Going the Distance: Offering Benefits of Convenience, Independence, and Even Improved Academic Performance, Virtual Schools Promise to Be Here for the Long Haul

MICAH WILLIAMS HAD A PROBLEM. His attendance at Lutheran High School in Orange County, CA, was down, and, a young actor, he had missed his middle graduation in order to fly to Vancouver, British Columbia, to appear in a movie. It seemed as if he had to make a choice: acting or getting an education. As it turned out, his mother made the choice for him: both. She enrolled him at Orange Lutheran High School Online. Now Micah logs in to OLO and does pretty much what traditional ground school students do: He reads background material, engages in discussions with other students, takes tests, asks questions of his teachers, and hands in assignments. He logs in at least Monday through Friday, at any time of the day from anywhere he has computer access, so he has time to pursue his acting career and get an education, too. Ironically, it's the virtual interaction with other students that he's most excited about. You can basically to any student you want to, Micah says, acknowledging that talk means type. all the time about everything. Online education has been a great solution, and it's one that working for a number of students whose circumstances bear little resemblance to Micah's. Consider Dan Hathaway, a freshman from Tennessee. Dan's an only child; his dad a lieutenant stationed in Iraq; and he and his mother run a farm, which makes attending a bricks-and-mortar difficult. Instead, he takes courses through OLO. He's carrying straight A's. And last November, he sent fellow students photos of calves being born. OLO student body consists of a mix of kids who have turned to eLearning for a variety of reasons. Some--called blended students--go to Lutheran High School, or one of many schools across the country, and use OLO to supplement their regular coursework. Others take online classes exclusively, and so are actually enrolled in the online high school. OLO's curriculum comes from Lutheran High; the teachers come from the University of Phoenix and from a pool of Lutheran High educators; the funding comes from tuition. Other OLO students include a nationally rated ice skater who lives on a ranch in Nebraska, a hockey player who travels all over the country, and a student who has had a kidney transplant and isn't sufficiently mobile to attend a regular high school. All benefit tremendously from taking classes online. Patty Young the director of Orange Lutheran Online, and she knows of many success stories like Micah and the others. The greatest challenge, she says, is getting the word out to overcome people's preconceived notions about what online is. students are open to it because they're comfortable with technology. Often, the most resistant are teachers, either because they're worried that their jobs will be overtaken by computers or because they're just not inclined to change their mode of teaching. But, says Young, resistant or not, both students and teachers can make the transition: It's really fun to watch the lights come on. We want to be innovative and visionary and try to meet the needs of many people in many different ways. Data in the Virtual World Founded in 1997, Florida Virtual School offers more than 90 courses and employs 295 full-time teachers and 160 adjunct teachers. Last year the served more than 31,000 students in all 67 Florida districts and in other districts around the country. Just as it in traditional schools, data gathering becoming central to online instruction, though the kinds of data virtual schools collect differ from what grounds are looking at. FLVS routinely administers surveys to students, parents, teachers, and administrators to gather data about the quality of its services, asking questions that address student-teacher communication and the quality of the school's support staff. In each survey, participants are asked to indicate any areas of concern or recommendations for improving the school's services. …