Virtual school enrollment has skyrocketed in Texas, up 1,200% in 10 years. Is it a new normal?
Aug 20, 2025
Amid skyrocketing demand for full-time virtual schools, districts and other providers are rushing to capitalize on the rapidly evolving market of school choice in Texas.
Enrollment at Texas public virtual schools increased 1,200% in 10 years. Nearly 62,200 students enrolled in full-time virtual school in 2024-25, up from just under 5,000 in 2014. The free, entirely online schools were already growing leading up to the pandemic, but after the lockdown forced families into temporary virtual schooling, many decided to stay there.
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“The pandemic was really a watershed moment for full-time virtual education,” said Adam Hawf, superintendent and senior vice president of online schools at Stride K12. “It caused a lot of people to have the experience of online schooling. And for many people, they didn’t like it and they wanted to go back to brick-and-mortar … But a lot of people experienced it and thought, ‘OK, this is something that works well for my kids.’”
Only a few public virtual schools existed a decade ago, including Houston ISD’s Texas Connections Academy and Huntsville ISD’s Texas Online Preparatory School, but 24 full-time, public virtual schools were operational last school year.
That number is likely to increase.
“There’s a set of states that were relatively early to kind of embrace the idea that even if the family is not a customer, we should still treat them like a customer. And, they deserve choice, and we should try to have the schools be responsive to the families, rather than vice versa,” Hawf said. “Texas has been ahead of the curve. And I think that, honestly, Texas seems to be pulling further ahead.”
New laws for virtual schools
Bi-partisan legislation passed in the most recent session overhauled the virtual school landscape. Senate Bill 569 was crafted, in part, based on recommendations from the Texas Commission on Virtual Education, which was created during the pandemic to discuss the future of virtual education.
“The untapped potential of virtual education is immense,” reads the 2023 report. “For districts, it offers the ability to offer more choice, recoup enrollment … For rural communities, expanded access to specialty, AP, CTE, and difficult-to-staff courses. For the highly mobile and foster care students whose circumstances require frequent relocations, the ability to continue attending the same school with established teacher and student relationships.”
Sen. Paul Bettencourt called it the “flagship virtual education reform bill,” saying he expected virtual education enrollment to double in three years, according to a May release.
Highlights of the new legislation include: definitions of new virtual and hybrid models; a requirement that parents are informed of virtual and hybrid options during course selection; a requirement that districts cannot discourage student population from enrolling in virtual options; allowing students to enroll in three virtual courses at the district’s expense, allowing charter schools to require virtual attendance in certain cases; providing an expedited pathway for existing virtual programs to expand; and forcing a district to consider a virtual or hybrid placement before expelling a student.
And while details of the law are still pending until the Texas Education Agency publishes guidance for districts in October, some leaders have already noted that they plan to use the new legislation, in part to keep their students from leaving to private schools in next year’s state-funded school voucher program.
Douglas Killian, superintendent of Cy-Fair ISD, said the district wasn’t previously able to capitalize on the increasing demand for virtual education, but that he plans to now, as the formerly fast-growing school district in northwest Harris County sees its enrollment begin to stagnate.
“Virtual education has been a drain on us as well, because we haven’t been able to offer that. We were able to offer a little bit of that during COVID, but there were strict restrictions there, so the Legislature solved that for us,” Killian said. “Well, now we’re getting into it. So we’re going to control that marketplace.”
Meeting increasing demand
Texas Connections Academy’s Executive Director Darla Gardner said they continue to receive enrollment requests in the week before school starts.
“Texas Connections Academy has approximately 8,900 students enrolled statewide and we anticipate that number will continue to rise. In fact, our school has had hundreds of families who began the enrollment process this week,” Gardner said.
Those students, no matter where in Texas they live, count in Houston ISD’s overall enrollment. HISD began offering virtual education in 2009 in response to families looking for that option, including students in rural areas, those who needed to recover credit or students with health issues. That population now includes advanced students looking for more challenging courses, students who are bullied, and students with mental health concerns that prevent them from thriving on campus.