “We cannot close the door to them for having a great education.”

Who succeeds in virtual education?

For some students, the computer screen provides a layer of distance that makes them braver, Correa said. Learning from home can also reduce distracting for some kids with autism.

For example, loud or persistent background noise, visually busy environments or other students bumping into them could overwhelm some children.

Other students might need virtual school for logistical reasons.

That could include students who are barred from in-person school for disciplinary issues, traveling athletes, kids going through intensive medical treatment like dialysis or chemotherapy, or parents who struggle with transportation.

Some families identify as homeschoolers but want professional help teaching reading and math, Correa said. Since virtual school is more concise, it leaves more flexibility in the day.

Parents’ fears can also push them toward keeping kids at home.

“Anytime that there has been a violent occurrence in one of our schools in Kansas City, I get a big uptick in enrollment,” Correa said. “They feel scared and they’re looking for an alternative.”

When virtual learning doesn’t work

To figure out if it’s a good fit, Correa starts by asking parents why they’re interested in virtual school.

“If it’s, you know, ‘I don’t have day care and I need my 12-year-old to be home to watch my kid,’ it’s kind of an alarm,” she said. “I’m not the one to judge what their decision is, but I am the one to help arm them with information.”

The virtual academy serves students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Because Kansas City-area charter schools can only operate within the boundaries of KCPS, its students have to be from that area.

The virtual academy doesn’t turn students away based on their reason to enroll, Correa said, but it monitors their progress. If a student isn’t thriving, she meets with a parent to make a plan, like tutoring or switching the child to in-person school.

Schools can deny virtual education if they document that it’s not in the student’s best interest.

“My goal before getting to that point is always to have the parent make that decision for themselves through very hard conversation,” Correa said. “But it does happen.”

Problems can arise when the virtual school doesn’t think it can fulfill an individualized education program, or IEP, often used to support students with disabilities.

“The parent has the option to return to in-person learning or waive the IEP, and then their student does not get that support,” Correa said. “They almost never waive the IEP.”

Students can also get removed from virtual school, and referred for truancy, if they stop signing in or engaging at all for too many days.

Correa said she’s also attentive to offering ways for virtual students to get more comfortable with in-person interaction.

Virtual school students can attend optional in-person events and participate in Brookside clubs and sports.

“If they want to kind of test the water, the opportunity is there,” she said. “If a student is saying to me, ‘I am ready to go in a building,’ then OK. But then also, if a student is saying to me, ‘I need out of the building,’ OK, I’m here. I just don’t want to disrupt their education.”

How virtual learning works 

Right before the school year started, Brookside Charter School’s STEAM lab was set up for virtual academy orientation.

Teachers and school leaders passed out laptops, hot spots for internet access and school supplies.

The supply bags include books, basics like pencils and glue, whiteboards and dry erase markers (extra for younger kids, who tend to leave the caps off), and individually packaged science kits for lessons on the solar system, geology or density.

But first, families settled in for a presentation to learn the basics.

Brookside Virtual Academy starts at 9 a.m. with a lesson on leadership.

Most days, students then launch into reading class, followed by math. Wednesdays are for science.

Students spend about two and a half hours in live virtual lessons each day, and another 90 minutes online working through a task list that includes social studies and science.

Live classes use video calls and technology that lets teachers monitor what students are looking at and control their screens.

Parents aren’t responsible for teaching their kids, but they’re expected to keep in touch and generally make sure the students are online and on task.

Connecting with families

For some parents, being extra involved in part of the draw.

Wilson, the parent of three kids in the program, said he appreciates that it cuts the school day down to essentials, allowing parents to be more strategic about where they put time into their kids’ education.

Bolder, the parent of a first grader, said she’s looking forward to more easily monitoring what her daughter is learning so she can help supplement that.

Virtual education makes it easier to connect with families, said Tina Duvall, a reading and math interventionist for kindergarten through fourth grade.

“I get to be in their home with them. It takes away a whole lot of anxiety for kids,” she said. “I thought in my years past teaching that I knew — really, really knew — my students’ families, but not like this.”

Duvall will be working with breakout groups of students, grouped by grade or ability level.

