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PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES (TEEN, LAPTOP)
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'Missing Out'
BY PAUL GLADER
Teenagers attracted by the individualized academic pace of an online school are finding that they’re missing out on an important element of high-school life: other students. Tatyana Ray of Palo Alto, Calif., had spent a year and a half with an online high school affiliated with Stanford University, and participated in four student clubs. But while she enjoyed the academics, she missed the human connection of proms, football games and in-person gossip. The digital clubs for fashion, books and cooking involved Web cams and blogs that felt more like work than fun. Last winter, she left the school for a semester and enrolled at a local community college. “Socially, it wasn’t working,” she says. “I felt I was missing out.” THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE As online high schools spread, educators are working to counter the social isolation that some students experience. At the same time, sociologists and child psychologists are examining how online schooling might hinder, or help, the development of social skills. “At that age, people really crave social interaction,” says Raymond Ravaglia, deputy director of Stanford’s Educational Program for Gifted Youth, which Tatyana attended. Online high schools are growing more popular. Roughly 100,000 of the 12 million high-school-age students in the U.S. attend one of 438 online schools full-time, up from 30,000 five years ago, according to the International Association for K-12 Learning Online. Many more students take some classes online, while attending traditional schools. Online schools appeal to gifted students who want to work at their own pace, students who dropped out of traditional high schools or who are home-schooled, students whose families travel a lot and teens with competitive outside pursuits like ballet or tennis. School operators include companies such as Kaplan, state-run entities such as the Florida Virtual School, as well as churches, universities and other nonprofits. Students graduating from accredited high schools receive a diploma; others typically earn GED certificates. Schools try multiple approaches to overcome social challenges. The Florida Virtual School has a model U.N., an online Latin club and a Science Olympiad team that practices online and meets in person before big tournaments. Michigan Virtual University, which has an online K-12 school, offers summer math and science camps. Stanford’s EPGY program dates to the 1960s, when computer-science professors at Stanford began experimenting with ways to teach math using computers. It expanded to offer online classes and summer camps and, in 2006, launched an experimental online school for gifted youth. The school is a good fit for children of far-flung executives, such as 16-year-old Josh Singh, who lives with his parents in China. He says the online school has expanded his social life beyond China. “I have friends all over the place now,” he says. ‘SOME KIND OF DANCE’ But the school’s leaders say they have been surprised by some of the challenges they have faced, and the high rates of students leaving the school. Administrators say students without classroom discipline or parental supervision sometimes withdraw emotionally and socially. Calvin Burkhart, a 17-year-old in Chicago, spent his freshman and sophomore years in Stanford’s program, partly so he could play competitive hockey. He says that while he found the courses fun and intellectually stimulating, the physical distance from students and teachers took a toll. He withdrew in 2008 and now attends a school near Chicago. “We need to find ways to have kids spend time together,” says EPGY head Jan Keating. “They are hot-wired to learn from each other.” In Palo Alto, Tatyana’s parents are largely letting her chart her education. For her senior year, she is taking some classes at EPGY and others at Foothills Junior College. She was just elected senior class vice president at the online high school. “We’re really hoping to get in some kind of dance at the end of the year because we don’t have a prom,” she says. “We don’t want to miss out on everything.”
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