There was a lot of conversation during the pandemic about how school districts’ scramble to deliver content fully virtually could fundamentally change K-12 learning. But did that become a reality? While most public school educators were eager to return to in-person classrooms, they also found benefits in online instruction—in part because some students excelled in more independent, virtual learning environments and some districts were able to fill gaps in their course offerings or supports. Many school districts initially promised to keep fully-virtual programs going for families who wanted that option even after buildings reopened for in-person learning. Now, with districts having put Covid-era practices well behind them, an important question for companies working across the K-12 marketplace is what demand remains for virtual programs in school systems. And, where those online programs remain in place, what kind of entities manage them—which would affect how vendors work with them. EdWeek Market Brief asked 163 district and 95 school leaders about the appetite among students for fully-virtual programs in a nationally representative survey, conducted by the EdWeek Research Center in March and April. Districts with lower poverty are statistically more likely to offer fully-online options to students outside of their district. Twenty-nine percent of school and district administrators from relatively affluent districts say they offer fully virtual programs to students from outside their systems, compared to 12 percent of those in systems with higher poverty. That tracks with what Benjamin Cottingham, researcher and associate director of strategic partnerships for Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), has seen among districts in his state. If a resource-strapped district has to choose between training teachers on how to provide high-quality, full-time virtual learning or improving their in-person instructional skills, for example, they’re going to choose the latter, he said. (Cottingham co-authored a report on online instruction in 2020.) “There are just higher-priority things for districts,” Cottingham said.