With about 100 students as of Aug. 20, two or three grades are combined under each of four virtual academy teachers. But staggered schedules and help from interventionists like Duvall will allow each grade to learn separately.

The biggest challenge, Duvall said, is not being able to sit by a student to point things out or hand them what they need.

“You just want to reach through the screen and help,” she said.

Bolder and Wilson said they have their kids in in-person activities so they can socialize. But they’re not sure if they’ll ever go to in-person school.

“There shouldn’t be such a thing as a bad school,” Wilson said. “But because there is, until we’re able to put our kids in a good school … then we feel like we’re more suited to teach our kids at home.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

If you asked most families with young kids whether they’d do virtual schooling again after the shift to online classes during the pandemic, .” But for Lia Carlile, it’s not a hypothetical — it’s a choice she’s made for her four kids.

Her youngest, 7-year-old Samuel Carlile, met his first-grade classmates in person for the first time at a class field trip to the zoo. His sister, 16-year-old Caroline Carlile, said he came home bursting with excitement about meeting the other students.

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“He was like, ‘oh my gosh, I got to meet so and so, and we had such a great time,” Caroline said.

“It’s amazing to me the community that these teachers have been able to build with students that have never met face to face,” added Caroline, who goes to , an online school through Quillayute Valley School District. The district is headquartered in Forks, on the Olympic Peninsula, but the Carliles live in Curlew, a small community in eastern Washington near the Canadian border.

Lia Carlile spent years teaching at a brick-and-mortar school before switching to teaching math and science at Omak School District’s , which Sam and her other two kids attend. Now, she’s the assistant principal there. Carlile said virtual education is a “really good compromise” between homeschooling and public school.

“I get a job that I love and the kids go to a school they love,” Carlile said.

But amid a rise in online schooling in Washington and other parts of the country, some experts are skeptical that virtual learning matches the benefits of an in-person environment – especially for the state’s youngest learners. Data also suggest virtual schools aren’t preparing students for college or other education beyond high school.

Although standalone K-12 online schools have been around for years, the rise in virtual learning during the pandemic. In recent years, districts have opened and expanded online program offerings, even as COVID receded.

As of 2022, there are 267 online schools in Washington state approved by the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. Although they are all authorized by public schools, others are publicly run. Four schools offer virtual learning for preschoolers and 140 for elementary school students.

Virtual school administrators say parents often choose online learning for their young kids to allow the family more flexibility, to prevent bullying, or to remove barriers for kids with disabilities and mental health issues like anxiety or depression. Elementary school parents in particular are often more hands-on, administrators say, and choose online school because it allows them more control over their child’s education.

“For us, we travel. We have family all over. The flexibility of online school, it was a necessity,” Carlile said.

Here to stay

were enrolled in at least one online class each year. During the 2021-2022 school year, , according to state reports, with just over 2,000 kindergarteners and first-graders enrolled in at least one online class. K-12 students in Washington state.

Data isn’t yet available for how many kids stayed in online schools during the 2022-2023 school year. At two of the state’s largest online schools, Insight School of Washington and Washington Virtual Academies, enrollment has started returning to pre-pandemic levels, school administrators said.

But , the agency approved 48 new single-district online school programs and seven new multi-district online school programs in the 2021-2022 school year. At least 33 of those new programs serve elementary-aged students, according to Rhett Nelson, director of learning options at OSPI.

“Online learning continues to grow as an enrollment option across Washington,” the report said. “As schools adapt to the assorted needs of their students, online learning will continue to be an important element of public education.”

Insight School of Washington, one of the largest online schools, expanded to elementary and middle school levels during the pandemic. Administrators say they plan to keep it that way.

“Online education may have gotten a bit of a bad rap through the pandemic because so many districts were trying to rush into that process,” said Jillian Ralston, an academic counselor at Insight. “But what we have is something that’s been around for a long time.”

“We know how to support these students,” Ralston added.

‘Virtual recess’ and ‘camera-on’ policies

In the Carlile household, recess is on the computer.

“[With] virtual school, people say, ‘how do kids connect, and how do they make friends?’” Lia Carlile said. “So we have this program this year called the K-12 Zone, and it’s virtual recess.”

