Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value - The Washington Post @ritacolleen

Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value - The Washington Post:

Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value

Dayna Smith/For The Washington Post - Gennifer Hirata, 10 — pictured with her mother, Michele — and her brother, Tyler, 8, are enrolled in the Virginia Virtual Academy, a full-time public school through which students take all their classes online.

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By Lyndsey Layton and Emma Brown, Published: November 26

A Virginia company leading a national movement to replace classrooms with computers — in which children as young as 5 can learn at home at taxpayer expense — is facing a backlash from critics who are questioning its funding, quality and oversight.

K12 Inc. of Herndon has become the country’s largest provider of full-time public virtual schools, upending the traditional American notion that learning occurs in a schoolhouse where students share the experience. In K12’s virtual schools, learning is largely solitary, with lessons delivered online to a child who progresses at her own pace.