Virtual High School student and teacher, meeting in real time.

Where Peter Billingsby teaches high school World History there is no chalkboard, no period bell, no lines of desks filled with students. Billingsby teaches his Florida Virtual School students from in and around a converted bedroom at his home in Asheville, NC. His students are among the estimated half-million students nationwide taking online courses, the majority as a supplement to their work at traditional schools, and some as full-time cyber-students.

An Educational Evolution

Computers have clearly come in to their own as tools for teaching and learning—both at home and in traditional school buildings. For one thing, they are everywhere: Ninety percent of U.S. kids between 5 and 17 use computers. Nearly 100 percent of public schools have internet access, and the student-to-computer ratio in schools is 4 to 1.

And students are very comfortable in the on-line world, though not necessarily as a place for learning. "The average high school student spends 27 hours a week online," says Susan Patrick, executive director of the North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL). "But the average amount of time they are online doing research is 15 minutes" per week.

Patrick and others see virtual classrooms, which students can access from anywhere, at any time, as a way to harness the power of the internet to educate students, while filling in gaps in traditional education.

Expanding the Educational Menu

To date, most of the growth in online learning is as a supplement to traditional school rather than a replacement.

With online access, students in remote school districts can access a broader selection of courses, including AP classes, which may not be offered by small schools. Home-schooled students can access supplementary courses. Kids who have demanding lives outside of school—young actors and athletes, for example—can travel, bringing their classroom along on their laptop. Incarcerated or seriously ill students and teenage parents can keep up. Gifted students can leap ahead. Even ESL (English as a second language) students, who often read English better then they understand it when spoken, can do well in online classes.

And for students who don't fare well in face-to-face classes, including those with certain learning disabilities or mental illnesses, online courses can mean the difference between making the grade and falling off educational radar, says Patrick.

To date, 22 states have established virtual schools. Many, like Florida Virtual School, function to support local school districts, supplying supplemental courses to students enrolled in traditional schools. The school, which started in 1997 with 77 students from two districts now serves over 21,000 students in grades 6-12 from every district in Florida and 35 other states.

Originally funded with a grant from the two original districts, the school is now paid by school districts on a per-pupil, per-course basis. Unlike traditional schools, though, FVS only receives payment when and if a student passes the course.

FVS can allow students to work at their own pace. Students meet on the phone with instructors before starting the course to discuss what pace would work best for them. While a full-credit course normally takes 36 weeks to complete, students can opt to accelerate or extend the time they take.

Meanwhile, cyber-charter schools, now operating in 16 states, often offer full-time diploma programs. And more and more private schools are developing online courses to extend their offerings.

How It Works

Virtual students and their teachers aren't just emailing assignment information through cyberspace. Most courses have their own websites, with discussion boards, meeting rooms and scheduled online chats.

Without a classroom, teachers work hard to connect to students through frequent communications by e-mail, phone and on-line messages. When Billingsby receives a student's assignment via email he is required to grade and return it in 48 hours. Same goes for any calls he receives from students or parents.

"It is even more important to be in touch" in an online environment," says Billingsley. The regular contact "takes the place of my physical presence," in a classroom setting. In fact, says Billingsley, parents of online students are more likely to communicate with him than the parents of students in traditional school environments. Occasionally, he says, students meet in person at a local library or on a field trip.

At EdVisions, a Minnesota-based cyber-charter school for grades 7 through 12, teachers host web conferences with their classes and principal Kevin Kreohler can call students into his online "office," for private conversations.

But the hands-off environment demands more of students, says Billingsley. "It requires much more organization to keep track of assignments and due dates and files," he says.

And Young says the set-up can expand opportunities for cheating. To prevent plagiarizing, the school offers several options for different projects, so students can pick and choose unique assignments—thus discouraging copying and encouraging personalization. "When a student produces their work it needs to have a piece of them in it," says Young.

Daniel Werl is a sophomore at Minnesota Center for Online Learning, a charter high school based in southeastern Minnesota. Werl, who lives in Minneapolis, attends rural-based "MCoOL" from locations limited only by their internet access. "I have a laptop," says Werl, "I (attend McoOL) at the library, at an internet coffee shop, at home."

