This summer, Florida will make it mandatory for every school district there to start providing a "virtual school" for kindergartners through eighth grade, giving parents a choice of letting their children attend classes and take tests via computer over the Internet. The state already funds the Orlando-based Florida Virtual School which last year was used by more than 63,000 middle and high school students with special needs.

Experts in the field, including those at the U.S. Department of Education, acknowledge they don't have hard numbers about how many of the nation's 49 million public school K-12 students are taking accredited virtual-school courses but best estimates are that about 1 million participated last year in totally online courses or "blended" education in K-12 public schools that combines in-classroom and Web-based curriculum, mostly at the high-school level.

That's according to the "K-12 Online Learning" survey done by the Sloan Consortium, a cooperative effort involving Hunter College and Babson College researchers, published in January based on a poll of school districts throughout the country to come up with an educated guess. That estimate of virtual schoolers is up 47% from Sloan Consortium's last survey two years ago.

About 4 million college students are said to be currently enrolled in fully online courses, but K-12 now seems to be taking off.

Alabama and Michigan in recent years have both passed laws requiring a measure of online instruction for high school kids because it was viewed as a positive experience and a chance to provide advanced courses not otherwise locally available, says Powell. But Florida's House Bill 7067, "Virtual Instructions Programs" which kicks in July 1, goes much further, requiring Florida school districts to run full-time virtual schools for kindergartners through eighth grade, with cyber-school options for upper grades, too.