Ecot Exposed

https://ecotexposed.org/


Wow, a whole website devoted to one e-school.


Shameful that this school exists!


The others are trying hard to catch up and grab a piece of this action.  Like pigs to a trough.


When I lived with a charter school administrator, they were always trying to catch up to ECOT.  Why can't Connections Academy produce the same kind of enrollment was the question being asked from the home office in Baltimore.

Another E-School Investigation

A great expose on K-12 in California.  From The Mercury News:
http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_29780959/k12-inc-california-virtual-academies-operator-exploits-charter


This the playbook for the Ohio E-Schools




Some key findings:

Teachers employed by K12 Inc.'s charter schools may be asked to inflate attendance and enrollment records used to determine taxpayer funding.

Ohio E-School Charters are fighting this accountability issue right now.

Fewer than half of the students who start the online high schools earn diplomas, and almost none of them are qualified to attend the state's public universities.

Check out the report cards for the Ohio E-Schools.  Dismal at best.

K12's heavily marketed online model has helped the company reap more than $310 million in state funding over the past 12 years.

Market! market! market! Where do they get the money for the radio and TV ads?  SOme interesting accounting.  Make sure the school never makes a profit and write off the loss.

Students who spend as little as one minute during a school day logged in to K12's school software may be counted as present in records used to calculate the amount of funding the schools get from the state.

About half of the schools' students are not proficient in reading, and only a third are proficient in math -- levels that fall far below statewide averages.

School districts that are supposed to oversee the company's schools have a strong financial incentive to turn a blind eye to problems: They get a cut of the academies' revenue, which largely comes from state coffers.

Also note the governance issue.  K-12 sets up and loads the boards.  Same as they do in Ohio


I like pictures

Unjust Enrichment

Trying to avoid accountability.


"When the Ohio Department of Education dug into the attendance reporting of Provost Academy Ohio, a small, Columbus-based online charter school, it found that the school was being paid far more than it should have received based on the actual time students spent logged into school-related activities.


Some wonder what would happen if the same scrutiny was applied to online charter schools that are five to 90 times larger than Provost. As lawmakers crafted new charter-school reforms, questions arose about the accuracy of e-school attendance"


What would happen is that they would see that the attendance is grossly inflated, probably fabricated and that the schools are receiving improper funding.  I would bet big on this, thus the push back.


"Hanna would not say specifically what would cause problems for e-schools. “We all want to be accountable. We just need to find a way to meet their requirements within the systems that exist now.”"


I call bullshit on that statement. They do not want visibility or accountability. 


http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/03/01/lax-attendance-tracking-allows-800000-state-overpayment-to-online-charter-school.html


"According to its five-year forecast, Provost will repay the state up to $850,000 in “overfunded foundation payments” over the next three years.


As a result, the school’s operator, Edison Learning, needs to contribute to operations or defer management fees during these years, the report said. The management company is paid $250,000 a year to handle administrative and other duties.


The Ohio Council of Community Schools is paid 3 percent of the school’s state aid for a sponsorship fee. The report does not mention deferring or waiving sponsorship fees."


Pretty soon you are talking about real money!

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.

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

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

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator, Part 2

Some more things I learned while living with a charter school administrator.

Procuring Federal title money and grants is profitable.

That the management company wants and expects every dime from the grants and title money.  It is the administrator’s job to get all the money.  If you do not get it, the company will be less profitable.  That may not be a wise career move.

Justifying title money is hard, it takes creative writing and accounting.

You can allocate and reallocate teacher hours and roles to maximize the amount.  You assign teacher hours to maximize the title money.  You can do this after the fact, even  while sitting in your home watching TV.  An observer might think this is fraudulent. 

That you can pay teachers less than at a public school.  That the teaching market is very weak.
That you can go somewhere warm in the winter for meetings and be dined and wined.  That these expenses , normally not allowed to the school, are paid by the management company.  You can go on a similar excursion in the summer.

That the management company picks the board.

That you can handpick a board and include some parents which can be “easily led around by the nose.”
That you can put your neighbor on the board.

