As many rural schools adopt virtual teaching options, the teachers can be thousands of miles from classrooms

In rural places, filling teacher vacancies can be impossible.
(Photo by Ash Ponders, The Wall Street Journal)

School is back in session, and in some places, students and teachers are thousands of miles apart as virtual learning becomes more common, particularly in rural areas, reports Sara Randazzo of The Wall Street Journal. "Virtual teachers are beaming into thousands of classrooms this school year in states from Nevada to Alaska to New Jersey, in subjects such as world languages, special education, science and math. . . . In rural places, the challenges of filling vacancies are felt even more acutely. The pay is lower than in urban districts, affordable housing options are limited, and recent college graduates might not want to move to a more remote, unfamiliar location."

"Even with students back in classrooms post-pandemic, more rural districts are making the concept of the remote teacher permanent," Randazzo writes. In Prescott Valley, Arizona, Humboldt Unified School District opted to pay virtual teachers to fill instruction gaps. Melissa Sanford, a Humbolt/Bradshaw Mountain High School's administrative secretary, said, "Bradshaw this year is offering Spanish 1, Spanish 2 and American Sign Language through a $142,000 contract with Elevate K-12, a Chicago-based company that provides the technology and instructors for remotely taught, live classes."

Not everyone agrees that virtual teaching should be the norm instead of the last resort. "The idea of continuing to rely on a virtual teacher is unwelcome, conjuring up images of unruly classrooms and little instruction being absorbed," Randazzo writes. "Bradshaw parent Jeromy Rye was surprised to learn after the school year started about the virtual teacher in his daughter Emma’s Spanish class. Even knowing there is a classroom coach in the room to assist, he is skeptical." He told Randazzo: “It may open up opportunities for people to misbehave, for one, or to not get the quality instruction compared with having a teacher in the classroom. I need to see the proof that it’s working.”

Virtual teaching may offer some rural schools the best path toward more equal education. "In Alabama, Birmingham-based nonprofit Ed Farm is teaming with the architecture firm of Danish Kurani to create what they call the Connected Rural Classroom, a high-tech room designed to virtually beam in STEM teachers to some of Alabama’s poorest regions," Randazzo reports. "Waymond Jackson, president of Ed Farm, said he is motivated by data from the University of Alabama’s Education Policy Center showing 11% of students are proficient in math in Alabama’s historically agricultural region, known as the Black Belt, compared with 23% elsewhere in the state."