Big Rapids Virtual School

Big Rapids Virtual School is an alternative public virtual school serving grades K-12 in Big Rapids, Michigan, with 133 students and part of the Big Rapids Public Schools district, which is ranked 261 out of 613 districts in the state and has a 3-star rating from SchoolDigger.

While the school has seen declining four-year graduation rates, dropping from 82.8% in 2023-2024 to 32.3% in 2023-2024, which is significantly lower than the district's overall four-year graduation rate of 70.2% in 2022-2023, the school's dropout rates have been increasing, from 7.6% in 2023-2024 to 29.4% in 2023-2024, much higher than the district's overall dropout rate of 11.7% in 2022-2023. Additionally, Big Rapids Virtual School has had high chronic absenteeism rates, ranging from 24.7% to 38.5% over the past few years, significantly higher than the state average of around 20%, and its test scores on the M-Step and SAT assessments are generally lower than the district and state averages.

Interestingly, the two nearby schools, Lighthouse Academy Eagle Village and MecostaOsceola Education Center, which are also alternative schools serving similar student populations, appear to have better outcomes in terms of graduation rates, dropout rates, and test scores compared to Big Rapids Virtual School. Additionally, the school has seen an increase in spending per student, from $7,062 in 2021-2022 to $8,991 in 2023-2024, suggesting that the school is investing resources to support its students, but the outcomes do not yet reflect the increased spending, which may be due to the school's very high student-teacher ratio, ranging from 66.5 to 76 students per teacher.