A Correlational Study Between Public Virtual Charter High School Students’ Enrollment Date and Prior Academy Performance

Abstract

Even with the increase in virtual learning, there remains a stigma that virtual schools are not successfully supporting students based on traditionally lower graduate rates and state assessment data. The problem is statewide educational decision-makers lacked an understanding of the prior academic performance, specifically credit attainment, among high school students who enrolled in virtual public charter schools in Oregon after the first semester of their ninth-grade year. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the correlation between enrollment date and prior academic performance, measured by credit attainment from the previous school, among high school students who enrolled in a statewide virtual public charter school in Oregon after the first semester of their ninth-grade year. This study filled a gap in the current literature by examining what correlation existed, if any, between prior academic performance and enrollment date of high school students who enrolled in virtual public charter schools. A theoretical framework of self-efficacy theory and transformational leadership theory underpinned the study. Quantitative correlational design was implemented utilizing archival data of students enrolled in a statewide virtual public charter school during the 2022–23 school year. Data were collected for a simple random sample from a secure student information system. Collected data were analyzed through the Spearman’s rank order correlation with a 95% confidence level and an alpha level of 0.05. With an r-observed value of 0.1318 and a critical value of 0.0824, the correlation between enrollment date and prior academic performance, measured by the degree of credit deficiency, is significant.