are you ready for the revolution? the Virtual Academy takes off

Part I, online academies
Part II, the Google PC
Part III, homeschooling

Steilacoom's "Washington Virtual Academy," discussed in Part I, has triple the students its administrators expected.

Applications to enroll in a new Washington Virtual Academy have ballooned to more than 600 students....

And there’s slightly more than a month until the 2006-07 school year begins Aug. 31, meaning more students probably will apply to enroll in the free statewide K-8 public school between now and then.

The advantages are obvious: flexible times, individualized pace, freedom from the classroom's limitations. Parents, too, are happy with the curriculum offered.

Kerri Lund lives within the Olympia School District's boundaries but educates her two daughters at home. The girls will be in the fifth and seventh grades this fall. For six years, Lund has used the K-12 curriculum offered through the Steilacoom academy and has had her children enrolled in the district's online program since it started in 2004.

"After researching the different curricula out there, we decided this was the most thorough and comprehensive foundation we could give our kids," she said. "It was the most up to date and the most cutting edge."

But now the district has to figure out how to provide enough instructors to meet the demand, something neither Olympian article mentions. I'm going to contact the Virtual Academy to see what they say about their embarrassing riches.