K12 Virtual School

Can we use online schooling to opt out of other options?

Put yourselves in the shoes of a middle-to-low-income parent in a dysfunctional urban or rural school system. You want your kids in the best schools possible. You want your kids to have the opportunity to choose college if it’s right for them, but all of the available schools you are zoned for are awful and your child may not be able to test into the selective magnet schools that many districts offer. Urban school districts have a long and illustrious track record of mismanagement. The chances of reform while your child is in school are extraordinarily slim.

When faced with this people normally only have two options: either send their kids to a charter school, or try to move somewhere with a better school system. Both options come with their issues. Charter schools typically only perform marginally better than traditional public schools, and many families can’t afford to uproot their family to move to a better school district which likely has housing policies that restrict any low-income immigration to the city.

One possible future option which hasn’t quite come into fruition is online schooling. Non-profit charter networks could build a system of online modules paired with teacher assistants to allow students to get an accredited and personalized education at home. It could be modeled on existing structures like Coursera, Udacity, and Khan Academy, except it would have to have the internal infrastructure and flexibility to provide a…