ECOT over a decade has received $691 million in taxpayer money for a failing charter E-school empire, which is 10% of all the money the state of Ohio has ever spent on charters. $270 million of that has been received in the past three years.
Since Gov. Kasich took office in 2011, Lager, the founder of ECOT has returned the favor to his political benefactors by contributing $658,225 to pro-charter school office holders and candidates, and in true “pay-to-play” fashion, has seen a greater three-year funding increase than in any other three-year period since ECOT opened in 2000. Contributing $658,225 in return for access to $270 million in funding represents an extremely handsome return on Mr. Lager's investment, all coming at the expense of quality schools for Ohio children.
Despite ECOT’s continued support from Ohio officeholders after funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into campaign coffers, ECOT’s online charter schools rank among the worst schools in the state. Specifically:
- ECOT’s graduation rate on the latest report card was 35.3%. The average for traditional school districts is 91.4%. The lowest traditional district is 49.7%.
- ECOT’s Performance Index score of 68.1 was worse than even the lowest rated of Ohio’s 613 school districts.
- When looking at the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, a signature policy under John Kasich, charter schools, like those run by ECOT, greatly underperform traditional public districts, despite receiving 89% more per pupil than traditional public schools
ECOT's failure for the third grade reading results are not alone. From the Columbus Dispatch.
Charter schools didn’t fare as well, in general. Nearly 29 percent of students in charters statewide that serve elementary kids and had enough scores to publicly report didn’t meet the minimum. Among central Ohio’s elementary charter schools, 33 percent fell short.
Results matter.
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