What are Virtual Schools?

Virtual Schools are defined by Wikipedia by:

A virtual school or cyberschool describes an institution that teaches courses entirely or primarily through online methods. Though there are tens of thousands of commercial and non-accredited courses available online, the term "virtual school" is generally reserved for accredited schools that teach a full-time (or nearly full-time) course of instruction designed to lead to a degree. Virtual public and private schools serving every grade level including graduate programs may elect to pursue accreditation through various regional and national organizations. Accredited schools must meet rigorous standards as defined by the issuing organization and are designed to insure that students are receiving the highest quality instruction and education. Examples of organizations that issue school accreditation include: [1] Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges, [2] Northwest Association of Accredited Schools
All or a majority of the student services are conducted via Internet technology. The virtual school differ/contrasts from the traditional school through the physical media that links administrators, teachers, and students. Virtual schools are an alliance of public distance learning schools. Many states in the United States have their own virtual school often with a student population numbering in the thousands.
There are many different virtual school instructional and enrollment models. Instructional models range from fully independent self paced (asynchronous) courses to semester based virtual (synchronous) teacher facilitated courses. Class sizes range widely with anywhere from 25 students to as many as 200 students in each class section. Students keep in contact with teachers and collaborate with other students through web communication tools provided in the course delivery platforms like Blackboard [3] or Desire2Learn [4] or Moodle [5]. In some cases students communicate by phone with instructors. To help with communication many virtual schools have implemented their own system programs to help build courses and maintain student profiles. There are also many books and training manuals to aid in the development of such schools and courses.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_school