The Growth of Online Schooling

About a week ago, The New York Times ran this piece on the growth of online schooling which I've been mulling ever since. One of the reasons we advocate for games and learning here is that they encourage social interaction and produce early opportunities for kids to work on their skills in collaboration, negotiation, and also competition. I know there are plenty of great reasons to home school your children, but I do wonder about what's lost when children don't go off to school every day, spending most of their time in one building, their home. As is argued around these parts by Project NML, some of the most important skills of the 21st century will be social. I know that home-schooled kids have plenty of opportunities for social interaction through sports, clubs, hobbies, etc., but what about the group project? The reading group? It seems to me that I learned a lot about myself and working with others between 5th grade and the present by working with other people in the classroom. I'm going to follow this movement with avid interest. If these students are networked to their teachers, can we network them to their peers as well?