The launched at Washington Virtual Academies and Insight School of Washington this year. Kids who use the K-12 Zone can move between online “rooms.” There are games in the zone and the whole space is moderated by an adult, similar to an in-person school’s recess monitor. Carlile said it’s largely used by middle school and older elementary students.

Every child enrolled at the two schools must also have a “learning coach,” an adult — usually a parent or grandparent — who supervises the child. The coach is much more involved with the younger grades, said Myron Hammond, executive director of Insight School of Washington.

Hammond said K-12 online school is much more interactive than an average online college class. At Insight, for example, the school has a “camera-on” policy for all students and encourages teachers to use web-based tools that allow students to work together.

Still, some online schools will offer occasional in-person events, like the zoo trip Sam went on, in acknowledgment of the benefits of in-person interaction.

“The only thing I miss in person that I can’t do virtually is give the kid a high-five,” Carlile said. “Pretty much everything else we can replicate.”

‘Just missing out so much’

Carlile believes “any student can be successful in a virtual environment,” as long as they have the right support.

However, experts are skeptical. Joy Egbert, a professor of education at Washington State University who studies technology use, said that while it depends on the student, in general, the younger a student is, the less likely they are to learn effectively in virtual school.

“I think some people think the online environment gives children access to everything they need and it doesn’t,” Egbert said.

There’s a higher learning curve for younger students. For example, Carlile’s son, Sam, had to learn how to use a computer before switching to online school. Egbert said that can be a challenge some young kids can’t overcome.

Caroline Carlile said she doesn’t know if online school would have worked for her when she was young, especially because she has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Still, she’s confident it’s working for her younger siblings.

“Because of Samuel’s teachers, he loves it,” Caroline said.

University of Washington professor Soojin Oh Park, who focuses on early education and child development, said she thinks young students cannot learn conflict resolution and other important skills in an online setting.

“By being solely reliant on virtual learning or [an] online schooling platform…they’re just missing out so much,” Park said.

Park said that if a child has consistent, in-person interactions outside of virtual school with kids their age and supportive adults, such as social groups for homeschooled kids, then “maybe it will be okay” for them learning online. That said, as a parent of a first grader, she’d approach any virtual learning environment with caution.

“I can’t imagine myself enrolling my own child in a fully online, virtual environment,” Park said.

Outcome gaps

At many of the largest virtual schools in Washington, most students are well behind state standards, particularly in math. And at Insight School of Washington, one of the largest for-profit online schools, only 7.6% of students met math standards in spring 2023, compared to 39% of all Washington public school students.

Hammond said the numbers reflect that many students come to Insight for credit recovery, and said Insight measures success based on parent feedback and increasing graduation rates.

“When I’ve met with families at graduations or even when I’ve made phone calls with families, it’s not uncommon for them to say ‘thank you,’” Hammond said. He added that families also frequently say they feel like they have more one-on-one support from their teachers in an online virtual program compared to at brick-and-mortar schools.

In a state audit report, they kept offering online school after pandemic restrictions ended because the programs were popular enough to become self-sustaining, even as districts lost access to temporary funding.

Walla Walla’s district officials said some students “thrived” in an online environment and Northshore School District, which covers an area around Bothell, said students who moved online “continue to do well compared to previous school years.”

But Park, the UW professor, pointed that found brain activity decreases when interacting on virtual meeting platforms like Zoom, as opposed to in-person interactions.

Park said virtual learning can offer easier access to resources like bilingual teachers, but she’s also worried about the ways it might increase disparities. Wealthier parents, Park pointed out, will likely have more access to extracurricular activities and other services that help enrich a child’s educational experience beyond a virtual classroom.

Egbert, at WSU, said that a common misconception is that virtual school offers more freedom than in-person school. In reality, Egbert said, it is often more difficult for teachers to adapt a standardized curriculum to fit a particular child online than it is in person.

If a parent is dedicated to putting their child in online school, Egbert said they need to make sure the particular program they choose fits with the way their child likes to learn. Overall, kids who are more oriented to learning through listening may do better in a virtual program than those who are especially social or like to learn through physical activity.

“My advice for parents is: It’s not just what you want,” Egbert said. “If you want your children to learn, think about how that can happen best for them. Not just because you need to take them out of school often.”

