America faces a skill gap, the teacher gap, and the funding gap. A recent paper from the Alliance for Excellent Education shows how online learning can help address all three.

Online learning engages students and personalizes learning allowing many students to make more academic progress than in a traditional classroom.  Online learning allows teachers to work anywhere; it's the only way to offer a full complement of rigorous STEM courses in many parts of the country.  Online learning, and formats that blend online and onsite learning, can improve academic, staffing and facilities productivity; it will prove to be an important part of dealing with lagging budgets.

Grand Rapids, Michigan recently announced that with the help of a Kellogg grant that they were converting their high schools to a blended model.  Blended charter networks will open this and next fall; they will be particularly useful in 'restart' situations. 

If you're advocating for or investing educational equity, teacher quality, STEM, charter schools, or just worried about budget deficits, you should be thinking about learning online.  See iNACOL for a variety of helpful resources. 

Like TechCrunch for IT, EdReformer.com will be hub for innovation, investment, and education entrepreneurship.  EdReformer.com will launch April 19.  If you'd like to highlight an initiative or guest blog on the site, contact Doug@VARpartners.net.