Should School Choice Come Via the Internet?

Increasingly, children are able to choose between educational programs not by commuting, but by telecommuting.

By J.H. Snider

What is the best technology to give students a choice—and thus create competition—among K-12 education providers: commuting or telecommuting? The current debate about school choice assumes that if you don't like the local school, you should be able to drive, bus, or subway your child across town to a school you like better. But physically moving children from place to place may be an increasingly outdated approach when it comes to choice. Increasingly, children are able to choose between educational programs not by commuting, but by telecommuting.

Here's how it works: Johnny can't learn calculus at his local high school. But plenty of educational services may offer first-rate calculus courses over the Internet. Voila : Johnny logs on to one of these services during study hall, completes the calculus course over the course of the year, and receives full credit for a task well done.

As a technology of choice, telecommuting offers considerable advantages over old-fashioned commuting, the first of which is the flexibility to choose between courses rather than schools. This is a simple matter of economics. The expense of transporting students across a city for a single math course is prohibitively expensive. Not only would each student practically need his own full-time chauffeur and limo, but also as much as half of a student's day would be spent in transit. These costs mean that all forms of traditional school choice (public, private, or charter) involve a choice of a large...