Impervious to failure, E-Schools

An excellent article by Kevin Huffman, former Tennessee’s education commissioner on his battle with K12 Inc.’s e-school in Tennessee.  Follow the money.  He concludes that there is little evidence that for-profits succeeding.  Too many conflicts in chasing the money over results.  We have the same situation in Ohio.

https://www.the74million.org/article/an-ed-commissioners-confession-how-i-tried-and-failed-to-close-the-worst-school-in-tennessee

Some excerpts:

“This past summer, the state released the school results from the 2014-15 school year. The Tennessee Virtual Academy earned a Level 1 in growth for the fourth year in a row. It clocked in at #1312 out of 1368 elementary and middle schools in the state. It is no longer the most improved lousy school in Tennessee. It is just plain lousy. It is, over a four-year time, arguably the worst school in Tennessee.

The K12 saga raises a lot of difficult questions for me. Is it possible for a for-profit company to run schools? Our very best charters all over the country are non-profits, and I see little evidence of for-profits succeeding in the school management business. I may be platform-agnostic, but the data is telling a compelling story on this one.

And yet, the “marketplace” fails when we are not able to ensure that parents know that the school they are choosing has a running track record of failure. Clearly, there is a critical regulatory role, and we cannot simply assume that an unfettered choice environment will automatically lead to good outcomes.

In theory, K12, Inc’s stock should be hammered by its terrible performance in Tennessee, but it’s actually up in 2015. And why wouldn’t it be? The corporate shareholders aren’t looking for student results — they are looking for K12 to expand and grow and add more students.

Nobody asks me for stock advice, but I say: Buy! Buy K12 Inc.! It is the rarest of breeds — a company utterly impervious to failure. It fails again and again, and yet it lives and breathes! “

The worm is turning for the online school scam

As it should be:


Online schools are losing support, creating divisions in the national charter school movement.


They will gladly take the money and promise result sometime in the future.  What is the cost to the students and taxpayers?  Online schools have been very good for the owners.


http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/11/online_schools_are_losing_supp.html


Poor test results at online schools are creating divisions in the charter school community in Ohio and nationally, leading some national leaders to question whether e-schools should even be part of the charter school movement anymore.
At the top of the list is Nina Rees, head of the nation's largest charter school organization, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, who is distancing herself from online schools and the damage they are causing to the public perception of charters overall.
After a visit to Ohio earlier this month, Rees said e-schools - schools where kids take all their classes by computer at home, instead of in classrooms - are dragging down the overall performance of charter schools in Ohio and other states.
"If you were to eliminate the (test scores of) online schools, the performance of the state would dramatically improve," Rees said.


Stanford study creating waves
The study in question, and one that has sparked a renewed debate over the entire online school model, came late last month from Stanford University's Center for Research of Educational Outcomes (CREDO). Researchers found that students in online schools – – learn far less than students in other schools.
Nationally, students learned the equivalent of 72 days of school less in reading and 180 days less in math, each school year, CREDO found.


CREDO found the scores of kids not only fell when they switched to online schools, but they rose when students went back to traditional schools.


Marie Hanna, executive director of Ohio Connections Academy, also had criticisms of the CREDO report, saying the virtual twin comparison "doesn't make sense."
That school is owned by Pearson, the international education giant that recently drew criticism in Ohio for its handling of the PARCC Common Core exams.
Hanna was far more reserved than the others and said that despite her reservations, CREDO's report is a call for more research.


"CREDO brings up some concerns," Hanna said. "No doubt about it. It brings up the need for more research in the e-school environment to really understand what's working and what isn't.''


Online schools receive about $6,800 per student a year in state tax dollars to run their schools, regardless of how much students learn.

Shake Off Those Charter Chains!

A chronology of failure

Adding to my chronology




http://progressohio.org/an-incomplete-yet-totally-terrifying-ohio-charter-school-scandal-chronology/

Schools as a business

Another excellent article from Denis Smith.  He hits the inherent conflict of interest between operating a business and doing what is right for the students.


http://www.plunderbund.com/2015/10/27/are-public-charter-schools-also-considered-businesses-mind-the-quotation-marks/


These charter schools are operated as personal fiefdoms.  This is another great example


"If people consider a school to be a business enterprise, inevitably the profit motive gets confused with the educational mission, which is what schools are supposed to be all about. The proliferation of for-profit national charter school chains has been a chief contributor toward the blurring of pedagogy and profit. And entities like Imagine and K12, a publicly traded company that is a big player in the virtual school field, only add to the growing perception that charter schools are first and foremost businesses and thus are all about money and privatization."


"Likewise, the nation is indebted to the Washington Supreme Court for its ability to teach us a civics lesson and, in the process, highlight a problem of democracy. When a board that is hand-picked by a private corporation and spends public funds to run what is called a “public” charter school that is a problem of democracy due to the absence of voter input – a violation of the democratic process.
We also should extend our thanks to the League of Women Voters for helping the Washington Supreme Court to understand that a school is not a business, but it nevertheless must be our business to ensure that schools are learning communities, not profit-centered enterprises, governed by citizens chosen in elections by qualified voters, not by corporations."

