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Key Findings

1. E-school enrollments have been rising in Ohio.
2. Low-income and low-performing students are more likely to opt out of traditional public schools.
3. There are considerable racial and ethnic differences between e-schools and charter schools.
4. E-school students score lower on standardized achievement tests than peers in charter and traditional public schools.
5. The lowest-performing students fare the worst in e-schools.

Online education is fast rising as a potential strategy to provide choices at all levels of education. Advocates of e-schools — schools that present entire curricula online — argue that new web-based technologies have the potential to expand the depth and breadth of courses available to students, while providing them with increased flexibility in terms of where, when, and how they learn. At the same time, questions have been raised about the potentially negative effects of introducing e-schools into K–12 public education, such as increased pressure among stakeholders to compete for limited resources, profiteering by private companies, and ineffective learning outcomes for students. Much is still unknown about the landscape of online education, from what drives families to select such schools to how effective they are at meeting students' needs.