A new report found that Tennessee students attending virtual schools aren’t showing the same academic growth as their peers in traditional schools.¶
Crystal McCarver, Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) Senior Director of Public Choice Programs, presented the Virtual Education Program Annual Report for the 2024-2025 school year to the State Board of Education on Friday.¶
She highlighted several shortcomings in the virtual education system, which is seeing academic outcomes significantly weaker than those of traditional public schools.¶
Weaker Academic Outcomes
Among the state’s 59 virtual schools, only 27 percent earned a Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) growth score of Level 3 or higher, compared with 66 percent of non-virtual schools. In Tennessee’s accountability system, Level 3 is the minimum expectation that students make roughly a year’s worth of academic progress, while Level 2 and Level 1 show that students make less progress than their peers on average.¶
The data suggests that although some virtual schools may be achieving acceptable student growth, the sector continues to lag behind traditional schools academically.¶
Board Member Dr. Ina Maxwell expressed a related concern about how these results are communicated to families. She questioned the internal monitoring and evaluation tool that districts use to rate their virtual schools, saying the reports focused more heavily on procedural compliance than student outcomes.¶
“Families can be told their school is ‘meeting expectations’ at the very moment the state is classifying it among its lowest performers,” Maxwell said.¶
McCarver said the TDOE has revised the monitoring tool to reflect that.¶
Attendance Growth
Despite low academic achievement, the number of virtual schools in the state has remained relatively unchanged since the 2021-2022 school year.¶
Virtual school enrollment has also increased by more than 1,700 students between the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. The virtual education system currently serves more than 14,000 Tennessee students.¶
New State Law
Concerns about virtual school performance led lawmakers to pass a new state law earlier this year that requires the state to close virtual schools that make the state’s priority list or fall “significantly below expectations” for three consecutive years under TVAAS.¶
Virtual school critics point out that these schools face an authorization process that’s less rigorous than that of public charter schools, have less stringent financial oversight and transparency, may be run by for‑profit operators, and even face fewer guardrails on enrollment, allowing them to recruit widely across the state.¶
