When I was in high school (mid-90s in a rural area), we had teachers via live satellite (the TI-IN network out of San Antonio) for those subjects with few inter

When I was in high school (mid-90s in a rural area), we had teachers via live satellite (the TI-IN network out of San Antonio) for those subjects with few interested students or no qualified staff resources. https://books.google.com/books?id=HGVQDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT234&ots=SYXGT1Kpej&dq=ti-in%20network%20san%20antonio&pg=PT234#v=onepage&q=ti-in%20network%20san%20antonio&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=HGVQDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT234&ots... We would connect via phone and participate in classroom activities with the teacher and other students on a rotating schedule. It was all lecture and interactive learning for the duration of the daily broadcast. The teachers were good. The production was high quality (for the time). And I can only imagine they did it on a shoestring budget. This video is a perfect example of both the production quality and is filled with examples of the type of rural districts it served: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0L5_wu9J8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0L5_wu9J8 That said, my experience was that it simply couldn't match the value of being in a classroom with a demanding teacher. The social expectation provided by an engaged teacher and the ability to directly measure my performance against my peers was critical. And that experience has made me generally skeptical of those who present distance learning as some sort of educational panacea. Schools have long noted that parental involvement is the biggest indicator of which students will struggle and which students will succeed. Given the current circumstance where parents are expected to shoulder a larger burden in making sure kids are engaged and learning, the gap between successful students and unsuccessful students will likely increase.