Idaho Home Learning Academy Charter

Idaho Home Learning Academy Charter is a large alternative K–12 charter school in Malad City, ID, serving 7,764 students through a statewide virtual/home-learning model that operates under the Oneida County District. Despite its small-city address, this school is really a remote learning academy for families across Idaho, with very high student-to-teacher ratios (33.6 students per teacher in 2024–25) and low per-student spending of about $3,749, both signs of its online, low-overhead instructional approach.

Academically, the school lags the state in math and English Language Arts. In the most recent school year, math proficiency was 26.8% versus the state's 43.1%, and ELA proficiency was 42.4% versus the state's 54.0%. Science tells a more encouraging story—the school's End-of-Course Science proficiency was 54.4%, a full 13.2 points above the state average of 41.2%. Upper-grade students also show stronger ELA results, with 8th grade reaching 50.1% proficiency. The school has shown gradual improvement in both math and ELA over the past few years, though the gap with state averages remains wide. Like its parent Oneida County District, which also trails state averages, this school is not a dramatic outlier locally—but there are no other schools within 20 miles for direct comparison.

Graduation rates have generally hovered near the state average, reaching 82.5% in the latest year and 80.0% two years prior. Reported chronic absenteeism is remarkably low at just 1.0%, compared to a 21.0% state average—though this likely reflects how attendance is counted for home-learning students. Parents should be aware that some data points appear unreliable: a reported 0.0% graduation rate in 2021–22 is clearly a data error, and several figures seem to mirror state or district numbers exactly. For families considering this school, the picture is a low-cost, high-scale virtual academy with real strengths in science and upper-grade ELA, but significant challenges in math, along with some data quality caveats to keep in mind.