Ohio Education Research Center Reviews E-Schools

An extensive report from the Ohio Education Research Center .  E-schools are not successful.  More dropouts, poor performance with similar demographics.  No magic bullet/solution or excuse was determined.  It is a failed one billion experiment.

A very thorough report.  The conclusion:

E-school students’ performance on standardized tests are dramatically lower, especially for

math, compared to those students who attend a brick-and-mortar school. Test scores

plummet the year a student transitions to an e-school. E-school students’ scores see

incremental increases in the subsequent years. However, it is important to note, that despite

subsequent increases their scores remain below the scores they received prior to entering an

e-school.

http://media.cleveland.com/plain_dealer_metro/other/Ohio's%20E-Schools%20report%20by%20OERC.pdf

What is the cost?


http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-06-12/one-year-with-a-bad-teacher-costs-each-student-50-000-in-lifetime-earnings

Dealing with e-schools: Kids in first year in online schools learn little, never catch up

Drilling down into the data.  The results for e-schools is not pretty.  The kids fall behind and never catch up.


Meanwhile the taxpayers pay millions and some corporations and sponsors make a lot of money.  $6000 per kid.


"Test scores plummet the year a student transitions to an e-school," that study found. "E-school students' scores see incremental increases in the subsequent years. However, it is important to note, that despite subsequent increases their scores remain below the scores they received prior to entering an e-school."


 Ohio Education Resource Center


An ugly graph.


http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/09/dealing_with_e-schools_kids_in.html

CURMUDGUCATION: OH: 200 Failed Charters

Another take on the 200 failed charters in Ohio.  Curmudgucation is a very good blog



CURMUDGUCATION: OH: 200 Failed Charters: When the Washington State supreme court ruled charters unconstitutional just before the school year started, charter fans were outraged. &q...

200 Charter School Failures and Counting

A thorough article on the waste of taxpayers dollars in this community school experiment.

It points out the lack of appropriate supervision by sponsors.  They have a conflict as there fees depend on the existence of the school, not the results.

It points out the lack of qualified disinterested school boards.  Ohio lets the managment company pick the boards and then presents a contract with the terms the managment company writes in that contract. 

“I wonder why people sit on Boards? Is it a cheap self esteem boost?”

“ I often think the many Boards I have seen are lead around by the nose anyway.”

http://www.connectionsacademy.com/news/ray_lambert_school_leader.aspx

"In Ohio, for-profit companies run most charter schools, according to a 2014 Beacon Journal analysis. Some of the largest are out of state. Contracts allow many of the operators to hire employees and negotiate vendor and landlord contracts without seeking approval of the school board. In many cases, contracts are with parties related to the for-profit operator."

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/blame-and-ignorance-follow-200th-charter-school-flop-in-ohio-1.625609#.VgAYW9DsFP0.mailto

No question the education education system needs help.  This points some of the many flaws.

Good summary of the Ohio Scam

Pretty good summary of the scam going on in Ohio.  This article focuses on the enormous rent.  There is even a more profitable business model.  Open a virtual school and pay no rent except to house some teachers.  You can further reduce this expense by having them work from home and hiring part-time teachers who only work from home.  Ohio Connections Academy, K-12, ECOT, OHVA have taken this to the next level.

I have previously posted about these hand picked boards with little school or business experience.  They will gladly sign off on a bad deal because they do not know better.  If they resist, find an even more clueless board.

Here is the article:

When Leon Sinoff was asked to sign off on a building lease for Imagine Columbus Primary Academy in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 2013, he had little reason to be skeptical. Before Imagine Schools, one of the nation's largest for-profit charter management companies, asked him to join the new charter school's board, Sinoff, a public defender, had no education background or experience. "I relied on their expertise and thought to myself, 'Well, who am I to say no to this proposal?'" Sinoff says.

But by the start of the second school year, he was having doubts. The school received an F grade for achievement on the 2013-14 state report card. Only three teachers had returned after the first summer break; within two years, two principals and one vice principal stepped down. The school—which serves a high-poverty, low-income community—lacked arts, music, and foreign language classes, and whenever the board inquired about adding them, Imagine said there wasn't enough money. Then Sinoff discovered that the $58,000-a-month lease—consuming nearly half the school's operating budget, compared with the national standard of 8 to 15 percent—was for a building owned by a subsidiary of Imagine, Schoolhouse Finance LLC.

"It clicked for me. Aha! This is self-dealing. That's why we are massively overpaying for the lease," says Sinoff, who resigned with the other board members this summer. He adds, "Imagine is perfectly happy cranking out low-quality schools and profiting off them. They don't care particularly about the quality of the kids' education."

Before Imagine Columbus Primary Academy opened, a different Imagine school operated in the building for eight years. Its story was nearly identical: The struggling school was paying enormous sums to Schoolhouse Finance while languishing on the state's "academic emergency" list—a designation reserved for F-rated schools—before its board voted to shut it down. One member of that board was David Hansen, who shortly after the school's closing was appointed by Gov. John Kasich to a newly created position: executive director of Ohio's Office of Quality School Choice and Funding. Kasich tasked Hansen with overseeing the expansion of the state's charter schools and virtual schools, which are online charter schools typically used by homeschoolers.

