Rachel and her 14 classmates -- make that 15, 16, 17 classmates -- some are logging on a little late -- are studying George Orwell's classic "1984." Could Orwell, writing in 1949, have predicted this? Probably not. Not bleak enough.

On her laptop computer, Rachel can see who else is in the class.

"There's C.J.," she says. "He's hilarious."

Mr. Ames teases the class about coming down with "senior-itis." He mentions a quiz for Thursday and Plato's "allegory of the cave."

His voice can be heard loud and clear, and when he calls on students, their voices, too, can be heard.

Rachel found out about PCCS last year through a friend. At the time, she was enrolled in an expensive, private Catholic school doing OK, but not as well as she wanted.

"It was a little too big for me and I felt a little lost in the world. I wanted to find myself and prove that I can do things for myself," she told me.

The little most Pennsylvanians know about cyber charter schools is that outgoing Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., had his five children enrolled in one, while they lived in Virginia.

Some people didn't like that. But they shouldn't hold that against the cyber school program. It works very nicely for many kids. Though it's not for everyone. It requires self-discipline and parental involvement, but that's true of any academic environment.

What it's good for is getting rid of the wasted time in almost every traditional public or private school. Time wasted changing classes, flirting with the opposite sex, traveling to and from and dressing for school, gossiping about who likes who, bullying and being bullied -- all the ancillary junk that goes with being in any bricks and mortar school.

Ah, but what about the importance of learning to socialize?

A look around Rachel's workspace suggests that's not much of a problem. It's crowded with photos of her friends, her tennis teammates at Penncrest High School and her prom date....

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