Werl is considered a fulltime student at MCoOL, and will get his high school diploma there, though he does take some classes at a traditional school. Werl says he likes MCoOL in great part because he likes technology and because it suits his preference for reading to learn. Besides, says Werl, the economics and American literature classes he takes at MCoOL aren't offered at the traditional school he also attends in Minneapolis.

Competing for Kids

Besides being an option for students like Werl, MCoOL is a boon for the tiny Houston, Minnesota school district. "Our school district has doubled in size in just a matter of a couple of years," says Steve Kerska, Director of MCoOL. The district, which currently has 1200 students, is projected to double again next year, due mostly to MCoOL enrollments. "It puts Houston on the radar," says Kerska.

In fact, virtual schools can be a great equalizer for both schools and students, says Kerska. "It allows us to compete" for students, and with their enrollments, a slice of the ever-slimmer state education budget, says Kerska.

Students who aren't comfortable in a traditional classroom can thrive in the "asynchronous" environment of virtual school. "Suddenly that 45-minute time-pressure class period is gone," since students can complete their coursework whenever they want, as long as they turn it in on time, says Liz Pape, president and chief executive officer of Massachusetts-based Virtual High School.

VHS, a nonprofit collaborative of high schools which together offer online courses to their collective students, offers accredited courses taught by teachers from the member schools. A teacher interested in teaching a course on nuclear physics might find only a few students in the school to sign up. But through VHS, a teacher can offer such a class to interested students across the state—and in turn, the students have access to a class they wouldn't be able to take otherwise.

With virtual schools open to students anywhere, students find peers they could never meet at the school down the street from their home, says Pape. "If you are going to a suburban white-bread school, you might be in an online course with a student from Mississippi and one from the American and International School in Kazakhstan."

Shortfalls of Virtual Schooling

Still, virtual schools struggle with subjects like physical education and music, which can be challenging to deliver online. And some students' learning styles are not well suited for virtual learning. "Online schooling really works best if your primary learning style is reading," says Werl. "If you learn by listening there is really not much listening you can do in an online course."

David Walsh, president of National Institute on Media and the Family, worries about students missing out on the non-academic aspects of school, such as social and emotional growth through interactions with other students in class, on the playing fields, and during sports or other activities. "I think it is important that we remember that education isn't just a matter of information," says Walsh. "Emotional intelligence is a stronger predictor of occupational success than academic intelligence."

Walsh also worries about the distractions inherent in working online. With video games and internet chat rooms just a mouse click away, says Walsh, "It would have to be a very disciplined learner" who wouldn't be tempted to stray for his or her studies. Werl confirms the risk of losing track of a research goal while chasing down information online. While researching jobs for an economics class, Werl stumbled on a link to a site on web programming. "Before I knew it, I was looking at how to program in HTML and Java."

Questions on Efficacy

The jury is out on just how well virtual schools actually educate students. Pape points out, "of the students who take our AP exams over 70% are (passing.) When you look at the pass rate for all students it is just 60%." But in the 2002-2003 school year, students in Pennsylvania and Ohio virtual schools scored below state averages on standardized tests. More recently, students attending virtual schools in Colorado had higher attrition rates and lower math scores than state averages.

Supporters note that virtual schooling is fairly new, and still evolving. In the near-decade since Florida Virtual School opened, educators there have learned a lot, says Young. "We learned that email wasn't enough. Communication by phone with parents and students had a much higher success rate."

Regardless of the methods they use, most proponents of virtual schools claim students in good online schools perform neither better, nor worse than students attending bricks-and-mortar schools. "If you took 100 of our online students," says Kerska, "I think you would see about the same bell curve you'd see in traditional schools."

Three years ago, Peter Billingsley commuted 45 minutes to teach kids in a windowless classroom. Now he is happily educating his online students while peering into his yard. His outlook has changed as he's seen his students succeed in his online classroom. "Virtual school is a wonderful opportunity I'd like to have available for every student."

Resources

• MCoOL, a high school is one of two online schools operated by the Houston, MN public schools.
• The other is the Minnesota Virtual Academy, a K-8 school.
• EdVisions is a Minnesota virtual charter school for grades 7 through 12.
• EdVisions is an outgrowth of the Minnesota New Country School, a rural school with a project-based learning model.
• Florida Virtual High School and Virtual High School are on-line high schools.