Virtual Classes Are Now Permanent Offerings at Some US Schools

Districts in Texas, California and New York are creating full-time remote learning this fall for the first time. From a report: Fourth-graders at the iLearn Virtual School in Dallas began class Thursday morning with an icebreaker. Their teacher Sumala Paidi asked them, "What superpower would you choose for yourself, if you could pick any?" The dozen children in the class responded with wishes for super speed or the ability to fly. One girl chose invisibility, so she could "take a cake, and eat it all myself." It could be a scene from a school classroom anywhere in the U.S. Except these students, unlike nearly every student learning at this juncture of the pandemic, were piping in via Zoom, and Ms. Paidi was teaching them from a remote office, with a camera and laptop. School districts in Texas, New York and California are creating permanent, full-time virtual schools for the first time ever this year, in a nationwide movement that has gained steam since the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 prompted schools to back and forth between in-person and remote learning. A 2021 survey of 291 U.S. school districts by Rand found a surge in the number that offered virtual schools for students after the height of the pandemic. Roughly 26% of the 291 districts were offering remote lessons as a full-time option last year, compared with 3% before the pandemic, according to the Santa Monica, Calif., research organization. Superintendents say virtual schools are a niche product meant to enroll a minority of students for whom remote classes make more sense than going to school. Less than 6% of students chose virtual classes among the districts that had them in 2021, according to Rand. The virtual option might be appropriate for about 4% of students in Dallas, according to a study commissioned by officials there last year. The city's iLearn Academy, which opened Aug. 15 with the start of classes, enrolls about 120 students in grades three through eight. The iLearn Virtual School is a fit for students who might experience social anxiety or whose families might be moving, said principal Monica Morris. Classes of roughly 20 students meet via Zoom at 8:30 a.m. and participate in live and prerecorded lessons until 2:30 p.m. each school day, Ms. Morris said, in a schedule that mirrors that of a typical in-person school.

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