In fact, Jackson said, out of all the high schools in Illinois that implement online learning, a predominantly Hispanic high school has the highest online learning pass rate. This school has managed to recover dropouts and has encouraged parents raising children and/or working full-time to enroll as well.

<div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">“Online learning isn’t just some remedial course we’re giving to minority or disadvantaged kids,” said Rose. “It’s a high-quality education that’s helping to meet individual student needs.”</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">&nbsp;</div> <div style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Jackson argued that sometimes online courses are even more rigorous than traditional courses, because they are more interactive, require technology literacy, and provide a host of online resources for a student to take advantage of.</div>

Laptops make it easier for students to edit their copy and make changes without getting writer's cramp, he said. As a result, students are writing and revising their work more frequently, which leads to better results. And it's important, Silvernail said, that those skills translated when the test was taken with pen and paper, too.

"It's just a lot easier to edit, to self-critique. Our teachers engage students in a lot of peer editing. Not only are they helping themselves, but they're helping each other as they get to their final projects," Rebar said.

The research suggests that kids who live online understand the process by which knowledge is produced and shared in an online environment, whereas those kids who come in within 10 minutes, they're trying to get the answer and get off. So they're not as critical of a corporate Web site, for example. That's just one example of some fundamental inequalities in access to social skills and culture competencies between the information-haves and have-nots.

Really this becomes the basis for the new hidden curriculum. We now must say those kids who are raised in an environment where they have regular access to the online worldï¿??have a different way of learning that prepares them for school--to do better in school and in life--than those kids who were being left out.