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that the author is pointing out is that it'll be incredibly profitable to run these sorts of "schools".

Will be profitable?

I think you're a bit behind the curve.

I thought home schoolers would be more receptive. They, as a group, are even more conservative, and are likely to condemn any and all use of IT in education.

What a staggeringly ignorant statement.

http://www.k12.com/

http://www.pavcsk12.org/

http://www.ncspe.org/publications_files/Cyber%20and%20Home%20Charters.pdf

Actually, there's even more to it than that. All-internet including K-12 grades is already available.

http://www.k12.com/

Gates is right - but not in the way people are reading him. He's not saying universities are a rip off - he's clumsily saying that the model needs to change. I send my kids to a K-12 academy. It's two days per week in the classroom and three days of self paced, internet based coursework. Under this model, teachers can handle two entire classes in the same time their traditional counterparts can handle one (Blue Fifth Grade on Monday and Thurs, Green Fifth Grade on Tues and Fridays with Wed for administrata and one on ones). If you compare to a traditional public school, that means you need 50% of the staff, 50% of the buildings, and use 50% of the energy. On work at home days, there are often live classes on the internet the kids attend as well.

The result is that my kids have accelerated their learning, and I've got something that helps me as a parent: rigorous progress tracking. Because everything is online, I know if homework isn't done or if my child is having problems with the transitive property. Likewise, teachers know what to help kids with one-on-one, and so fewer kids fall through the cracks or fall off-pace.

Gates is right about books, too. Far too many of the books I had in college were basically used minimally. The prof would have handouts, a guide, and what amounted to a home made textbook you bought at the local copy shop. The book would cost $190, and the other materials, $15. It got to the point that by my senior year I would buy the $15 and borrow a friends textbook if it was needed (I think that happened once).

The materials my kids get with their K-12 school are fantastic, and are clearly not made for a committee. The result is the books do not require a teacher or parent to explain what the book is really saying, and kids become used to reading, trying to figure it out, then asking for help, which is often how independent learning happen in the real world.

You think the publisher is going to charge significantly less for the material if it's delivered online?

The traditional publishers may not want to play ball but they are not the only game in town. I bet some of the newcomers may like to offer online textbooks at pennies on the dollar one source may be: http://www.k12.com/courses/textbooks-products/

Once the traditional publishers realize they are losing market share they will change their model or go out of business.

Background.

"Educational Entrepreneurship" is an enormously powerful nation-wide effort to sub-contract educational administration, curriculum, and professional development services in low-income public school districts to private for-profit partners, after districts are taken over under NCLB. Mass Insight is a leader in this drive, and you can view its proposal to coordinate the takeover process for its partners in a report on its website. They are explicit, in their report, that their eventual target is to take over the entire public education system and run it, free of "bureaucratic interference."

Another powerful player is New Schools Venture Fund, which has just added former Mass. Education Board chairman Jim Peyser to its partners; The Gates Foundation is a backer, and the Harvard Business School now offers MBA classes in
Educational Entrepreneurship.

The eventual for-profit providers of services are located under several layers of interlocking "advocacy" organizations, with a conscious strategy of leveraging investment of public and private money to promote the takeover. Texas, Massachusetts, and California are epicenters of the project, where Republican governors have built Education Boards dominated by adherents. An example of a "partner" might be K-12 Inc, which went public last week with a stock offering that raised $108 million, according to the current issue of Education Week.

The rationale for forcing public schools to consume these private services is that the services are "research-based" and have proven their effectiveness. A problem is that the research is often biased or distorted by researchers with hidden agendas. In many cases, especially in Texas, it was fabricated outright [she means Reading First]. Most activity has been in math and reading, since those are the high-stakes targets of NCLB. But as concern has risen over the condition of science instruction, vast amounts of money have been appropriated to improve it, and entrepreneurial attention has now focused on science education.

As you may know [remember this was originally sent to other teachers], the federal "What Works" clearinghouse has

Because this program is a charter school of a school district, the teachers' union sees it as a threat similar to brick-and-mortar charter schools. Every student in a charter school program, virtual or physical, means one less student in traditional public schools. Per-pupil funding follows the students, threatening the status quo favored by the incumbents.

After RTFA (I know, this is Slashdot, but...), and going over the Chicago Virtual Charter School materials, I can't say I'm terribly impressed with either one. For starters:

• The school _will_ have programs in the arts and P.E. - any good reporter would have pointed that out, and challenged the statement by the union president.
• The school _does_ explicitly address the issue of socialization - but see some comments on this below.

However:

• As designed, the CVCS is less of a charter school, and more of a "guided homeschool" materials provider;
• In fact, the CVCS appears to be (mostly) a repackager for a subset of K12 Inc. materials;
• These materials are singularly unimpressive - the curriculum, described activities, etc. fail to demonstrate any particularly innovative thought, serious research, or indeed much examination of what the best schools - not just in the USA, but worldwide - are doing;
• While the curriculum is delivered via computer, it might as well be delivered via workbooks - there is little to no use of the unique visualization, exploratory, or social interaction aspects of the computer;
• The socialization approaches mentioned are superficial at best - they seem to have been designed by the marketing department, rather than by educators, psychologists, and sociologists;
• In fact, the entire CVCS website appears to have been designed by marketers, with little to no input from educators - the primary thrust is to provide parents and legislators with "well, that sounds OK" soundbites, rather than any serious educational content.

Overall, it looks like the CVCS might be a tolerable interim solution for parents who only have access to desperately bad public schools, but certainly not a replacement for even middle-of-the-road traditional public education, let alone a serious attempt to explore the potential of virtual schools.

Now, this might work in the inner city, but at that point you'd have to subsidize the cost of broadband for all those people that can't afford it.

This almost feels like a plug, but I work for a home school curriculum provider , which also operates through a number of state chartered "Virtual Academies."

The largest is in Pennyslvania, with a large number of students coming from Philadelphia. We provide the students a computer to school with, and the Academy subsidizes broadband, or pays for dial-up access for the families outright.

In addition to helping with the various legal hurdles some states impose on home-schoolers, the HSLDA also provides a clearing house for home-schooling information.

Another group you may find interesting is k12.com, which is an internet-based classroom for homeschoolers, founded by former US Secretary of Education Bill Bennett.