Virtual Schools for K-12 Should Be Outlawed

except in extremely limited circumstances like credit recovery and teaching rural students.  Such programs should be done only through school districts, NOT through private or charter schools.  It is just as important for students to be able to socialize with peers and learn to work together as it is to learn academics.

You HAVE to have interaction with others to be fully rounded as a functional adult.  Virtual schools are being used by cynics as a way to gut teachers, librarians, and others for cost-saving reasons.

The "teachers" can be outsourced to India or China and make pennies a day.

It’s an appealing proposition, and one that has attracted support in state legislatures, including Virginia’s. But in one of the most hard-fought quarters of public policy, arising chorus of critics argues that full-time virtual learning doesn’t effectively educate children.

“Kindergarten kids learning in front of a monitor — that’s just wrong,” said Maryelen Calderwood, an elected school committee member in Greenfield, Mass., who unsuccessfully tried to stop K12 from contracting with her community to create New England’s first virtual public school last year. “It’s absolutely astounding how people can accept this so easily.”