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He’s also a star in Ben Adler’s 8th-grade science unit on gravity and kinetic energy at Oakland, California’s , a middle school in the city’s East Peralta neighborhood. Students are designing, building and launching rockets on Macbook Air laptops around their classroom — and trying to keep their “Kerbonauts” on track (and intact) for various space missions.

It’s clever, engaging and far more typical in 2023 than it was before the pandemic. Lessons like these mark a genuine shift in American schools. Indeed, though many campuses reopened in part during the pandemic because they concluded that children were not learning enough using digital tools during virtual learning, late pandemic schooling today is . 

Americans have spent huge chunks of the past three years thinking and talking about schools in binary terms — open or closed, in-person or virtual. But with schools all but universally open and back to a normal state (however imperfect), though, these dichotomies have gotten somewhat blurrier. 

Truth is, we didn’t reopen schools back to “normal” in-person learning over the past few years … so much as we brought daily virtual learning into real-world classrooms. 

It’s the new normal in U.S. public education — and it’s complicated. I’ve visited nearly 100 public school classrooms across three states in the past six months. I don’t recall seeing a single one without a computer screen projected onto the board at the front of the room. Lessons reliably include videos from curriculum vendors and/or the internet. On several occasions, I watched early elementary schoolers hold up badges hanging from lanyards around their necks to unlock laptops to play. Written assignments and quizzes — including Adler’s on rocketry — are often conducted on laptops and submitted online. As students type, teachers frequently project with animated graphics and sound effects. 

There’s no question that the pandemic shifted schools’ digital infrastructure. The extraordinary pressures of the past three years of crises forced significant new public investments in closing digital divides. Policymakers and schools poured emergency funding into purchasing devices like laptops, tablets, Chromebooks and internet hotspots so that all students would be able to access online lessons — . This made a real dent in longstanding digital divides, even if it didn’t wholly close them. Indeed, in January 2021, a survey of teachers still found that few of their English-learning students had reliable internet access. 

It’s far from clear what this means for the present and future of U.S. public education. Teachers I’ve spoken with express ambivalence about the degree to which digital technology has permeated campus. Most say that it’s created both exciting skills and pernicious challenges. 

When Downtown Charter Academy closed on March 13, 2020, it sent students home with two weeks of assigned work. As it became clear that the crisis was serious, DCA acquired digital devices and hotspots to ensure that all families could access distance learning. Within a few weeks, the school had moved its pre-pandemic schedule online. “It was 20 hours per day at first,” says Director Claudia Lee. “But it got easier.” 

But closing device and internet access gaps was just a first step. Many DCA students and families lacked the digital literacy to use and manage these new tools. This was also true across the state. A fall 2020 survey of linguistically diverse California families found that did not understand the pandemic learning instructions they received from their children’s schools. Further, responded that they did not have email accounts they could use. 

DCA teachers say that the logistics of the transition were relatively smooth. They also confirmed that they faced many of the problems that plagued virtual learning across the country. Student engagement was a struggle, with some students attending only sporadically and others switching off their cameras under the pretense that their connection was too slow to bear the video. “We visited some homes,” says Lee, “and found some situations that were hard. Kids were trying to learn in kitchens, for example, or other places with lots of noise and distractions around. So we brought a small number of kids back to campus to log on virtually — but socially distanced.”

The school reopened for full-time in-person learning in , but it was hardly a return to normalcy. By the end of that school year, DCA students’ academic outcomes were than peers in the surrounding school district, but that was only part of the story. In discussions during a daylong professional development session this January, many teachers noted that students were prone to online distractions and — worse yet — had become increasingly adept at using digital tools and resources to avoid doing their classwork themselves. Students brought these virtual learning habits back to their in-person classrooms. 

“We need to help them understand that your choices become your identity,” said one teacher who asked not to be quoted by name. “Like, ‘If you always lie, you’re gonna eventually be known as a liar. If you always cheat, you’re gonna eventually be known as a cheater.’ George Santos is a great example of why you shouldn’t make lying a habit.” 

