National Trends Supporting Distance Education

Week 2, Question 1 - Are there trends around the country that support online learning in general? Describe these trends.
Since we’re talking about national trends, I started with the U.S. Department of Education and located a fact sheet on their Office of Educational Technology at: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/facts.html. While there were many other facts presented, the following were those that seemed to best represent trends in what DOE calls “distance education”:
A greater proportion of rural area districts had students enrolled in distance education courses than did urban and suburban districts.
42% of districts that have students enrolled in distance education courses are high poverty districts.
When small districts offer distance learning, they are more likely to involve a greater proportion of schools.
80% of public school districts offering online courses said that offering courses not available at their schools is one of the most important reasons for having distance education.
50% of public school districts offering online courses cited distance learning as very important in making Advanced Placement or college-level courses available to all students.
92% of districts enrolled in online distance education courses had students access online courses from school.Since these statistics were derived from local school district and state departments of education as recently as 2003, they reasonably portray some emerging trends in the use of online learning.