{"id":356090,"date":"2026-06-30T18:59:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T18:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/356090\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T18:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T18:59:15","slug":"one-of-texas-largest-virtual-schools-closed-leaving-12000-students-in-the-lurch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/356090\/","title":{"rendered":"One of Texas\u2019 largest virtual schools closed, leaving 12,000 students in the lurch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Enrollment in public virtual schools has exploded over the past decade, no doubt accelerated by the pandemic<\/a> and families looking for alternatives to traditional classrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this month, one of the state\u2019s largest online public schools, with some 12,000 students, abruptly shut down<\/a>, leaving families scrambling, teachers out of work, and raising new questions about whether the pace of growth in virtual ed has outpaced accountability.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Sander<\/a>, who covers education for the Houston Chronicle, said the closure of the Lone Star Online Academy was announced when its partner district, Roscoe Collegiate ISD, decided not to extend its contract with the private company that ran the virtual school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cRoscoe Collegiate ISD is a public school district in West Texas \u2014 a pretty small district,\u201d Sander said. \u201cIt only educates about 700 students in person, but they have around 12,000 virtual school students through their partnership with Stride K-12, which is a private company that runs virtual schools around the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Online learning options are often touted for providing more flexibility for students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are different models. There\u2019s asynchronous, which means students can do classes at their own pace. And there\u2019s also synchronous learning, which is basically like a regular school day, but in front of your computer instead of in a classroom,\u201d Sander said. \u201cAnd these public schools that we\u2019re talking about, they\u2019re virtual and they\u2019re free because they\u2019re funded by taxpayer money through their partnerships with school districts.\u201d<\/p>\n

But despite the popularity, the Lone Star Online Academy had an F from the state\u2019s accountability rating system every year since they opened in 2021. Meanwhile, Roscoe Collegiate ISD had A and B ratings in its in-person schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were struggling academically and there are a few possible reasons for that,\u201d Sander said. \u201cVirtual school is different from regular school\u2026 It tends to have a more transient student population. Students might be coming in partway through the year, (or leave) before the year is over, which has historically provided a little bit more of a barrier to academic success for virtual schools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sander said the decision to close the online school came as a surprise to families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI spoke to one parent who said that as of the last day of school, they had no reason to believe they weren\u2019t going to be going back to school at the same online program that fall,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is not the same as a regular school closing in the sense where it\u2019s not a brick and mortar building. There\u2019s maybe no transportation changes. But these parents and these children will end up in a different program in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Representatives from Stride K-12 told Sander they\u2019re trying to place all of the students from this public virtual school in one of their other public virtual schools in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The closure of Lone Star Online Academy provides another data point in a fairly new landscape when it comes to virtual schooling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese schools are fairly new. The structures and systems that (we\u2019re) seeing on a large scale, it\u2019s still something that is being researched and studied,\u201d Sander said. \u201cWhen something is growing so fast, it is important to make sure that there are conversations about what accountability looks like when it comes to virtual schools. <\/p>\n

Should they have different metrics given that they\u2019re not in person, given that their student population can be more mobile? I think a lot of those conversations are happening, but in this case, I don\u2019t think they happened before the school eventually closed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Enrollment in public virtual schools has exploded over the past decade, no doubt accelerated by the pandemic and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-356090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}