And yet, these costs have attached benefits. Teachers are wrangling with new digitally infused questions around academic integrity, yes, but that’s also because they have continued to use Google Classroom and other platforms as part of their courses. These streamline student assignments, teacher grading and subsequent data analysis — and offer the potential for more effective and timely communication with students’ families. Indeed, teachers reported that, at this stage of the pandemic, many more of their families have and can use online communication tools like email, school communication apps (), and video conferencing to stay linked up to what’s happening on campus. In particular, Zoom parent-teacher conferences are much easier and more equitable than the old in-person-only model. 

As such, teachers spent much of the family engagement part of the January professional development session discussing how to unlock families’ new digital literacy abilities. Members of the 8th-grade team admit to one another that they aren’t meeting their initial goal of reaching out to at least five families each week through the school’s official communication app — and brainstorm ways to reset and hold one another accountable to that expectation. The 7th-grade team agrees that they could do more to engage students’ families, and devises a process for making and sending a two-minute Friday video explaining what 7th graders will learn in the coming week. Almost everyone agrees that the school needs a meeting to help get families familiar with — and logged on to — the school’s different digital platforms. 

As for the little green Kerbals in their spaceships, Adler emails, “Across all three days, no students were caught running any other program or browsing. A notoriously disengaged student became enraptured, and even turned in good marks on the follow-up assessment.” Students scored reasonably well on a subsequent quiz, with — for example — majorities of the 8th graders correctly identifying “apoapsis” as “the highest point in an orbit,” even though the term did not appear in any of the instructional materials other than the Kerbal Space Program missions. 

So: is digital literacy a key skill (or a skill set)? Or are digital tools a crutch for students? Or some murky mixture of both? These are potent questions for this moment, as , public launches of artificial intelligence tools and concerns about are creating a national discussion about technology and education. 

I truly don’t know. But I think we’re long overdue for a collective rethinking of just what we want from education technology. As we clamber out of three years of pandemic-steeped K–12 education, it presently feels like we’re drifting to a sleepy acquiescence of any and all digital learning tools without regard for their actual purpose. It’s time for educators, policymakers and families to adopt a more intentional, active stance when making education technology choices — with an eye to avoiding unreflective reliance on these tools.

Kristy Maxwell realized something had to change the day she picked her son Levi up from school and found out his teacher had left the autistic kindergartener alone crying and throwing pencils from under his desk.

The Michigan mom switched her son to a school that had a good reputation serving students with disabilities, but things didn’t improve. Because Levi was a “math whiz,” staff ignored his trouble socializing and his difficulty handling the cafeteria’s loud noises, Maxwell said. Meanwhile, she was unsuccessful in lobbying the school to screen her child for autism, a way to secure the extra services required by law for students with disabilities. The mother worried her son might never get the learning support he needed.

Then, in March 2020, the pandemic shifted all classes at his school online and forced the family into an accidental experiment in a new model of education. 

During remote school, Levi could get one-on-one attention sitting next to his mother, who had to temporarily stop her work as a massage therapist due to COVID. His younger sister, who struggles with anxiety, could take breaks to pet the family’s dogs.

“When everything shut down and we were forced to go virtual … my two younger kids did really well,” Maxwell said. 

“We decided after doing that, since the younger two kids did so well outside of a brick-and-mortar [school], keeping them virtual would be the best way to help them academically.”

The Maxwells, whose three kids are now 9, 11 and 15, are among the thousands of families across the U.S. that tried virtual learning for the first time during the pandemic and are now staying with it.

New data indicate that online schools have had a staying power beyond the pandemic that few observers suspected. While some virtual academies have operated for decades, they saw a well-documented in 2020-21, the first full school year after COVID, as many virus-wary parents looked to protect their children from infections and anti-mask families sought a way out of face-covering requirements. But in the following year, even as brick-and-mortar schools fully reopened and mask mandates fell, remote schools mostly maintained their pandemic enrollment gains — and in many cases added new seats.

On average across 10 states, virtual school enrollment rose to 170% of its pre-pandemic level in 2020-21, then nudged up further to 176% in 2021-22, according to data obtained by The 74. 

The new figures contribute to a more far-reaching understanding because, while have documented the uptick in new fully virtual schools and standalone remote academies offered by districts, scant analyses have provided a national picture of student enrollment in those schools.

‘Looks like it’ll stick’

The trend reveals that for many families virtual learning has become more than a temporary model to get through the pandemic — but rather a long-term option preferred in increasing numbers.