"Imagine is perfectly happy cranking out low-quality schools and profiting off of them."

In July, Hansen resigned after admitting he had rigged evaluations of the state's charter school sponsors—the nonprofits that authorize and oversee the schools in exchange for a fee—by not including the failing grades of certain F-rated schools in his assessment. Specifically, he omitted failing virtual schools operated by for-profit management companies that are owned by major Republican donors in the state.

The two central figures in Ohio's corporate charter movement, David Brennan and Bill Lager, have donated a combined $6.4 million to state legislators and committees, more than 90 percent of which went to Republicans, who have dominated the state House and Senate. Their donations have paid off. Since 1998, the state has given $1.76 billion to schools run by Brennan's White Hat Management and Lager's Electronic Classrooms of Tomorrow, accounting for one-quarter of all state charter funds.

"Why do we accept this for our kids? It's not good enough for kids in Missouri, but it's okay for kids in Ohio?"

 

The charter solution to the problem:  Get a new board who is even more clueless.

 

"I'm sure [Imagine's new board] is even more oblivious than we were, given that we caused a lot of trouble in the end," says Sinoff, who resigned after Imagine refused to re-negotiate the high-priced lease. "I think that they are not entirely happy that we squeaked through the filter to make life difficult. I'm sure they haven't made that mistake again, and they have folks even more oblivious than we were."

 

The complete article is here:

 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/08/ohio-charter-schools-john-kasich-imagine

 

Top ten List by Denis Smith

A nice list from Denis Smith. 

In the hope (snicker) of getting some action from our legislators in September, our citizen panel decided to channel the spirit of David Letterman and compile a list of the Top 10 Needed Charter School Reforms. Here are the results of our deliberative body.

#10: Cut legal exemptions
Charter schools are exempt from 150 sections of the Ohio Revised Code.
The legislature needs to eliminate at least half of these exemptions by the end of the current session. After all, if proponents like to call them “publiccharter schools,” they should be more aligned to our system of public education and therefore not need so many exemptions from laws which public schools must comply with due to their public nature. If the charter industry objects, we should not let them have it both ways. Charter proponents should stop using the term public charter schools due to their resistance to increased regulation and fewer legal exemptions. In turn, the public should start using the term corporate charter schools to better define their nature.

Agree, it is taxpayer money.  We should be able to see where it goes.

#9: Management companies subject to full review by state auditor
Here’s another classic example of the charter industry having it both ways. If you receive public funds, the public has a right to see how their money is spent or misspent. Add to that the requirement that any furniture, equipment, and real estate purchased with public funds is public property, subject to liquidation at auction upon closure of the school, with the proceeds returned to the state treasury. Recall that White Hat Management took the position that such assets were corporate and not public property. JobsOhio is another example of the principle of having it both ways. Public money and the assets purchased with such funds should not be convertible to private assets through a management arrangement.

Agree, the system is set up to guarantee that the school will not show a profit.  It is pretty easy for the management company to suck out the taxpayer money and spend it however they want including high salaries for the management companies.

#8: Eliminate Non-Profit Sponsors
The charter industry is replete with example after example of someone or some entity having it both ways. Non-Profit charter school sponsors follow that tradition. They accept public funds for serving as charter school sponsors or authorizers but tell individuals and organizations seeking information that as non-profits, they are exempt from public records requests. As with Nos. 10 and 9, if a non-profit organization accepts public funds, it should be responsive to such requests and the same scrutiny that other types of sponsors (school district, educational service center, vocational school district, university) accept as a player in the charter industry. The public is tired of the charter world having it both ways.

3% is a pretty nice cut from these multimillion dollar budgets the taxpayers are funding.  More than a potential conflict of interest in this arrangement.  Taxpayers would not accept a 3% fee to their local school boards.

#7: Celebrity endorsements and cap on advertising
This charter school reform measure is tied in with Nos. 9 and 8. Public funds should not be used to pay for endorsements to promote charter schools. Worse yet, we’ll probably never find out how much ECOT endorser Jack Hanna or anyone else might have been paid because the management companies maintain they are private entities and resist audits and requests for financial information from state regulators.

Agree and you will never see the state report cards mentioned in that advertising.

#6: Accuracy in advertising
If a rose is a rose, a charter school should be called just that. Ohio is the only one of forty states authorizing charter schools that uses the term community school rather than charter. That term by itself – used in the original legislation – is purposefully misleading. My recent article on charter names pointed out that only a handful have the word charter or community school in their official title. The same is true for television ads, where the name charter isn’t used. As the school year begins and you see and hear ads for charters, listen carefully for what you might not hear in the commercial.
The local public school is a community school and a charter is a charter.

And you will never hear about their test results.  Only some private polls where nine out of ten parents are satisfied.

#5: School treasurers. There is a continuing concern about the ability of charter school treasurers to adequately perform their duties when many serve multiple schools. One former charter treasurer , sentenced to two years in prison, was said to have served as the chief financial officer of at least nine charter schools at the same time, though other treasurers have served more than that number in the past. New legislation is needed to cap the total number of schools a treasurer can serve simultaneously.

