Virtual Schools Not Generating Revenue

It wasn't that long ago that I posted an entry about how it seemed foolish to me that people in the K-12 systemwould think that they would be able to save money and even make money from virtual schooling (see An Article of Interest). In that post, I stated that "in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador a teacher would typically have 150-180+ students (25-30 students per class for 6 classes in a seven slot schedule), whereas the virtual high school in Newfoundland, the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation, has indicated that roughly 80 students is enough for a full course load for an online teacher." At least that was their thinking on the issue during the first year or two.

Anyway, I raise this issue again because of an entry at Distance-Educator.com's Daily News entitled No tide of cash from virtual schools. As best I can tell, as I only get a preview of the article without registering with the newspaper, in this article there is a school or school board that isn't generating the revenues from their virtual school that they initially expected.

I guess my question in all of these entries is, when did public schooling get into the business of trying to make money? A secondary question would be if personalized instruction isn't done in the traditional classroom because of all of the additional work it would create for teachers, why do some believe personal instruction online will be less work that group instruction in the traditional classroom?

Tags: virtual school, cyber school, high school, education