“It looks like it’ll stick,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. “In some states, the numbers went up temporarily and came back down a bit. But overall, if [families] are staying for a couple of years, I would expect that they would keep it going.”

Six states in the dataset — Arkansas, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota and North Carolina — saw consecutive year-over-year virtual enrollment increases, while four — Florida, Oregon, Wisconsin and Wyoming — saw dramatic upticks in 2020-21, then a slight dip in 2021-22.

“We didn’t know what to expect after the [mask] mandates were lifted, but we maintained our enrollment and we continue to grow,” said Jodell Glagnow, attendance administrator at Wisconsin Virtual Academy.

In Iowa, an extreme case, virtual school enrollment swelled to 373% of pre-pandemic levels in 2020-21 and notched up even further to 388% in 2021-22. The growth corresponded with an increase in the number of approved online schools in the state from three to nearly two dozen over that span, a state Department of Education spokesperson explained.

The data represents K-12 students enrolled in standalone online academies and excludes students taking remote classes offered by their home brick-and-mortar school. The scope, however, varies slightly state by state. For example, the Florida numbers reflect enrollment in the statewide Florida Virtual School, while the Arkansas figures come from its two approved virtual charters and the Michigan tally encompasses students at all 88 providers approved for online instruction.

Oregon was the lone state to provide , revealing white students were overrepresented in the state’s virtual schools in 2020-21, while students with disabilities, those navigating poverty and English learners were underrepresented. Overall, enrollment rose to 172% of pre-pandemic levels that year and reduced slightly the next year. 

GeRita Connor runs Lowcountry Connections Academy, a virtual school in South Carolina. Her school opened last year to accommodate the overwhelming demand for online schooling once capacity was reached at its partner academy, South Carolina Connections, which contracts with the same for-profit provider, Connections LLC, an offshoot of publishing and testing giant Pearson. 

The families who were newcomers to online academies like hers in the fall of 2021, she said, often hadn’t even considered remote schooling before COVID.

“I think that what happened during the pandemic is that families became more aware of the option of virtual learning,” Connor said. “[It] really opened the doors for those opportunities to exist.”

For the Maxwells in Michigan, Levi stayed in the online option his school maintained through the 2020-21 year, then in the fall of 2021 switched to the statewide Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy. His younger sister, Aria, briefly returned to school in person, but switched back to a district-run online option in January 2022. In September, she was able to join her brother at Great Lakes.

Rotten apples?

Experts caution the emerging trend could translate to poor academic outcomes. Virtual academies far predated COVID in some states, often with lackluster track records. And during the pandemic, students who spent the most time away from in-person classes suffered the largest learning setbacks.

Research from the using pre-pandemic data shows students at online schools score far worse on academic tests than their peers learning in-person, even when controlling for factors like race, poverty level and disability status.

To now see more and more families enrolling in online learning worries Heather Schwartz, a researcher at the Rand Corporation who has during the pandemic.

“Until we have proof the virtual schools can perform just as well — for at least some students — as traditional public schools, yeah, I’m concerned,” she said.

Participating families and administrators, however, attest to a positive impact on student learning at many virtual schools. Levi Maxwell, for example, has seen his grades improve dramatically while learning online, his mother reports. Last year, he wrote his first story by himself, after struggling for years in English.

But Gary Miron, an education professor at Western Michigan University and outspoken critic of virtual academies, believes the negative experiences outweigh the positive ones and is frustrated to see student enrollment continue to rise.

“It defies market theory,” he said. “You’d think consumers would wake up and say, ‘I’m not going to buy these apples. They’re rotten. I’m going to get another producer.’ But they’re not.”

He also warns that many virtual schools — including Connections Academies — have nonprofit “shells” that contract with for-profit management organizations. Those contracts often include costly management fees and six- or seven-figure salaries for top executives, he said. 

“Those so-called nonprofits are just incredibly profitable,” Miron said.

Connections Academy spokesperson Chantal Kowalski countered that schools in her organization are public and, like traditional brick-and-mortar schools, are governed by boards that “make all material or budget decisions and publicly post board meeting minutes online.” She added that they “contract with Pearson for online education products and services like curriculum and technology.”

