The headline
US public virtual schools (schools that deliver all or most instruction online) enrolled roughly 811,000 students across 1,811 schools in 2024-25. That's a category that barely existed 25 years ago and has more than quadrupled in size since 2017-18.
Virtual enrollment is dominated by a small number of large multi-state operators: Commonwealth Charter Academy (PA), Texas Virtual Academy at Hallsville, Ohio Virtual Academy, Epic Charter School (OK), Pennsylvania Cyber, Georgia Cyber Academy, Highlands Community Charter (CA), Nebo Online School (UT), and Texas Connections Academy. Together these networks enroll a substantial share of all US virtual public-school students.
Where virtual enrollment concentrates by state
Five states host the bulk of US virtual public-school enrollment: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, and California. The pattern correlates with permissive virtual charter laws. States that allow statewide virtual charter authorization have large virtual sectors. States that restrict virtual charters do not.
What the outcomes data says
The research on virtual school outcomes is consistently sobering. Studies by CREDO at Stanford and by Mathematica have found that virtual public schools produce student outcomes meaningfully below comparable brick-and-mortar schools, particularly in math, and particularly for students who enroll mid-year or who have prior academic struggles.
This does not mean virtual schools have no role to play. They serve specific populations: students with severe medical conditions, students in rural areas without local options, students who have been bullied or assaulted in traditional schools, students with intense extracurricular commitments. For those students, the alternative is often no schooling at all. But used as a general substitute for in-person K-12 education, virtual schools have not yet demonstrated comparable outcomes.
The post-COVID trajectory
Virtual enrollment spiked dramatically during the 2020-2022 COVID years and has only partially reverted. Many of the new enrollees from that period have stayed enrolled, particularly families who had a negative experience with their local district's remote instruction in 2020-21 and switched to a dedicated virtual school the following year.
Methodology
Source: NCES Common Core of Data 2024-25 (using the NCES virtual-school classification), supplemented by state-level virtual charter reporting where available. The 1,811 schools / 811K students figure includes only public virtual schools (district-operated and charter); it does not include homeschooling, private virtual schools, or hybrid in-person/virtual schools.