"Nearly 4% of the total elementary and high school population, or one million students, are also enrolled online."<p>Interesting statement. One out of twenty-five students in K-12 education outnumbers homeschoolers, for example. As I have posted elsewhere on HN recently, I have extensive experience as a parent with online education. I mentioned one provider in a recent post, to which I will no longer give repeat business, and our family has tried other online learning providers on various occasions. As an overall part of our homeschooling program, I like COMMUNITY in online education a lot, and that is what I will shop for in the future, besides excellent classes with a solid reputation and good placement and a thorough curriculum. On the whole, online classes are probably even easier to muff than in-person classes (my current occupation is providing in-person classes, intentionally designed to fit niches not now filled by online classes), but where online classes shine is in providing alternatives for which parents can shop when locally available classroom alternatives don't meet learner needs. There is still much work to be done in this market, but already plenty of opportunity for an eager learner to break out of the limitations of the local school oligopoly.