Odyssey Academy of Virtual Learning

Odyssey Academy of Virtual Learning is an alternative, fully virtual PK–12 school in Ripon, Wisconsin that enrolls 266 students as part of the Ripon Area School District. Because it is the district's only alternative/virtual option and spans 14 grade levels, individual grades are often just 10–30 students, making single-grade results hard to interpret. The nearest listed comparable is Princeton School, also an alternative PK–12 school with 285 students about 14 miles away in the Princeton School District.

On the measures families often watch, attendance is Odyssey's standout: chronic absenteeism is 2.9%, less than half of Princeton's 6.3% and about one-sixth the state's 17.3%. The graduation rate reached 100%, above Princeton's 91.3% and the state's 92.0%, and the dropout rate fell from 12.8% to 10.5% to 7.9% over three years — still more than seven times the state's 1.1%. Academically, Odyssey trails its own district in 7 of 8 elementary and middle school math and ELA measures in 2025–26, with math weaker (about 28% proficiency) than ELA (about 53%), but 10th graders beat both district and state on ACT English (62.5%) and Forward Social Studies (57.1%).

Two patterns deserve attention. Grade-level achievement swings by 40 or more percentage points year to year — 8th-grade ELA went 58.3%, then 33.3%, then 90.0% — the signature of tiny cohorts rather than clear instructional change, and 4th- and 6th-grade results were not reported for 2025–26, so treat those as unknown. Also, Odyssey spends $11,957 per student, about 41% less than Princeton's $20,274, while its student-teacher ratio has climbed 30% in two years to 25.8:1, against Princeton's 9.9:1.