Online K-12 education made its appearance in the mid-1990s, largely as a resource for bright students who had no access to accelerated classes. It moved next into core high-school courses where districts found themselves with teacher shortages--math, science, foreign languages--and has been growing bumptiously, and in a dozen directions, ever since. The International Association for K-12 Online Learning, which goes by the acronym iNACOL, estimates that 82 percent of school districts now offer at least one online course. Two of the fastest-growing trends in online education converge in the Performance Learning Center project, which is why the author called Communities in Schools, a nonprofit dropout-prevention program that devised the model in Georgia in 2002. The PLCs call themselves an alternative to traditional schools and distance themselves from the credit-recovery factories that many districts have opened to boost their graduation rates ahead of state and federal sanctions. But the schools offer struggling kids a chance to make up courses they failed in traditional teacher-student classrooms, which puts them at the nexus of a national debate. States are raising their graduation standards, but returning kids to the classroom for a second attempt at algebra often is counterproductive and gobbles up teacher time. The second trend is the "blended" approach, combining online learning with a teacher-led classroom. Most instruction is online in the PLC model, but a teacher-coach is there to answer questions, direct projects, and keep kids on track. Communities in Schools linked these two trends with the small-school idea and has expanded the project to seven states and 33 schools.