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Cyber Schools Address Elementary Needs

Aimee Cvancara helps her son Peter, 5, with math work on a laptop computer at the family home in Anthem, Ariz. Peter is enrolled in the Arizona Virtual Academy, a K-12 online school that uses curriculum from Herndon, Va-based K12 Inc., a company that provides e-learning services. Elementary students in the academy must demonstrate mastery at subject checkpoints.

—David Wallace for Education Week

Younger Students Have Different Needs

By Ian Quillen

Colleges and universities are learning lessons as they design online courses to meet a growing demand for e-learning driven largely by student desire for scheduling flexibility and access to coursework not otherwise available. High schools, too, are building a framework of best practices for online-only courses and for hybrid classes that blend online and face-to-face learning, especially for students at the lowest and highest ends of the academic spectrum.

But what about students on the younger end of education? What lessons have been learned about how best to tailor online courses for the early grades?

“Certainly, I think you’re seeing it’s more and more common for online learning [to take hold in] elementary and middle school,” said Matthew Wicks, the vice president of strategy and organizational development for the Vienna, Va.-based International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL. “It is some of those same motives, but it has a different flavor...