Hours before the sun rose and you opened your newspaper this morning, a Mesa high school senior reported for calculus class and turned in an assignment to her teacher.

A 12-year-old competitive ice skater headed for the rink in Tempe with her entire school tucked into her gym bag. A third grader from Gilbert battling cancer slept peacefully having finished all November’s curriculum in preparation for his next bout of chemotherapy.

These Arizona students and thousands like them around the state are pioneers in the 21st century education phenomenon known as K-12 online learning. Aided by technology and guided by licensed, specially trained Arizona teachers, these students can truly learn anytime and anywhere, whether for one course or their entire school program. The virtual schools that serve them have headquarters around the state, with several of the largest — including Mesa Unified’s Distance Learning Program and two independent charter schools — clustered in the East Valley. Arizona’s online learning community is the toast of the town as more than 1,200 online educators from every state and around the globe gather in Metro Phoenix for the annual Virtual School Symposium of the North American Council for Online Learning.

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