This year, Arizona has joined a national effort to get more students to take their courses online, reports the Arizona Republic. For the past 10 years, a pilot program has allowed 14 districts and charter schools [1] to offer online courses to about 15,000 Arizona students from kindergarten through high school. Now, a new state law allows all of the state’s 227 districts and 500 charter schools to offer online courses. Schools can create their own online courses or buy online courses from a commercial company. The law also allows schools to make these courses available to any student in the state. The Arizona State [1] Board of Education and the State Board for Charter Schools must approve new online courses. In the meanwhile, the state education department has created the “Arizona K-12 Online Course Catalog” of courses already approved through the pilot project. It’s available to schools, students, and parents on the department’s home page, www.ade.az.gov/ [2]…