That you can put some parents on the board who do not need to understand anything about finances or board operations.  It is a learning position and the school leaders will feed you what you the information they deem that you need to hear.  It is an ego boost for some.

That lobbying is an important part of the business plan.  That politicians love the idea and the political contributions.

That they have hired their own lobbyist.  A lobbyist can throw a good party.

That marketing is a key element in securing enrollment.  You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on slick TV ads, slick radio ads and the internet.  Your competitors will do the same.   That you can quote a result from 2010, but ignore subsequent results.  That you will never see the state report card mentioned in any marketing materials.

Freedom of choice, even if it is a foolish decision, is a strong marketing point.

Lobbying and marketing expenses ultimately come from the taxpayers of Ohio via the management company.

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator, Part 1

My grandfather had a favorite saying.  You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

My Ex-wife was an administrator for an E-school.  The marriage ended on bad terms. 

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator.

That charter schools are called community schools in Ohio.  Many are not located in the community and actually suck significant amount of money from a local community or district with no charter schools.  Community schools has a folksy sounding name, better for marketing.

That ethics are optional.

That there are many ways to game the system to benefit your own interests. 

There is little oversight.

Self-preservation is a powerful force.  Being an administrator is a pretty good gig.

There is an inherent conflict between producing results and producing revenue by increasing  the headcount.  This conflict causes some stress at first but you get over it.  More students mean more dollars.

That E-schools are not for everyone, and probably not for the majority of the students enrolled.

That E-schools are a profitable business.  The schools themselves are “non-profit”.  How it works is that you send most of the money to the management company who set up the school.  That school money gets siphoned to the management company, usually to a local entrepreneur who established the management company or to a large or giant corporation like K-12 Inc. and Pearson Education.  They need to take enough so that the school never will show a profit.  Non-profit status does not apply to the management company.

That you can pay students and parent to take tests by offering them gift cards.  That the schools really would prefer that some students not take the tests.

That despite millions of dollars coming in the door, that you can have a part-time treasurer.  That treasurer can serve many charter schools.  The treasurer does not audit the management company.

If your treasurer gets indicted for malfeasance at another school, you should hire a new one.

The majority of the Ohio E-schools have the same sponsor.

The sponsor takes their fee based on total revenue.  It is very profitable to be a sponsor.   I don’t see much in the way of staff or overhead for these sponsors.

That the management company can make millions for it’s founders.

That the salary information listed on web sites is out of date and inaccurate, too low for administrators.

That you can invest the money earned from one state to expand in another and internationally.  More students mean more dollars.

Bloomberg takes on K-12

Not a good investment.  Good article

Plagued by subpar test scores, the largest operator of online public schools in the U.S. has lost management contracts or been threatened with school shutdowns in five states this year. The National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled in April that students can no longer count credits from 24 K12 high schools toward athletic scholarships

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-14/k12-backed-by-milken-suffers-low-scores-as-states-resist.html#disqus_thread

The results for Ohio:
The 2012-2013 Ohio Department of Education report card shows 1 C, 1 D and 6 F's With a performance index of 73.0% and Indicators met of 45.8%^[2

The 2013-2014 Ohio Department of Education report card shows 1 C, 1 D and 6 F's With a performance index of 73.6% and Indicators met of 41.7% ^[3]

http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Archives%20TS/Community%20Schools/142950/142950_2012-2013_BUILD.pdf

http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/School-Report.aspx?SchoolIRN=142950

Ohio is number 4, and that is not good

Follow the money!

I sense that the pendulum is swinging back towards sanity after a failed billion dollar experiment.  More articles in the papers.  More letters to the editor.  More pressure on the politicians. 

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-s-for-profit-charter-schools-drag-state-into-group-of-nation-s-worst-performers-1.539387?localLinksEnabled=false

"Ohio’s charter schools have a national reputation for hiring for-profit companies that produce poor academic results.

Only three of 26 states had lower performing charter schools, according to a Stanford University study of states with schools in operation long enough to compare results.

