Today, approximately six years since the shutdown of in-person learning at a majority of the nation’s schools, district leaders are contending with a fragmented policy landscape where standards vary wildly by state.
According to the National Education Policy Center, a nonprofit research institute, accountability models often fail to capture the distinctive operational realities of virtual schools, which frequently serve highly mobile student populations and utilize nontraditional instructional models.
This lack of standardized oversight is creating downstream consequences for student transcripts, college readiness and long-term equity.
PATCHWORK GOVERNANCE
There is no single governance model for virtual education in the U.S.; instead, states operate on a spectrum ranging from centralized control to extreme decentralization, said Claus von Zastrow, senior policy director at the nonprofit Education Commission of the States.
At one end are states like Florida, which von Zastrow said maintains a centralized, decades-old statewide system through the Florida Virtual School. In this model, the state serves as a primary provider and authorizer, ensuring a level of consistency in course quality and data collection.
Michigan, von Zastrow said, takes a decentralized approach allowing multiple authorizers — independent entities including state boards and local school districts — to approve and oversee virtual school operations, often resulting in less uniform data and oversight.
Texas, on the other hand, utilizes a moderately centralized model, blending state-level oversight with significant local flexibility through the Texas Virtual School Network. The state’s education department requires virtual courses be reviewed and approved to align with local education standards, oversees a catalog of state-approved providers, and maintains strict control over funding eligibility to ensure the expansion of virtual schools remains tied to rigorous benchmarks.
Differences in governance models, von Zastrow said, dictate how a school is held accountable.
STATE-LEVEL METRICS
One of the most pressing issues for state leaders, he said, is the “data gap”: the discrepancy between the information states currently collect and what is actually needed to evaluate student progress.
“Some of the gaps are things that are gaps broadly in education, but that are especially important for virtual schools,” he said. “Things like engagement, right? That’s not something we necessarily even know for all schools, but very often we use things like attendance as a proxy ... Better attendance would suggest better engagement. That’s harder to do for virtual schools.”
Data components like course tracking present another hurdle. Inconsistent course coding across state systems often leads to high rates of miscoding, a problem von Zastrow noted is exacerbated in less centralized systems. While students in virtual pathways still participate in mandatory state testing, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has highlighted significant risks regarding the comparability of these results and the challenges of maintaining testing integrity in remote environments.
THE TRANSCRIPT ‘PROBLEM’
These K-12 data gaps eventually collide with the higher-education admissions process, according to Donnell Wiggins, associate vice president for strategic enrollment management at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and a National Association for College Admission Counseling board member. When a student applies to college from a virtual or homeschool pathway, he said, admissions officers often encounter “difference rather than inconsistency” in how academic records are presented.
Since there is no unified national approach to how transcripts are written for virtual learners, Wiggins said admissions officers often struggle with a lack of detailed course descriptions.
Virtual transcripts have improved dramatically, he said, but “states have to do a good job in making sure the institutions truly understand the course description process ... . How does it translate to X, Y and Z when you think about the core college prep curriculum, four units of English, four units of math, three units of science?”
Without that context, Wiggins said, a transcript can feel incomplete. Admissions teams, he said, are interested in understanding the depth of a curriculum and how a student engaged with the material. But admissions officers, he said, need to understand the “how” and the “what” of student learning; rather than just focusing on grades, which may not be standardized.
This ambiguity, Wiggins said, often forces admissions officers to seek external validation of a student’s academic work and social readiness. One emerging “equalizer” here is the rise of dual enrollment, through which students can earn both high school and college credit simultaneously. For many students, he said, these credits serve as a standardized proof of performance in an otherwise fragmented data landscape.
“When we see a student has been successful in a college-level course at a community college or a local university, it gives us a level of confidence in their academic preparation that a standalone virtual transcript might not fully convey,” Wiggins said.
MOVES TOWARD STANDARDIZATION
If he could advise state leaders directly, Wiggins said he would primarily suggest an “intentional dialog” between virtual schools and higher-education institutions to create an even playing field for admissions.
But addressing existing gaps will require several technical and structural improvements, he said — starting with standardizing course descriptions. Using frameworks like the Common Education Data Standards, a national initiative promoting the understanding of education data, Wiggins said, is increasingly viewed as a way to move toward targeted alignment, rather than full, rigid standardization.
The emergence of AI, von Zastrow said makes standardized benchmarks even more vital for students’ long-term success in virtual pathways.
“There are a set of things you can do by learning from states that have been in the game longer, learning from those who have thought about the data challenges longer, and then maybe integrating some of their particular strategies,” he said. “I suspect it’s going to be a time when states really have to keep their eyes wide open and try to figure out exactly how they can navigate these challenges in real time.”
