Anchor Lead: Online learning is well established at universities. Now it’s catching on in kindergarten through high school. Most of the 25,000 online learners in Washington state take their classes in a regular school building. But some students are tired of the time constraints and social stresses that come with a traditional school, so they’re doing just about all of their work online out of their home.

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In the latest edition of The Learning Curve, KPLU’s Jennifer Wing introduces us to one family that’s trading in the brick and mortar school for a virtual education.

Inside the American Karate-Escrima School of Self Defense 12-year-old Justin Burch and his 13-year-old sister Jessica are barefoot and dressed in black karate clothes. They start their lesson by kicking life-sized mannequins right in the gut. It’s 10:30 on a Tuesday morning and they have the place to themselves. While most other kids their age are at school sitting in a classroom, Jessica and Justin are working towards their orange belts in Karate. They do go to school, but their teachers are online and their bedrooms double as their classrooms. These middle school students are enrolled in Federal Way’s Internet Academy. Several factors, including harassment and bullying, prompted them to try online learning.

Jessica Burch: People tended to tease me and stuff for the stupidest reasons.

Justin Burch: I was assaulted five times. Punching me in the face, shoving me in the shoulder on purpose. There’s some kids there that were not on the happy side.

Now that school bullies are cut out of the equation, Jessica, from the security of her bedroom in Auburn, is posing more questions to her online teachers than she ever did in the classroom. She says it’s less intimidating.

Jessica Burch: If there’s a question that’s kind of silly, if I ask it it’s not like the whole class is gonna be laughing. Because it’s not like they’re gonna know.

For Justin, the flexible schedule that comes with virtual learning easily bends to his night owl rhythms.

Justin Burch : Sometimes I stay up until two or thee in the morning doing school work. It’s hard work, but it’s fun because you can take a break anytime you want.

What the Burch children are doing is home-schooling with a virtual twist. They’re studying math, science, English, geography and history from lesson plans accessed through their computers. Jessica and Justin’s parents, who never would have attempted teaching their children on their own, leave the schooling up to the professionals at the Internet Academy. Darlene Chalker is one of their instructors.

Darlene Chalker: I open up emails and I smile when I read some of these things, and I wish they could see me smile because they delight me.

The Internet Academy is housed in a one story building in a small office park. From the outside it looks more like an insurance company than a school. Inside it’s very quiet. Computers outnumber people three to one. The computer on Darlene Chalker’s desk serves as a classroom for 120 kids all over the state. Her most famous student to date is Apolo Ohno, the Olympic Gold Medal Speed Skater from Seattle. Students enrolled in the school range from high-level athletes with demanding schedules to kids like Jessica and Justin. Before coming to the Internet Academy, Chalker taught in a regular classroom for seven years.

Darlene Chalker: In the classroom it’s easy for a student to sit in the back of the classroom and turn in all their assignments but really not have much contact with the teacher. Online, every student who sends me an email gets an answer and gets contact with me. They get feedback on every single assignment they hand in. And I’m getting to know everyone more than I ever did in the classroom.

Gene Maeroff, who has written extensively about the virtual classroom, says Jessica and Justin’s situation of being bullied is a good example of how online learning is catching students who would have fallen between the cracks in a regular school.

Gene Maeroff: If you think about teenage girls who get pregnant, this might serve their needs. Children who are home bound. In Texas, for children of migrant workers as they move around.

Maeroff is the author of A Classroom of One: How Online Learning is Changing Our Schools and Colleges. He says while a virtual education can benefit middle school students like Justin and Jessica, it does not work for elementary school. Maeroff argues six and seven year olds need to be in a classroom with other children so they can pick up important social skills.

Gene Maeroff: In a school setting, children learn to deal with the ideas that others have and be more tolerant, to follow rules. To be honest, to be reliable in situations that put demands on them in school. They learn through these kinds of experiences.

One of the pluses of online learning is that it’s not tied down by school-bells and buzzers.

Thousands of students in Washington state are discovering this through the “Digital Learning Commons.” The “Commons” is a network offering 300 online courses to high schools across the state. Some middle schools will be added next year. Lewis Fox is one of its founders.

Lewis Fox: The one thing that’s always been the constant in education is time. You’re in class for a quarter, you’re in class for a semester. The variable has always been what you learn. One of the nice things in the online arena is you can make the learning outcome the constant and the time the variable.

Managing the freedom of that time is where a lot of students get into trouble. Some students at Federal Way’s Internet Academy plow ahead with their lessons, but many procrastinate and wind up cramming everything in at the last minute. Online teachers say involved parents are vital to a student’s success. Robert and Paula Burch, Justin and Jessica’s parents work opposite job shifts so one of them is always home. It isn’t easy.

Paula Berch: We don’t have evenings together anymore. It’s either that or we could spend our evenings figuring out how we’re going to battle with the school over assault charges and the violence and the name calling and the peer pressure, and all the stuff that goes on at the school.

Even when she and Robert are at the office, they’re always checking in.

Paula Berch: At work, during my lunch hour, I’ll hop online and see what they’re doing. I’ll call home and say, “Hey, what are you doing?”

“Oh, I’m doing English.”

“Uh, no you’re not. I’m online and you haven’t done anything. The last time you logged out was an hour ago. What are you doing?”

Paula is happy with the education her children are getting. She’s impressed with the lessons and says the constant feedback from teachers is making her children more excited about learning. Paula and Robert are considering keeping their children enrolled through high school. Before making that decision, they might want to look at the results of two studies currently in the works. They’ll compare the test scores of several online programs with regular schools to see how online students are fairing academically compared to their peers in brick and mortar schools. Federal Way’s Internet Academy is one of the institutions researchers are looking at.