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Two Families, Two Takes on Virtual Schooling


With all the talk about online education lately, it's clear that the vision evoked by the words "home schooling" is changing. The image of Mom and kids sitting at the kitchen table has given way to a child logging onto a virtual class from the home office.

The number of students in kindergarten through 12th grade enrolled in virtual schools nationwide has grown to 225,000 from 50,000 a decade ago—and 30% year over year since 2001, says Susan Patrick, chief executive of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a nonprofit advocacy group. Some parents choose virtual schooling to accommodate a heavy schedule of extracurricular classes or interests; others feel their children's needs are better served outside a traditional classroom. Here are two families' experiences.

The Thomas Family

Vanita and Peter Thomas's daughters, Sarah, age 7, and Ruth, 13, doubled up on schoolwork this semester so the family could take a five-week trip to India without their falling behind. "I can sometimes do a week's worth of math in a day," says eighth-grader Ruth.

Sarah Thomas, 7 years old, works on geometry while attending virtual school in her family's Redmond, Wash., home. ENLARGE
Sarah Thomas, 7 years old, works on geometry while attending virtual school in her family's Redmond, Wash., home. Mike Kane for The Wall Street Journal
A social studies teacher in Vancouver, Wash., in a recorded video on the computer screen of 13-year-old Ruth Thomas. ENLARGE
A social studies teacher in Vancouver, Wash., in a recorded video on the computer screen of 13-year-old Ruth Thomas. Mike Kane for The Wall Street Journal

The girls are schooled from the living room of their Redmond, Wash., home. The Thomases' 19-year-old son, Sandeep, was a virtual student from eighth grade through graduation.

At 8 a.m. one recent day, Ruth had already begun her algebra lesson, while her sister, first-grader Sarah, was rounding off numbers to the ten-thousandth. After 45 minutes, they quietly transitioned to Language Arts 8 and third-grade reading respectively. Then Ruth began research for the 3-D model due Friday in Science. "I call my teachers for one-on-one help when I need to," she says.

After the children's daily course work, their lessons are assessed online. Then they spend time pursuing interests like acting, in Ruth's case, or in the their online schools' virtual clubs. This year, Sarah joined the Quiz Bowl and the American Girl Club, where she meets girls with like interests from 50 states.

Ms. Thomas, a stay-at-home mother, and Mr. Thomas, a software architect, switched their children to virtual schools six years ago. Ruth was in time-consuming singing and acting lessons. Sandeep needed remedial help, having had no schooling until he was adopted at age 6.

Ms. Thomas says at the local public schools, "the kids' grades were okay, but we felt they weren't learning anything. We want them to work at grade level or above, and online schooling has allowed us to do that."

Sandeep was awarded Student of the Year with a cumulative GPA of 3.7 from the online Insight School of Washington, and now he is pursuing a business degree at the University of Washington. He entered school as a sophomore, having earned 39 transferrable credits in high school. He testified in front of Congress that peer pressure and learning disabilities would have left him to fail in his local public school and that online schools altered his fate.

The Whitehead Family

Elana Whitehead, a stay-at-home mother in Cape Canaveral, Fla., enrolled her fourth- and sixth-grade boys in Brevard Virtual Instruction Program, the virtual arm of the Brevard County public school system, last year. "The kids' friends were doing it and they were curious," she says.

The Whiteheads received a box of books in August, and were given weekly course work. Adam, age 10, and Noah, 12, would log on for each subject. BVIP would present a slideshow about the day's lesson, then direct them to read a chapter in a textbook and complete some worksheets. They would log back on later to do an assessment.

"Adam was online for less than an hour each day," says Ms. Whitehead, "but Noah had more work online than offline." No credentials were required for Ms. Whitehead, who sat with her sons as they logged hours playing with snap circuits, taking the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and sitting in a virtual classroom with 60 other students.

As a "learning coach," Ms. Whitehead was required to supervise her boys' schoolwork for at least five hours each weekday. Along with her husband, a contract engineer with NASA, Ms. Whitehead wanted to be sure Adam and Noah were getting enough social interaction and exercise.

A scene from a stopmotion video Adam made. ENLARGE
A scene from a stopmotion video Adam made. Adam Whitehead

A truncated school day and no commute left plenty of time for digging holes at the beach, collecting reptiles and filming stop-action Lego movies. Adam took up piano in his spare time, and Noah, to his parents' surprise, became a bookworm.

But, "the boys missed their friends," Ms. Whitehead says. Their sister, Anna, age 9, was continuing at her regular school, so they had someone with whom to compare their more-isolated days.

"I probably didn't spend enough time with my daughter, and housework went by the wayside. It was a hard year," Ms. Whitehead says. "Noah's questions were far outside of my ability. It would have been totally impossible with two working parents."

This fall, the boys went back to the local public school. Since they had always been on the Brevard County curriculum, the transition was seamless, Ms. Whitehead says.

How Classrooms Online Work

Where it's offered

Twenty-seven states and Washington, D.C., offer full-time virtual schooling. Florida Virtual School became the first state-funded online school in 1996.

What children learn

There is no nationwide standardized curriculum for virtual schools, and core subjects and electives vary from state to state. "It's streaming classes in real time, live chats with teachers, group projects," says Jeff Kwitowski, spokesman for k12, a network of online school programs serving more than 80,000 students nationwide.

Who does the teaching Teachers do the teaching while parents generally act as "learning coaches," says Todd Hitchcock, senior vice president of online solutions at publishing giant Pearson, which recently purchased Connections Academy, one of the largest virtual school companies. These coaches coax younger students through tough subjects, but they needn't be accredited or have much knowledge of, say, cosines and Ancient Egypt.

What students do

Students typically log on to interact with teachers and other kids statewide who are online simultaneously. One teacher is assigned to as many as 60 students. In some programs, a counselor is on call day and night to help with homework, schedules, grade concerns and individual learning plans.

How grading works

Virtual schools follow the same grading procedures as traditional schools, with testing and a teacher assessing students' work. Students may not progress to the next level of learning until they master the preceding lesson.

Much research about full-time online students has been inconclusive, according to the Keeping Pace with Online K-12 Learning 2011 industry report. But the longer a student remains in a virtual school, the more likely the student is to succeed.

How the money works

In most cases, children attending a virtual school remain part of their local public school district. That means the school district retains state funding for the child. The state signs a contract with a company to provide virtual curricula.

In Wisconsin, for example, state auditors found that virtual charter schools there cost about $6,500 per student annually, in line with national averages, says Susan Patrick, chief executive for the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a not-for-profit advocacy group for virtual studies.

By contrast, if parents enroll a child in private, parochial, or traditional home schools, the district loses funding.

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