Fast Facts About Online Learning

• 40 states have state virtual schools or state-led initiatives.
• 30 states, as well as Washington, DC, have state-wide full-time online schools.
• There were an estimated 1,816,400 enrolments in distance-education courses in K-12 school districts in 2009 – 2010, almost all of which were online courses. 
• 74% of these enrolments were in high schools.
• This estimate does not include students enrolled in most full-time online schools which were approximately 200,000 students in 2009-2010 and 250,000 students in 2010 – 2011.1
• These figures represent phenomenal growth as a decade ago, it was estimated there were 40,000-50,000 enrolments in K-12 online education.
• The top reasons why school districts make online learning opportunities available to their students is to provide course not otherwise available at their schools, and providing opportunities for students to recover course credits from classes missed or failed. Credit recovery is especially important for urban schools with 81% of such schools indicating this is a very important reason.
• The College Board estimated that in 2010 only 33.7% of school districts offered AP® or IB courses in English, math, social studies, and science.
• The types of online courses with the highest enrolments in school districts are credit recovery and dual-credit.
• The most common provider of supplemental online courses to school districts are universities. 75% of districts offering online learning options for their students indicate that all courses were developed by an organization other than the school district. For districts larger than 10,000 students, this drops to 63%.
• 74% of school districts with distance education programs planned to expand online offerings over the next 3 years.
• The most common location for students accessing their online course is their school, with 92% of students accessing courses from school and only 78% of students accessing courses from home.

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