Agree, see what happened to the treasurer of Ohio Connections Academy and Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy,  How many other schools did Stephanie Millard serve?

#4: Governance reform. With more than a billion dollars in state education funds being diverted to charter schools, it’s time to require greater transparency and accountability for the use of scarce public dollars, and governance reform is one place to start. In a previous article, I wrote this statement: “The public school district that has the largest number of its resident students enrolled should be entitled to a seat on the board. Since state funds are deducted from the foundation payments for the district’s resident students and sent to the charter school where the student is enrolled, the district is entitled to monitor the performance and operation of the school, particularly when many of these students return to the district at some point.” In addition, lawmakers should require authorizer and parent representatives to be members of the board, with the parent seat filled by an individual selected at an annual meeting of the school parents. An additional part of governance reform would be to require all board members to be registered with the Office of Secretary of State, as is the case with other public school board members.

Agree, the appointment of rubber stamps. friends and collegues to the board is not in the best interests of the students. This is set up to benefit the management companies and not the students.
Raymond Lambert School Leader of the Year by the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools (OAPCS) once had this to say about boards. “I wonder why people sit on Boards? Is it a cheap self esteem boost?” “ I often think the many Boards I have seen are lead around by the nose anyway.”
#3: Administrative qualifications. Incredibly, there are no minimum educational or professional licensure requirements for charter school administrators. This situation needs to be addressed immediately if all charter reform efforts are to be viewed as substantive. After all, school is about education.

Agree, and I would add that promotion and leadership should not be tied with who you are sleeping with.

#2: Citizenship requirement. In traditional school districts, board members have to be qualified voters – citizens – in order to serve as overseers of public funds. News reports in the last year have focused on one charter school chain where some of the board members and administrators may not be American citizens. If charter proponents want to emphasize the word public in the term public charter school, they should also agree that requiring American citizenship for board members is a no-brainer for the charter industry.

Agree

And the Number One Needed Charter School Reform –
Get the money out!
The influence of charter moguls David Brennan an William Lager on the Ohio Republican party are well-known. Money talks, and in charter world, money speaks loudly. Public funds – the profits gained from running privately operated schools with public money – should not be allowed to unduly influence legislators. The fact that HB 2 stalled at the very time that another $91,726 arrived to replenish state Republican campaign coffers is no coincidence.
If Mark Twain was correct when he observed that “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session,” the absence of lawmakers at Broad and High compounds the inaction on charter reform. But if at least two of these Top 10 Needed Charter School Reforms wound up being included in this year’s reform package, that would be a small victory for the life, liberty and property of Ohioans.

Follow the money, ignore the results

David Hansen Resigns

From the Washington Post.  There is also a lot of coverage from the Cleveland and Columbus press.  I do not see much from the Cincinnati press.

The "mask" is off.  Money talks.  He got caught scrubbing data.

Results matter.  Good and bad.  No excuses.

"In the latest mark against Ohio’s troubled charter school sector, David Hansen, the Ohio Education Department official responsible for school choice and charter schools, just resigned after admitting that he gave help to charter schools to make them look better in state evaluations.

Hansen, who resigned Saturday, recently acknowledged that he omitted from evaluations “F” grades received by online and dropout recovery schools. The evaluations were not for the schools themselves but for their sponsoring (or authorizing) organizations. His actions, according to the Associated Press, “boosted the ratings of two sponsors” so that it was possible that they could be eligible for more help from the state.

Hansen was required to include all school scores in the evaluations, which have since been retracted by the department. According to the Plain Dealer, the “F” grades the schools received were given “for failing to teach kids enough material over the school year.”

Hansen’s wife is Beth Hansen, chief of staff to Kasich. Kasich is expected to jump into the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, and Beth Hansen is planning to work for the campaign.

The AP quoted David Hansen, the executive director of Ohio’s Office of Quality School Choice and the Office of Community Schools, as saying that he omitted the failing grades because he thought they would “mask” other successes by the schools.

Thought for the day

It is wise to remember that you are one of those who can be fooled some of the time.  -- Laurence J. Peter

CURMUDGUCATION: Privatization Primer

CURMUDGUCATION: Privatization Primer: Every once in a while I try to take the many complicated and twisty threads, back up, and tie them into a bigger picture. Think of this as t...



More good stuff here.  education is a multi billion dollar industry

Inexplicity bad

An excellent article on the non-accountable online charter schools.  The online schools get a one year exemption on their  first year test scores for transfer students. 

 

As noted elsewhere in this blog  sponsorship is a big business in Ohio.  3% of the state funds.  Do the math at $267 million per year over $8 million being siphoned to the sponsors.  One could create quite an empire for $8 million.

 

Yet the sponsors remain unaccountable.  The state of Ohio has also removed all the scores for online schools to grade their effectiveness. 

