Texas Virtual School Closure Raises New Questions About Online Public Education

“Ideally you would have a growth model that would assess a student from the moment they arrived to the moment they left.”

Ariel Sokol, Founder of Kolari Consulting

Less than a month after staff at Lone Star Online Academy were told the school was expected to improve from an F to a C in Texas’ accountability system, they learned it would not reopen for the 2026–27 school year. The decision leaves roughly 12,000 students searching for new placements and abruptly ends one of the state’s largest public virtual school programs.

Lone Star operates through a model that has helped online education grow quickly across Texas. The academy is a public school of Roscoe Collegiate Independent School District, a small West Texas district that contracts with the private education company Stride K12 for its virtual platform and operational support. Students enroll from across the state, allowing a single district-provider partnership to serve a population many times larger than the district’s physical campuses.

That scale reflects a broader shift in public education. Full-time virtual school enrollment in Texas rises from fewer than 5,000 students in 2014 to more than 62,000 during the 2024–25 school year, an increase of approximately 1,200%. Families turn to online programs for flexibility, health and safety concerns, disabilities, learning differences, or circumstances that make a conventional classroom difficult to sustain. State policy is also opening the door for more districts and charter schools to establish virtual and hybrid campuses.

Lone Star’s closure raises questions about whether the systems surrounding that growth have kept pace. The school receives repeated failing ratings, its performance threatens the accreditation of the district responsible for it, and the relationship between Roscoe and Stride ends with little public explanation. Families and teachers are left to respond after the decision has effectively been made.

The closure therefore represents more than the loss of one school. It tests how Texas measures the performance of online programs, how responsibility is divided among districts, private operators and the state, and what protections students receive when a virtual campus serving thousands of families disappears.

To better understand the situation and potential future for determining whether Texas can continue expanding digital learning options while maintaining academic accountability and preserving the alternatives on which many families depend, we spoke with Ariel Sokol, Founder of Kolari Consulting.

Ariel Sokol is the founder of Kolari Consulting, where he advises companies, private equity firms, and investors on corporate strategy, financial planning, due diligence, mergers and acquisitions, and capital raising. His work focuses heavily on education and technology businesses, including K–12, higher education, and education services, drawing on experience across public-market analysis, corporate finance, and regulated industries.

Sokol previously served as vice president of finance and strategy at Connections Education, a Pearson company that provides technology and management services for virtual schools. He has also worked in higher education advisory and corporate development, served on the board of National American University, and covered education companies as a Wall Street equity research analyst. He holds an MBA in finance and economics from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree in history from Amherst College.

The pressure on Lone Star had been building long before families learned the school would close. The virtual campus received repeated F ratings under Texas’ accountability system, and those results affected more than the school itself. Because Lone Star operated through Roscoe Collegiate Independent School District, its performance also weighed on the standing of the small West Texas district responsible for it.

That structure created an unusual imbalance. Lone Star enrolled roughly 12,000 students across Texas, while Roscoe’s physical campuses served only a fraction of that number. The district remained publicly accountable for an online program operating at a scale far beyond its local system. As failing ratings accumulated, Roscoe faced growing pressure to stop Lone Star from further damaging its accreditation.

The academic case for intervention was therefore visible. The decision-making process was not.

Staff were told that Lone Star would remain open and were expected to improve from an F to a C. Less than a month later, they learned the program would not return for the 2026–27 school year. Families had to find new placements, teachers faced sudden job uncertainty and the public received little explanation of when Roscoe decided to end the arrangement or what alternatives officials considered.

Sokol says the district’s academic concerns may explain why the partnership ended, but not how the decision was handled. “I think this is a very curious situation because there’s simply a lack of transparency on the part of the … school district,” he says. “There are questions that need answers.”

Those questions matter because closure is not the only response available to a failing school. District and state officials can require an improvement plan, change leadership, increase academic support, or place a campus under closer supervision before ending the program. Without a clear public account, families cannot know whether those steps were attempted, rejected, or judged insufficient.

Lone Star’s record explains why scrutiny intensified, but not what produced the results. The closure shifts attention from the district’s decision to the accountability system behind it: what an F captures about a statewide virtual school, what it misses about the students who enroll, and whether the rating can distinguish weak instruction from challenges already present when students arrive.

Texas’ accountability system records whether Lone Star students meet state standards. It does not show where many of them are academically when they arrive or how far they move before leaving. For a virtual school serving students who often transfer after difficulties elsewhere, that missing starting point limits what a campus grade can explain.

Sokol says families frequently turn to online education after a student struggles in a traditional classroom because of medical needs, autism, ADHD, bullying, or other circumstances. Some students enter during the school year or after extended academic disruption. Their needs do not lessen the school’s responsibility for their education, but they affect the baseline against which its performance is judged.

“I think it would be simplistic and reductive to simply say … that it’s a reflection of online schools and their ability to educate students,” Sokol says.

