What will the school like in 25 years, in 50 years? One provocative answer comes in the form of a question: “Will there be a physical school for future generations?” Today, we can see two trends that are offering alternatives to the physical school. Both of them are growing as alternatives and are expected to increase in their influence.

Homeschooling
In 2007, 1.5 million students, or 2.9% of the K-12 population was homeschooled, up from 1.1 million homeschooled students in 2003. Parental motivations for homeschooling are broader than religious education. Parents see both the school environment and academics as inadequate.  

Homeschooling is not regulated like the traditional school system. Current regulation of homeschooling tends to be lax, as with most developing industries.  

• 40 states require parents to notify set up of a home school
• 10 states do not even require notification
• 13 states require nothing further than notification
• 17 states require tests and evaluation; 6 regulate curriculum & teaching quality

Curriculum and testing are significant areas of debate regarding homeschooling, given that the majority of states do not test homeschooled children or regulate their curriculum.Besides questions of academic standards, is there a role for further regulation of homeschooling? What is the optimum learning environment of a homeschool? How are socialization opportunities such extracurricular activities, physical education, and sports replaced within the education of a homeschooled child?

One can imagine a future in which homeschooled children access services from a traditional school that a homeschool does not have the resources to provide.  

Online Education
While homeschooling has greater numbers of students participating at this point in time, technology is seen as the greater force behind the decline of the bricks and mortar school in the long term. The numbers, though, are still small. Nationwide, 44 states have online learning with 45,000 participating students and 50% offering full or part-time K-8; most of which is rural distance learning over the Web.  

Parental motivation for embracing online learning is similar to parents of homeschoolers: a low opinion of public schools. Online learning is about to get a big boost from the state of Florida, where, starting in the 2009-2010 school year every school district in the state must set up an online school for K-8, with the state paying $6,000 per student.  

But are these at home, online learners still in the Florida school system – not quite. Students are tested, get report cards, and take the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Poorly performing students must return to the classroom. However, students taking the online option do not have access to extracurricular activities and intramural sports.  

It seems logical that homeschooling and especially online learning will decrease the population of full time students in the physical school over time. Yet one can also see homeschoolers and online learners as simply new constituents of the physical school, requiring a new range of educational services and social opportunities. This reinforces the vision of some: those who see the future of the physical school lying in their transformation into community centers, providing services and facilities to the diverse student and non-student communities alike within each district.

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Tags: Educational Environment  Teaching Styles/Philosophies