 

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/ohio-online-charter-schools-not-accountable-for-students-who-do-poorly-in-first-year-1.603886

 

 

 

Ohio, a Pearson State

Not a good month for Pearson

 

The Pearson Corporation is a multi-billion dollar United Kingdom enterprise which has grown from a construction company to include newspapers, entertainment enterprises such as amusement parks, and book publishers among its holdings. In 2000 Pearson spent $2.5 billion to acquire an American testing company in an effort to increase its profits through securing contracts to produce standardized tests and test preparation materials

 

(http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html). It has been given enormous control over K-12 public schools in Ohio by the Ohio legislature and governor.

 

Pearson effectively controls what is taught, who graduates, and even who gets a second chance at a high school diploma through the General Education Diploma (GED) examination. Recently Comcast was prevented from acquiring Time Warner because the federal government determined that Comcast's control of 60% of the market was too great. But that market share pales compared to the 100% Pearson has been granted by the State of Ohio.

 

Since 2013, Pearson tests even license teachers in Ohio. Because the tests are designed and graded by Pearson, the company and its employees determine what teachers need to know in all particular teaching fields-English, science, history. Colleges must address what Pearson puts on the tests so that their students will be licensed to teach in Ohio initially and, later, when a teacher seeks professional advancement.

 

By 2018, Pearson end of course exams in designated subjects in grades 9 -12--PARCC Tests--will determine if a student receives an Ohio high school diploma. PARCC tests-Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and careers-are to be based on Common Core State Standards (CCSS), developed with primary input from Pearson.

 

In January of 2014 Pearson produced a revised GED exam---a new version of the GED that is to be taken entirely on-line. The pass rate fell 90 percent because the test now measures college readiness rather than what was actually learned in high school.

 

Pearson controls the curriculum by defining the knowledge and skills a student must master. Pearson assures us the CCSS will be rigorous; i.e. that at least thirty percent or more of students taking the tests will fail. An educator such as Dr. Louisa Moats, who was a contributing writer of CCSS, is just one of many of those critical of the jump to test and fail (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/child-development-central/201401/when-will-we-ever-learn). These standards for which Pearson oversaw the development, helped by tax free money such as an $88 million dollar grant from the Gates Foundation, in turn require the development and selling of both on-line materials and textbooks to prepare the teacher to teach to the test. Pearson produces the materials from which the teachers teach and the tests that tell us if they have performed satisfactorily. In Ohio they have no competitors. If your school "fails" then send your child to a Connections Academy, a Pearson for-profit Charter advertised on their GED webpage.

 

Teachers, parents, and concerned citizens have criticized the tests on a number of grounds-the number of tests, the time the tests take, the appropriateness of the questions, the secrecy about the test questions, the spying on students' social media, the use of the tests for punishment, teaching to the test, the ignoring of the arts, the expense and failure of the technology for administering the tests, and the tremendous cost to taxpayers. The mania for testing and collecting volumes of data are destroying our education system and creating a world of big profits for the Pearson corporation and Big Brother-ism--all approved by our Ohio Legislature and Governor and supported by Federal legislation-No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

 

 

 

William Phillis

John Oliver on testing and Pearson


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10th Period: Ohio Charter Schools' Terrible, Horrible, No Good,...

10th Period: Ohio Charter Schools' Terrible, Horrible, No Good,...: Talk about a rough week. Take a look at the news stories coming out about charter schools this week. On Saturday, the Akron Beacon Journal...

Nine ousted or investigated in Ohio’s largest charter school network - Break News - Ohio

Nine ousted or investigated in Ohio’s largest charter school network - Break News - Ohio

The worm is turning

On Sunday, the Beacon Journal’s astute education writer , Doug Livingston, took up the travesty once again under the headline “Charter schools misspend millions in Ohio”.
Braced with figures from State Auditor Dave Yost’s team, Livingston topped his report with a telling opening paragraph:

“No sector – not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals – misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio'”

Based on the writer’s review of 4,263 audits by the state auditor, the money was misspent “four times more often than any other type of taxpayer agency.” Say, $27.3 million. There are some other for-profit charter organizations in Ohio, but none with the commanding scope of White Hat’s influence

Although Yost is committed to cleaning up the gore, he’s fighting a losing battle. The size and reach of the charter system has grown so large that he doesn’t have a staff that’s big enough to cover all of it.

Charter-school reforms should continue

Charter-school reforms should continue



The blended schools and drop out recovery schools are also prime candidates for fraud. Nexus Academies, Life Skills etc

More virtual school potential fraud

Ohio lawmakers forward e-school attendance allegations

ASSOCIATED PRESS

COLUMBUS — State lawmakers in Ohio have referred allegations to authorities that an online charter school failed to dis-enroll hundreds of chronically truant students in order to pad its rolls.
Ohio Virtual Academy, which serves about 13,000 students statewide, says it follows all state reporting laws and enrollment guidelines.
Reps. Bill Hayes (R., Harrison Township) and Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo), the House Education Committee’s top Republican and Democrat, told the Associated Press on Monday they have forwarded an anonymous whistleblower’s email to state Auditor Dave Yost, whose office has made school attendance fraud a priority.
Hayes also involved the Ohio Department of Education and alerted the school, whose authorizer said it is conducting its own review.
The whistleblower provided a lengthy list of specific students listed as truant, in some cases for most of the school year.

