Online education has evolved over the last 18 years as technology continues to advance. Starting at age 5, children are able to forego traditional classrooms and begin attending school from a computer in their homes. Research has not identified significant academic differences between traditional and online schools; however, there is limited research on differences in social competency in these settings. Bandura's social learning theory was used as a framework to compare social competency skills in traditional (n = 113) and online (n = 28) high school students living in Pennsylvania using the Social Skills Inventory (SSI). Participants were recruited using a private research consulting company. When comparing overall SSI scores of online and traditional students using an ANOVA, a significant difference was found (p = .04), with traditional students scoring significantly higher in social skills than online students. However, ANCOVA analyses showed that after controlling for age and years enrolled in each school setting, there were no significant differences in SSI between the two groups (p = .08, and .09 respectively). These results should be interpreted with caution due to the disparate group sizes. It remains unclear if online school students are socially impaired compared to their peers in traditional brick and mortar schools; however, no such differences were identified in this research. The findings of this study may impact social change by serving as a pilot to inspire the development of new measures and identify a need for future studies. A longitudinal study may provide more insight about social development in online school students. In addition, development of a measure that encompasses modern socialization and variables that are applicable to all school aged children could assist with more clearly identifying any relation between school type and social development.

Current research indicates that distance education courses can be as effective as traditional courses when the method and technologies used are appropriate to the instructional tasks. The number of states, counties, and school districts that provide online courses for high school students has rapidly expanded during the last ten years. The number of students, who enroll in these courses, has often grown by double digits each year. Understanding K-12 students' experiences in, and expectations of, online learning is important for many reasons. Online learning is certainly growing and may become a graduation requirement in more states. Currently Michigan requires every student must participate in some form of online learning as a high school graduation requirement. High school students enrolling in online courses may have a measurable influence on higher education courses in the future, as students become more experienced with online learning. A great deal has been written about the development of virtual high schools, some of the issues surrounding them and basic student demographics. There are only a few studies that have interviewed students in detail as to why they have chosen to participate in a virtual school and examined how this choice has impacted them. The purpose of this study was to describe from the student's perspective, why they had enrolled in online courses and allowed them to characterize their experiences. Further, this study sought to identify the personality types and traits of the students enrolled in online high school courses and reported on one measure of the student's cognitive style or cognitive tempo. Forty-three students who were enrolled in a state sponsored virtual high school participated in this study. The study used three online instruments to collect data. The Matching Familiar Figures Test-20 was used to measure the impulsive or reflective responses of the students. The Long-Dziuban Reactive Behavioral Survey was used to determine the students' personality types. The third instrument was an online questionnaire of open-ended questions asking the students about their online experiences. In addition, twelve students participated in follow-up interviews. The study found that the students enrolled in online courses for a variety of reasons; students were concerned about and wanted control over the timing and pacing of their learning. Students' comments suggested that there may be a relationship between cognitive tempo as classified by the MFFT-20, and the students' preference for pacing through the online course materials. In addition, the distribution of personality types and cognitive styles represented in this sample were different from the general school population suggesting that perhaps some students are more interested in online learning than others are. After reviewing the results of the students responses to the MFFT-20, it may be that students may are becoming faster at processing visual information with fewer errors. More research is needed in this area. There does seem to be a trend in this direction and this could have implications for students enrolled in virtual high school courses. Finally, the students in this study characterized their online learning experiences as positive but did not feel that online learning should be a high school graduation requirement for all students.

Florida Virtual School (FLVS) was established in 1997 as an online education alternative for the residents of Florida. The purpose of this study was to identify policy changes at the organizational, state, and federal levels that had the propensity to impact student success (as measured by student's final letter grade) at FLVS. In addition, this study identified which type of institutional isomporphic policy (coercive, mimetic, or normative) best classified major policy changes in the organization from 1997-2007. The use of institutional theory as the guiding framework for this study proved to be beneficial and enabled the researcher to conclude which types of policy are the most effective in increasing student success in the secondary online education environment. This study utilized ANOVA and regression analysis to detect whether or not changes in policy at the organizational and federal level have a statistically significant impact on student success in the secondary online education environment. This study reveals that student success at FLVS is consistently decreasing and that the change is statistically significant. Regression analysis found that the policy changes at FLVS in this study explain some of the variance detected in the change in the mean, or GPA, of the school. This study found that both coercive and mimetic policies have a statistically significant impact on student success in the secondary online education environment as identified in the isomorphic mechanisms outlined in institutional theory. This study is important to the field of literature regarding secondary online education in that it opens the discussion regarding types of policy and the potential impact that policy changes have on student success in the secondary online education environment. In addition, this study serves as a framework upon which future studies can be conducted and are recommended in this study.