They’re too confining, he says. They trap kids in chairs, in classrooms, in the narrow bounds of an established curriculum. So White and a handful of fellow revolutionaries have begun pushing a new vision for American public education.

Call it the a la carte school.

The model, now in practice or under consideration in states including Louisiana, Michigan, Arizona and Utah, allows students to build a custom curriculum by selecting from hundreds of classes offered by public institutions and private vendors.

A teenager in Louisiana, for instance, might study algebra online with a private tutor, in a local entrepreneur’s living room, literature at a community college and test prep with the national firm Princeton Review – with taxpayers picking up the tab for it all.

By Stephanie Simon

(Reuters)