I wonder how much this cost the Ohio taxpayers?  How many youths are going to be unprepared to be productive citizens because of a lack of education because the E-school is more concerned about collecting money than insuring the students receive an adequate education.  A shameful scam.

I think K-12 is in trouble and would not be buying their stock.

CURMUDGUCATION: Do Charters Create Pressure for Excellence

CURMUDGUCATION: Do Charters Create Pressure for Excellemce: Charles Sahm and I have been in as low motion conversation about charters. After the New York Times ran a less-than-inspiring portrayal of E...



Another good analysis of the costs of E-Schools in PA

10th Period: Ohio Charters Just Don't Work, Part III

10th Period: Ohio Charters Just Don't Work, Part III: Now that I've shown how state data indicate that Ohio's charter schools simply aren't up to snuff with Ohio's school distric...

Postscript: Treasurer Cincinnati College Prepatory Academy

A follow up on the aftermath of  of the scandal at Cincinnati College Prepatory Academy.  Stephanie Millard, the treasurer of that school and of Ohio Connections Academy has plead guilty to two counts of unauthorized use of property.  Two years probation.  Not sure what other schools she served as treasurer, but I suspect that many charter schools were looking for a part-time accountant to bless their dealings.  I do know that this indictment and conviction did generate a taxpayer paid audit of Cincinnati College Prepatory Academy and Ohio Connections Academy and perhaps others.  Both audits found issues.

This is why reform is needed as to the finances of charter schools and their for profit management companies.  The loosie goosie fiefdoms paid by the taxpayers, with unelected weak school boards, are a tempting target for abuse.

From the court records:

SENTENCED COUNT 4: UNAUTHORIZED USE OF PROPERTY CONFINEMENT: 180 DAYS, SUSPENDED 180 DAYS HAMILTON COUNTY JUSTICE CENTER PROBATION: 2 YRS

SENTENCED COUNT 16: UNAUTHORIZED USE OF PROPERTY CONFINEMENT: 180 DAYS, SUSPENDED 180 DAYS HAMILTON COUNTY JUSTICE CENTER PROBATION: 2 YRS

10th Period: State Defines "High Performing" Charters

10th Period: State Defines "High Performing" Charters: One of the things most charter school reformers agree about is that whatever Ohio's charter school reform looks like, its few high-perfo...



Good blog.  It does not appear any of the virtual schools made the list

E-Shools in Ohio $224 million

The worm is turning

The Columbus Dispatch is finally getting on board.

Seems pretty reasonable.  It is the taxpayer’s money.  Campaign donors do not speak for the majority of taxpayers.  Despite the massive marketing please let the results (including the finances) speak for themselves.  Billions have been spent.  How much is enough?

“Ohio’s charter-school system has attracted national ridicule for its giant-sized accountability loopholes…

A significant gap, flagged by Yost, is that the bill fails to require school-operating companies to disclose how they spend the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of tax dollars they are paid to run the schools. Their status as private companies doesn’t change the fact that they are using public money to provide public education. Under current law, some operators refuse to show their books to the governing boards that hired them, let alone to the public.

This lack of accountability is unacceptable, and lawmakers should fix that before they sign off on H.B. 2.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2015/03/22/1-a-big-step-forward.html

10th Period: National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Wors...

10th Period: National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Wors...: For years now, I've been saying Ohio is unique among the 50 states for its crazy charter school system. And last week, many prominent ch...

Ohio Charters ridiculed. At least we are not Nevada

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/03/ohios_charter_schools_ridicule.html#incart_m-rpt-1

More analysis on charters from Minnesota

Students in most Minnesota charter schools are failing to hit learning targets and are not achieving adequate academic growth, according to a Star Tribune analysis of school performance data.

The analysis of 128 of the state’s 157 charter schools show that the gulf between the academic success of its white and minority students widened at nearly two-thirds of those schools last year. Slightly more than half of charter schools students were proficient in reading, dramatically worse than traditional public schools, where 72 percent were proficient.

Between 2011 and 2014, 20 charter schools failed every year to meet the state’s expectations for academic growth each year, signaling that some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students had stagnated academically.

A top official with the Minnesota Department of Education says she is troubled by the data, which runs counter to “the public narrative” that charter schools are generally superior to public schools.

More than half of schools analyzed from 2011 to 2014 were also failing to meet the department’s expectations for academic growth, the gains made from year to year in reading and math.

Of the 20 schools that failed to meet the state goals for improvement every year, Pillsbury United Communities is the authorizer for six of those schools: Dugsi Academy, LoveWorks Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, Connections Academy, Learning for Leadership Charter School, and the Minnesota Transitions Charter School’s elementary, Connections Academy and Virtual High School. Those schools also missed annual achievement gap targets.

Interesting article on Pearson

The company’s global adjusted operating profit for 2013 topped $1 billion — and 55 percent of it came from the North American education division.

