Virtual Preparatory Academy of Oregon

Virtual Preparatory Academy of Oregon is a fully virtual, alternative public school serving 80 students in grades K–12 from a rural mountain town — Prairie City, Oregon — under Prairie City School District 4. With roughly six students per grade, it is by far the smallest school in its district: about one-third the size of Prairie City School and one-eleventh the size of Oregon Connections Academy.

On state tests, VPAO sits in the middle of the field. Its science proficiency (30.8%) is essentially at the state average (30.6%) — the only one of the three schools at that level — while its ELA (30.7%) and math (26.7%) results trail the state but beat Prairie City School (21.9% ELA, 17.9% math, and under 5% science). The school also reports just 8.8 students per teacher, by far the lowest of the comparison group (Prairie City School: 11.3; Oregon Connections Academy: 25.3), suggesting more individual attention per student. Its reported spending of $3,725 per student is far below Prairie City School's $25,324, though the figure is identical to Oregon Connections Academy's, which suggests it reflects a shared allocation rather than a building-level budget.

Two areas deserve caution. First, VPAO's chronic absenteeism rose from 30.9% to 38.7% between 2023–24 and 2024–25 — the only school in the group moving in the wrong direction, while both the district and the state improved. Second, high school performance is largely unknown: VPAO reports no graduation rate, and 11th-grade results are suppressed in all three subjects. Grade-level results also swing widely (from 16.7% in 8th-grade ELA to 36.8% in 7th-grade ELA), a pattern typical of very small cohorts, so treat these numbers as signals rather than precise measurements.