Still, GAO education director Jacqueline Nowicki remains concerned about oversight.

“To the extent that the sector grows and becomes larger, I do think the risk to the federal government grows in terms of accountability,” she said.

Virtual schools, real relationships

The primary concern for Lake, of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, is whether students enrolling in online schools lose out on facetime with teachers. Many remote academies rely heavily on asynchronous lessons and offer fewer hours of live instruction than traditional schools.

“Virtual learning can be a great option, but it isn’t a substitute for connections with adults,” she said. “You have to make sure that the virtual program is providing a lot of student-teacher interaction.”

At their Michigan virtual academy, the Maxwells feel like their needs are being well met. The school has provided more specialists to accommodate her children’s special needs than their brick-and-mortar schools ever did, Kristy Maxwell said. But she admits the energy required to keep her children on task through the school day can be considerable.

“It is a lot of work on my part,” the mom acknowledged.

In a nearby Great Lakes state, seventh grader Helena Warren has also felt satisfied with a recent pivot to the Wisconsin Virtual Academy. She transferred in January 2022 and appreciates how much one-on-one time she gets with her teachers through Zoom breakout rooms or phone calls when she needs extra help.

The middle schooler made the switch because the work at her old school was too “basic and easy,” she said, causing her to tune out and get bad grades, including some C’s and D’s. Now her grades are better and the assignments are more challenging. When she demonstrates mastery of a concept, her teacher asks her to help explain it to her peers, which she enjoys.

“She’s doing higher-grade stuff than she would be doing at a regular brick-and-mortar school,” said her proud mother, Melody Warren, who plans for Helena to stay online indefinitely.

“I think she’s gonna go through high school,” Warren said.

“I was teaching students in person and online at the same time, dealing with students who were quarantined, trying to maintain social distance in a very small classroom with 20-plus students,” she said. “I gave some serious thought to leaving teaching altogether, even though I didn’t necessarily want to leave the classroom. I just knew that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing.”

That’s when she found Georgia Cyber Academy, an all-remote school that enrolled students statewide. Her short stint teaching virtually when the pandemic first struck had “played to my strengths as a teacher,” she recalled, so she applied for a position in the English department. By the next school year, the educator had a new job.

On the heels of the pandemic and with reports of stress and burnout reaching all-time highs among the nation’s teaching corps, many — like Colwell — have chosen to migrate online. As a result, while multiple brick-and-mortar districts across the country are desperately seeking to fill vacant teaching positions, online schools say they are often attracting far more candidates than they can hire.

“Anytime there’s an open position, [our human resource officers] are inundated with applications,” said John Johnson, a teacher and former member of the school leadership team at Cobb Online Learning Academy, another virtual school in Georgia. 

Throughout the 2021-22 school year, his school had to hire roughly two dozen staff due to steep upticks in enrollment and students nationwide are continuing to leave traditional public schools. “The moment they started posting the positions, they were just having applications coming in left and right” with over 10 candidates per role, he explained.

Halfway across the country, Colorado Connections Academy experienced something similar. The school had an “absolute explosion” in student sign-ups through the pandemic, Executive Director Shannon Cox said, meaning they also had to bring on more staff. Recruitment was easy: “We’ve got more applicants than we know what to do with.” For a recent posting, the school had four candidates within a matter of hours.

“Even heading into this year where all of the local schools are having a very hard time finding candidates, we’re still finding excellent candidates and having a lot of applications,” the school leader said. “So many educators [are] looking for an opportunity to work fully remote.”

Though research shows teacher shortages this year have been concentrated in certain states and regions rather than being rampant across the country, many districts, including , reported hundreds of unfilled positions. Roles like special educators have been especially difficult to fill, a problem that predates the pandemic.

But several virtual school administrators said their institutions have been largely immune to the problem.

An extreme example comes at Lowcountry Connections Academy, an online school in South Carolina. Before school started this fall, the cyber academy posted four new teacher openings. They received roughly 1,050 applications for the roles, said head of school GeRita Connor.

“This is year 20 for me (in education), year 10 as a leader. That’s the most applications I’ve received in my life,” she said.

Much of the interest in the Lowcountry Connections Academy roles came from educators currently teaching at in-person schools who liked the idea of working from home, Connor said. 