“The line between profit and profiteering can seem pretty fuzzy,” said Cathy Davidson, director of the Futures Initiative and a professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. “If you have an exclusive contract with a massive educational system, is that really just earning a profit, or are you profiting at the public’s expense?” Davidson said. “That’s the line many people, including myself, find very troubling.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026_Page2.html#ixzz3SWpZPsoT

Chapter superintendents, not so super

From Denis Smith

Seriously?  No wonder the results are often horrible.  Only the best and brightest (or not)?

Set up your own board and get yourself elected superintendent.  Title sounds good and the pay is whatever you can convince the board to pay you.  Ohio has probably doubled the number of superintendent positions with the advent of charter schools.

"How then is it that when it comes to the subject of “public” charter schools, Kasich and his friends have different definitions and understandings for terms like educators and superintendents?

Under Ohio law, there are no education or professional requirements for an individual to serve as a public charter school superintendent or principal. None. As Woody Allen might have put it, if 80% of success in life is just showing up, you’ve got a good chance of becoming the top administrator of a charter school just by showing up, with a new start-up school proposal in hand, at the offices of a charter school sponsor.

And yes, governor, let’s say it again: there are absolutely no administrative licensure requirements in charterdom. You don’t even have to be an educator in order to open and become a superintendent of a “public” charter school."

Founder of closed charter schools is accused of robbing Near East Side home

Founder of closed charter schools is accused of robbing Near East Side home



You can't make this stuff up

The wild west produces a judgment

Solution:  Eliminate the middle man.  Keep all of the rent!  Open a virtual school.  (It works, see K-12, Ohio Connections or ECOT)

Columbus Dispatch is getting on board.

 

$1 million judgment against charter school operator

By: Catherine Candisky

The Columbus Dispatch - January 21, 2015 01:00 PM

A federal judge in Missouri ordered Imagine Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter-school operators, to pay nearly $1 million for forcing a lucrative lease agreement on a school it operated.
Under the complex deal, Imagine Schools negotiated the pricey lease with SchoolHouse Finance and presented it to the school board of the Renaissance Academy for Math and Science for approval. Imagine Schools owns SchoolHouse Finance and directly benefited by the agreement.
“This clearly constituted self-dealing,” U.S. District Judge Judge Nanette K. Laughrey wrote in a blistering 29-page ruling.

Sound familiar? The Dispatch in October reported about a North Side charter school spending more than half of the tax dollars it receives on rent in a very similar lease deal with Imagine Schools and SchoolHouse Finance. The board of the Imagine Columbus Primary Academy asked Imagine to renegotiate the lease but that has not happened.

Other Ohio charter-school operators use similar lease deals, and while apparently legal, supporters and opponents complained that they wasted tax dollars and lawmakers pledged to take a look.
"Legislators who are working on charter school reforms should make prevention of these types of abuses a top priority," said ProgressOhio Executive Director Sandy Theis.

Charter schools are privately operated with public tax dollars and many contract with management companies to handle day-to-day operations.

ProgressOhio recommended placing a cap on state money used for rent, requiring the Ohio Board of Education to sign-off on leases, requring charter-school boards to have independent attorneys and financial officers and other changes.

In the Missouri case, the school board of the now-closed Kansas City school sued its former management company, claiming it had manipulated the board and failed to act in the school’s best interest. “While the Renaissance Board theoretically had authority to act independently on some limited issues, it was in fact a captive of Imagine Schools by both design and by operation,” Laughrey wrote. “While this changed over time with the assistance of the sponsor, the University of Missouri, intervention came too late to save the school, which operated consistently with too few expenditures for instruction and low student performance.”

Laughrey found no evidence that Imagine Schools discussed the market rate for similar leases with the Renaissance board or informed members that SchoolHouse calculated the rental rate based on a 12 percent return on investment regardless of the market rate. They also neglected to mention that the higher-than average rent would result in lower-than average expenditures on books, supplies and teacher salaries.

“For example, in 2007-2008, Renaissance spent 27.9 percent of its funds on instructional costs while the national average was 65.8 percent and Missouri was 64.6 percent,” the judge noted.
Laughrey also had some interesting findings about how Imagine gets board members to go along with these not-so-sweet deals. Imagine recruited inexperienced school board members and one who had received political contributions from the companies and had family members working there.

Editorial Voices

The worm is turning...

ECOT

More online fun.  $112 million this year!

ECOT received $19 million more in state funding than Cincinnati received, despite having fewer than half as many students.

Most of the publicity, including comments from governor, have been quite negative. The worm is turning....

In 2006, the Columbus-based online charter school Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow was under fire.

The state disputed its attendance numbers, and the Newark schools superintendent accused it of committing fraud by “failing to meet even minimum standards of operation.”

Since then, ECOT — whose founder, William Lager, has been a major contributor to Ohio politicians over the past five years — has continued to grow rapidly, in both enrollment and budget. Last school year, ECOT enrolled 14,561 students, more than twice the number it did in 2006.

ECOT, whose students take classes from home on a computer, grew by 122 percent during Ohio’s eight-year moratorium on new online charter schools. Some of its strongest growth was in elementary grades, including kindergarten.

