There have been things happening, almost under radar, but they are happening and they lay out a road to a much different version of high school. Some schools are using the Rosetta Stone software to teach language courses, some are offering some classes online, in fact there are online schools that offer GED courses, and some high schools offer their entire curriculums online.
As for the move to teach online or with software their is a compelling reason to go this route in that it could save school districts, and so taxpayers a lot of money. Whether or not it could come to be widely accepted will undoubtedly depend on performance, but the cost savings by not needing that building and those teachers is compelling. Some may say that this will stunt young peoples social lives, but most teenagers probably have 300 people friended on facebook by the time they reach high school. Others may miss things like band or athletics, but let's face it these things are the first to get shorted when money gets tight, which it most certainly is now, and as far as athletics is concerned that could always be done on a civic/town level. There would also be the need to make sure students are actually learning something, this could be accomplished by having traveling testers who go from district to district giving in person tests, an expense, but not nearly what maintaining a full staff is. Even if you had to maintain a building with PCs in areas where computer ownership is not widespread and staff it with some some people to staff it it would still be cheaper than the teachers and their pensions. There is also the chance that you could have a truly national curriculum, where everyone was taking the same class.
Once again, it would come down to performance. If the performance wasn't there it surely wouldn't fly, although one could envision an unequal system developing where the better could send their children to schools staffed by teachers and the poorer were left with the online option.
Another thing which is brewing that hasn't attracted as much attention as it should is the pilot program being funded by a 1.5 million dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. This program is being trialed in eight states. It is based on the academic programs in several countries including Singapore and France. In this program students take a proficiency test at the end of their sophmore year, if they pass it they can move on to a community college, if they don't they take it again at the end of their junior year, and if required again at the end of their senior year. They also don't have to go on to college, they can remain in high school if they wish to take classes that would allow them to get into a more select school. The idea is to cure the problem of students arriving at college needing remedial classes, that problem is considered to be caused by unclear goals in high school, in this case passing the proficiency test becomes the goal.
I have some concerns about this program although I do feel that high school is too long. I think that we have spent the last few years throwing tests at young people and expecting that having to pass or do well on the tests will make better students, I think this may fall into that trap. It also takes what you would suppose are the better students and puts them in what for college level classes are more mediocre schools with many underachieving older students. In any rate it seems to take the approach that high school has become so dysfuntional, so beyond repair that the best we can do is shuffle off young people into community colleges. I also have no doubt that most students would pass the test at the sophmore level. This becomes another case of do you teach young people to learn something or do you teach them to pass a test. This would turn high school into a two year prep for the test, in our culture of no child fails, most children would pass the proficiency test. Those who do not fair well in this system would be ideal candidates for the online GED classes mentioned earlier.
This would also shorten high school, and the staff require to run it, shrinking the cost and the experience.
Neither of these however addresses what really bedevils our schools which is an inability to determine who we want to teach civic ethics, should teachers teach civic ethics or should parents. There is a bias against teachers teaching ethics, but parents have shown a terrible ability at doing so. Why do Asian or Jewish children perform better in school, it is because they come from a culture which values learning, a form of what we might call civic ethics.
Now there could be a way around coming right out and hitting this issue head on. If schools could teach some low level law classes, micro economics, how to balance your check book, figure the interest you pay on a car loan, how to write a resume and do well in a job interview a type of ethics could be taught in a round about way where the inplications of certain life behaivors becomes clear.
This things may not happen, but the problems in high school learning combined with over extended local budgets mean that the high school experience will be undergoing some major changes, most probably involving the shortening of the public school model.