No longer a ‘non-starter’

No real-time national data tracks how many educators have so far switched from brick-and-mortar to remote jobs, experts say. But there’s been a noticeable change in attitude around remote education since the pandemic, said Colin Sharkey, executive director of the Association of American Educators, which serves over 30,000 school staff nationwide.

“Prior to the pandemic … there was certainly a reticence on the part of a lot of folks in traditional education that [online education] was not going to work. Basically, that was a non-starter,” he said. 

But when COVID gave practically all teachers nationwide exposure to the model, Sharkey said, “some got a taste for it and thought, ‘Wow, this actually really accommodates my professional and personal goals better than returning to the classroom.’”

Research from the using pre-pandemic data shows students at online schools score far worse on academic tests than their peers learning in-person, even when controlling for factors like race, poverty level and disability status.

Heather Schwartz, a researcher at the Rand Corporation who has studied virtual schools during the pandemic, has trepidation about the continued trend toward more families and teachers engaging in online education.

“Until we have proof the virtual schools can perform just as well — for at least some students — as traditional public schools, yeah, I’m concerned,” she said.

No lunch duty, no hallway duty

For Colwell, teaching at an online school has meant increased family time and more mobility. Last year, she enrolled her three children in Georgia Cyber Academy, where she was working, and took the opportunity to travel as a family. Over the course of the school year, the group spent time in Egypt and 19 different U.S. states. They planned their transit on weekend days so they could get set up for online school by Monday.

“As long as we were in a location where we had strong internet service, then we could still have regular school and work days wherever we were,” she explained.

Others who pivoted to fully remote teaching jobs since the pandemic echoed that flexibility and work-life balance have been major benefits. They also reported they feel able to serve students in a new and more fulfilling way online.

“When the pandemic hit in March of 2020 … some of [my kids who] did next to nothing in the brick and mortar, when we did the virtual, they just began to be engaged and come alive,” said Victoria Miles, now a math and science teacher at the Greater Commonwealth Virtual School in Massachusetts. 

“It just opened my eyes that there’s a real need for this kind of teaching,” she said. Her current students include those with disabilities and hearing impairments as well as professional actors and even a motocross athlete.

After teaching in traditional schools for over a quarter century, Miles estimates the move cost her roughly a 20% salary reduction, but “with that cut in pay, comes a great quality of life increase.”

Johnson agreed. His schedule now includes time to plan lessons and complete his grading, meaning he never has to work longer than eight hours per day. The less enjoyable aspects of the profession, he said, disappear online.

“We never have carpool duty, we never have lunch duty, we don’t have hallway duty, we don’t have to do any of those little things because there are no students on our campus.”

On a similar though darker note, Miles said a significant factor for her in moving to online school was no longer having to undergo active shooter drills.

‘Not for everybody’

The choice among some educators to pivot online is in step with workers across all industries who made career changes or quit outright — part of what some have called the pandemic’s “,” Sharkey said. 

“Teachers are no different than the rest of the professionals who are reevaluating what is important to them. Flexibility, time on task versus commuting … certainly could be playing a big role in why some educators are pursuing full-time virtual careers.”

Educators who recently left the profession and took jobs in other industries cited increased control over their schedule and the ability to work from home as the key draws to their new gigs, a December 2021 Rand found. The majority accepted positions with equal or lesser pay, but had less job-related stress.

“Plummeting morale, I think, is pushing some public school teachers out of their in-person teaching,” said Schwartz, a study co-author.

Last year, a former colleague of Miles’s who was still teaching in a brick-and-mortar school called her crying, explaining that she was having difficulty dealing with a student’s behavior. Coincidentally, Greater Commonwealth Virtual Academy had an opening that met the educator’s skill set and soon she joined her friend at the online school. But the change didn’t stick.

“She really missed the interaction, she missed the face-to-face, she missed just having all those kids in a room,” Miles said.

Now, her colleague has returned to in-person teaching. Miles, for her part, has stayed online. Many of her lessons are asynchronous, meaning while some students are watching her teach a lesson online, she’s free to give one-on-one attention to another virtual student who needs extra help. She also appreciates no longer needing to wake up at 5:30 a.m.

But, she acknowledged, “it’s not for everybody.”