ABSTRACT
K-12 virtual education is a new and rapidly growing educational environment. With thirty-one states in the United States currently offering fully online options, and forty-eight states offering some type of online education, virtual schools have gone from being unnoticed to enrolling just over 300,000 students in 2019, with as many as one million or more enrolled in some form of online learning. This new education environment has the potential to drastically change the landscape of education. This is especially true for at-risk populations, including students with disabilities, who have been choosing online education over traditional schools at an increasing rate. As more students choose to attend this alternative school environment, and more conversations occur surrounding the options online learning provides, it is important to have a working definition of virtual schools, a description of how they operate, their impact on at-risk students, and the potential benefits and concerns that accompany virtual education.
