The title will make sense to Isaac Asimov fans

The link is one of those non-expiring ones because it's a NY Times Magazine article, which tend too be good but too damn long to effectively quote or read in one sitting.

Published: December 7, 2003

Andy Markishtum's hair reaches past his shoulders, thick and shining. He speaks in a low monotone, a rocker growl, and his favorite band is Cradle of Filth. As a student at McKay High School in Salem, Ore., Andy was part of the stoner crowd -- a self-described slacker with a backpack full of half-finished assignments. ''I'd get too distracted,'' he says. ''There would be kids sitting right next to me talking or something, and instead of paying attention to the teacher, I would drift off. Someone would drop a book, and I'd have to look.'' Attention-deficit disorder was diagnosed; for a while, Andy took Ritalin, but it gave him migraines. His mom decided he needed to get out of McKay and leave behind his old scene, his old messed-up self. Andy enrolled in Salem-Keizer Online high school, and he says, ''Now I can really concentrate.''

Salem-Keizer Online, or S.K.O., is one in a growing number of public, private and charter schools available to kids who are looking for an alternative to a traditional education. Commonly called ''virtual school,'' it's a way of attending school at home without the hovering claustrophobia of home-schooling. S.K.O. has 131 students enrolled in the Salem area. Nationwide, there were about 50,000 students in virtual courses last year. As a business, virtual school is booming. Jim Cramer, co-host of CNBC's ''Kudlow & Cramer,'' calls online-school-software companies a hot commodity.

Andy Markishtum says that without virtual school, he ''probably would have dropped out.'' Now he will graduate almost on time. The biggest problem was that ''too many people were too dumb.'' The teachers bored him, the homework flummoxed him, he hated the mandatory pep assemblies ''that were really prep assemblies.''

Walking through his old school, Andy points out the cafeteria table he and his friends used to sit at. ''People would shun us, even though we had never done anything to them,'' he says. A sign reads ''Drug and Gang Free: McKay Togetherness.'' The bell rings, and the hall floods with bodies. A few clean-cut kids grimace at Andy's flowing hair. It's not so hard to understand why Andy would want to get out of here, why he would rather enroll in a school he can log into anywhere -- the public library or his mother's house. Now instead of walking through the dreaded double doors past a suspicious security officer, Andy enters a Web site where a plain white screen welcomes him: ''Sign in!'' He checks his e-mail and clicks on the day's assignments, blasting music from his stereo, free of the tyranny of class periods.

Virtual school seems like an ideal choice for kids who don't fit in or can't cope. ''I'm a nervous, strung-out sort of person,'' says Erin Bryan, who attends the online Oregon-based CoolSchool. Erin used to attend public school in Hood River, Ore., but ''I didn't like the environment,'' she says. ''I am afraid of public speaking, and I would get really freaked out in the mornings.''

Kyle Drew, 16, a junior at S.K.O., says: ''I couldn't get it together. I was skipping more and more classes, until I was afraid to go to school.'' Leavitt Wells, 13, from Las Vegas, was an ostracized girl with revenge on her mind. ''The other kids didn't want anything to do with me,'' she says. ''I'd put exploded gel pens in their drawers.'' Now she attends the Las Vegas Odyssey Charter School online during the day, and when her adrenaline starts pumping, she charges out into the backyard and jumps on the trampoline.

On S.K.O.'s Web site, students can enter a classroom without being noticed by their classmates by clicking the ''make yourself invisible'' icon -- a good description of what these kids are actually doing. Before the Internet, they would have had little choice but to muddle through. Now they have disappeared from the school building altogether, a new breed of outsider, loners for the wired age.