With all the talk about online education lately, it’s clear that the vision evoked by the words “home schooling” is changing. The image of Mom and kids sitting at the kitchen table has given way to a child logging onto a virtual class from the home office.

The number of students in kindergarten through 12th grade enrolled in virtual schools nationwide has grown to 225,000 from 50,000 a decade ago—and 30% year over year since 2001, says Susan Patrick, chief executive of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, a nonprofit advocacy group. Some parents choose virtual schooling to accommodate a heavy schedule of extracurricular classes or interests; others feel their children’s needs are better served outside a traditional classroom. Here are two families’ experiences.

Elana Whitehead, a stay-at-home mother in Cape Canaveral, Fla., enrolled her fourth- and sixth-grade boys in Brevard Virtual Instruction Program, the virtual arm of the Brevard County public school system, last year. “The kids’ friends were doing it and they were curious,” she says.

The Whiteheads received a box of books in August, and were given weekly course work. Adam, age 10, and Noah, 12, would log on for each subject. BVIP would present a slideshow about the day’s lesson, then direct them to read a chapter in a textbook and complete some worksheets. They would log back on later to do an assessment.

“Adam was online for less than an hour each day,” says Ms. Whitehead, “but Noah had more work online than offline.” No credentials were required for Ms. Whitehead, who sat with her sons as they logged hours playing with snap circuits, taking the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and sitting in a virtual classroom with 60 other students.

For the rest of the article, go to Two Families, Two Takes on Virtual Schooling