Lone Star’s repeated F ratings establish that too many students fail to reach the outcomes Texas expects. What they do not reveal is whether those students lose ground after enrolling, remain at the same level or improve without reaching grade-level proficiency. Each result points to a different assessment of the school’s effectiveness, yet all can produce the same final rating.

“Where is the measurement of the student up until the point where they entered in the school, and where is the measurement where they leave the school?” Sokol says. “Ideally you would have a growth model that would assess a student from the moment they arrived to the moment they left.”

A growth measure would not replace proficiency standards or make weak results less consequential. It would add information about whether the school helps students recover credits, complete courses, and make academic gains from their individual starting points. Without that context, Texas can identify that Lone Star performs poorly but has less ability to determine which parts of the outcome reflect school quality, student mobility, or challenges that precede enrollment.

That limitation places greater weight on the institutions overseeing the program. The district, the private operator and the state each hold a different part of the system, but responsibility for interpreting poor results and responding to them does not fall neatly on any one actor.

Lone Star is public in law but hybrid in operation. Roscoe Collegiate Independent School District holds the authority to run the campus and answers to the Texas Education Agency for its results. Stride supplies the online platform and substantial services behind the program. When performance deteriorates, however, a campus rating identifies the school and district without showing which institution controls the decisions that might improve it.

This distinction matters given its consecutive failing ratings before there is room to move forward. Roscoe absorbs the damage to its accreditation, giving the district a strong incentive to end the partnership. Yet the public record offers less clarity about who determines staffing levels, tutoring, attendance policies, student onboarding, or the additional support provided once the first failing grade appears. Formal responsibility may sit with the district even when the causes of weak performance extend across the contract.
Sokol is unequivocal about where public accountability ultimately belongs.

“These are schools operated by the governments, and so ultimate accountability comes to the government, the school systems, school districts, states,” he says. “They’re responsible for putting forward mechanisms that allow us to understand student and school performance.”

The answer is legally clear, but operationally incomplete. Oversight depends on whether a district can see problems early, require changes from its provider, and determine whether those changes work. It also depends on whether the state can separate the performance of one campus from patterns linked to a company managing virtual programs in several communities.

Texas Virtual Academy at Hallsville illustrates another consequence of public decision-making. The Stride-supported school operates under the state’s alternative accountability framework, while Lone Star is judged as a standard campus. Sokol cautions against treating Hallsville’s stronger rating as proof of a better operating model.

“I think it’s apples and oranges,” he says. “You can’t talk about Hallsville and somehow say that in any way it’s superior to Lone Star.”

The classification changes the lens through which performance is viewed, even when two schools may enroll students with similar needs. It therefore belongs to the same chain of responsibility as curriculum, staffing and intervention: public officials decide which rules apply, while private providers work within them.

Senate Bill 569 begins to make that chain more visible. The law defines whole-program virtual providers, requires campuses to disclose third-party involvement and allows the state to evaluate providers alongside the schools they help operate. It also requires revoking authorization after three consecutive years of unacceptable performance.

For families, the distinction between district authority and private management becomes most consequential when the partnership ends. They are the ones left carrying records, accommodations, and unfinished coursework from one system into the next.

For the families leaving Lone Star, the boundaries between district authority, private management and state oversight matter less than what happens next. Students must move records, coursework and support needs into another setting, often after choosing virtual education because earlier placements did not work. A closure that appears manageable on an organizational chart can be far more disruptive at home.

That disruption is especially significant for students whose options are already limited by disability, health concerns, bullying, anxiety, or difficulty functioning in a conventional classroom. Moving them into another program may require more than finding an open seat. Families must determine whether the new school offers the same flexibility, services, and continuity that led them online in the first place.

Sokol says the debate over virtual education often overlooks that context.

“I wish that critics of online and virtual education, I wish that they had some compassion and empathy for families that are struggling to find solutions for children and for families,” he says. “It’s not just an issue with children, but it’s a family problem.”

That does not make virtual schools exempt from scrutiny. Families who depend on an alternative model have as much interest in strong teaching, measurable progress and early intervention as state officials do. Lone Star shows that academic accountability and student protection cannot begin only when a campus reaches the point of closure.

Texas is expanding virtual and hybrid education while introducing stricter rules for campuses and providers. Lone Star becomes an early test of what those rules must accomplish in practice: identify weak performance before it hardens into repeated failure, make the roles of districts and operators visible, and give families a clearer transition when a program ends.

“For most of these exercises, the first thing is to basically acknowledge the problem and ask the right questions,” Sokol says.

Lone Star will not determine the future of virtual education in Texas on its own, but it clarifies what the next phase of growth must answer. The state is no longer deciding whether online public schools belong in its education system. It is deciding whether those schools can expand with accountability that matches their scale, oversight that reflects how they operate, and protections that remain in place when a program serving thousands of students disappears.