ECOT now has more students than Canton, Dayton, Dublin or Westerville schools. It is the state’s 10th-largest district. And growth came for ECOT despite its consistently low state report-card results: It ranks among the worst-performing schools in the state.

“The growth has been huge,” said Aaron Churchill, who is Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. It has offices in Columbus and Dayton and sponsors charters but criticizes weak oversight and poor-quality schools. “There are clearly a lot of questions about the quality of the education they’re putting out. I’d be curious to know why parents are selecting it.”

ECOT’s tax revenue grew in step with its enrollment, to $112.7 million, 90 percent of which is funded by the state. Charter schools are funded with tax dollars but often are privately run.

According to a state financial audit made public last week, ECOT paid $21.4 million last year to the two for-profit companies Lager formed to serve the school — nearly one-fifth of the school’s total revenue.

IQ Innovations, Lager’s software firm, sells the IQity online-learning platform to ECOT as well as to other schools and districts elsewhere in the country. Altair Learning Management is Lager’s school-management firm, and it oversees ECOT’s day-to-day business, including hiring and firing.

Most of the money sent to the for-profit companies — $17.4 million — is for purchasing curriculum from IQ Innovations, an expense that has grown steadily each year since ECOT first paid $5 million to IQ for the 2008-09 school year.

ECOT also spent another almost $11 million on communications last year. ECOT spokesman Ryan Crawford said he couldn’t immediately say why the communications budget was so large but said it might include advertising. ECOT has used Jack Hanna, director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, as a spokesman in TV spots for the school.

Just over half of ECOT’s revenue goes to employee salaries and benefits, compared with 80 percent or more in traditional districts.

Critics say that ECOT owes its existence to its lavish campaign donations, mostly to Ohio Republicans.

“These guys set up companies and pay themselves,” said William L. Phillis, the executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding. He calls the relationship between Lager and the Ohio GOP “incestuous.”

“It’s pathetic from the standpoint of the taxpayers,” Phillis said. “This money’s being laundered, wasted, going into somebody’s pocket. It’s a crime, but, of course, it’s all legal.”

ECOT spokesman Crawford said that critics have raised questions about the relationship between the school and the two affiliated for-profit companies before. ECOT considers the debate a philosophical one, and he points out that neither state auditors nor the Ohio Department of Education has found fault with the relationship.

He said the school’s growth has been driven exclusively by enrollment gains from students choosing its program over other schools.

“We’ve heard these questions for 15 years now. We have a different feel for how it works than our critics. We feel confident that what we’re doing is correct,” Crawford said. “We do our very, very best to be good stewards of public dollars.”

Students interviewed for ECOT’s website for its graduation ceremony last summer said they enroll for lots of reasons, including the need for flexible schedules because they have jobs or children.

Although the online school boasts on its website that “over 10,000 students have graduated from ECOT” since it opened in 2000, its track record for helping students graduate on time is among the worst in Ohio. In the past four graduating classes alone, about 5,600 seniors did graduate on time. But two-thirds of ECOT seniors during that time — 10,600 — did not graduate with their classes.

With its most-recent graduation rate of 38 percent, few districts in the state rank lower. Only 35 of the roughly 700 traditional school districts and charter schools that serve high-school students have a worse outcome, and most of those are other statewide e-schools and charters that exclusively serve dropouts.

By comparison, Columbus schools’ most-recent graduation rate was 77 percent. Cleveland’s was about 64 percent.

Phillis said it’s astonishing that ECOT continues to escape the scrutiny of lawmakers despite meeting only three of the 24 possible state testing and graduation standards, receiving F grades in all but one category. ECOT got a D in the performance index, which is an index of state testing performance.

“It has to end,” Phillis said, “taking money that’s appropriated for the education of children for enormous advertising, campaign contributions and profit.”

Altair and the IQity software firm have several lobbyists who step in to protect their interests during state budget times and when charter-school issues crop up in the state legislature.

And ECOT’s founder, Lager, has spent at least $1.13 million on Ohio campaigns in the past five years alone. Lager could not be reached for comment, and his spokesman said he couldn’t reach him, either.

That’s more — on Ohio politics, anyway — than was spent by David Brennan, the well-known Akron charter entrepreneur who lobbies heavily on behalf of his White Hat schools group. During the same time period, Brennan donated about $820,000, according to campaign-donation records kept by the Ohio secretary of state.

For the past three years, Lager has funneled more than $200,000 per year to mostly Republican officeholders, including William G. Batchelder of Medina, the outgoing speaker of the Ohio House. The largest single donations went to the Ohio Republican Party.

Political contributions also were made through Lager’s two privately held companies. Since 2009, IQ Innovations has sent more than $154,000 to Ohio political candidates and groups. Altair’s contributions totaled about $38,000.

Lager is a member of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Digital Learning Now initiative, whose 10-point plan includes pushing lawmakers to require all students to take at least one online course; loosening laws on class size, student-teacher ratios and required amounts of instructional time; requiring state proficiency tests to be taken digitally; and providing digital charters with the same per-pupil public funding that other schools receive.

bbush@dispatch.com

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/01/04/popular-ecot-poor-performer.html