California Online School Seeks Students, Tax Dollars
by BEN ADLER
A school district near Sacramento, Calif., is looking outside the box for new revenue sources in these harsh budget times. Elk Grove Unified has opened up its own Virtual Academy offering complete online curricula for grades kindergarten through 12.
Officials hope to attract home-school students and children from other districts, plus the state tax dollars that come with them. But this kind of online education is also raising some red flags.
The New Virtual Academy
For eighth-grader TJ Foster, school can sound like an educational video. But usually, it sounds like the clicking of a computer mouse.
TJ is one of 200 students in the Elk Grove Unified School District's brand-new Virtual Academy. Each day, at his home in the rural farmland south of Sacramento, he signs into a website and takes