A factor in the difference appears to be the motivation to make money.

Tennessee, New York and Rhode Island, which the study reckons have the highest-performing charter school sectors, are among the six states that ban for-profit companies.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ohio trails only Michigan and Texas in the percentage of taxpayer-funded charter schools run by for-profit companies, according to the Colorado-based National Education Policy Center.

• Of the 16 lowest performing networks, 14 were managed by for-profit companies.

• The online charter schools Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and Ohio Virtual Academy, which account for a quarter of all charter enrollment, averaged the lowest student growth in the state.

• Of the 12 highest-performing charter school networks, eight hired nonprofit management organizations.

• $503 million of $920 million in public funding went to charter schools managed by for-profit companies. A little over half of the $920 million went to out-of-state companies.

• Out-of-state and for-profit companies enrolled 74,458 of the 119,271 Ohio charter school students."

A .375 GPA

Some insights from a recent auditor’s report.  I think  I am reading this correctly. 

Imagine Schools Inc. has been justifiably  criticized for paying a subsidiary more money in rent than it does for its teaching staff and producing poor results.  The national benchmark for rent is 15% according to an article in the Columbus Dispatch. 

A recent audit of Ohio Connections Academy shows that teaching and administration total $5,268,575.  Overhead totals $6,003,793.   113% more than the money for teaching salary and benefits.  Overhead is undefined.  This money flows out of the state to a Maryland management company, Connections Learning,  who does with it as they wish.  There is little in bricks and mortar expense.  Compare that to 15% rent benchmark.

The management company can recycle the same software year after year.  They can sell essentially the same software to multiple states.  The transfer and accounting of the overhead expense insures that the non-profit altruistic E-school never will show a profit.  Useful to show why they cannot pay teachers more or to elicit sympathy from parents or politicians.  They are the underdog. 

Yet it is a very profitable business for the management company. Connections Learning, K-12 and others are aggressively expanding in every state possible.  Underdog status also justifies the need for more money and more students.  See page 20 on the attached link. 

What are the latest state report card results for this E-school?  1 C, 2 D’s and 5 F’s.  A .375 GPA.  It would be nice if they could move the decimal point.

To help manage the multimillion dollar budget they hired a part-time treasurer  who is under indictment for her role as treasurer with Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy.  I guess there is no need for an on-site full time treasurer. 

The audit also shows unresolved title money issues totaling $668,642 (see page 46).  When will this be resolved?  To paraphrase a politician, pretty soon we are talking real money.  At best it shows that they are sloppy with their record keeping.  At worst is suggests that they are playing with the allocations to put more of scarce title money in their pockets at the expense of taxpayers. 

https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2013/Ohio_Connections_Academy_11-Hamilton.pdf

There is an obvious problem.  Look at the proliferation of E-schools in Ohio.  Who benefits?

What is needed?  Transparency, strong boards (which are not lead around by the nose by the management company), and oversight.  These characteristics exist in the vast majority of our public school districts.  Oh by the way, results  would be good too.

95% Fees, how to cash in on kids

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/09/the_95_fees_that_charter_schools_pay_white_hat_go_before_the_ohio_supreme_court_today.html

Interesting article on how to convert public funds to private property and profit.  It also makes it very difficult for a school board to act independently from the entity that created it. 

This case is currently in the Ohio Supreme Court.

OHDELA paid 75 percent of its $14 million budget to White Hat as a management fee.

Outside of White Hat, audits for online charter school Ohio Virtual Academy showed a similar pattern. About two-thirds of the $68 million the school spent in 2010-11-- $43 million -- went toward purchasing services from K12 Inc., the company that runs it.

The profit margins are a closely guarded secret.  My understanding, is that the profit margin for Ohio Connections Academy (owned by Pearson) is 30%.  Yet that school hired a part time treasurer.  No need for detailed disclosure.  No need for an elected board.

The money make millionaires out of some.  The money provides many separate districts which then create  high paying principals, superintendants, treasurers and managers. The sponsors take their piece of the action.  Unfortunately the students and teachers are not beneficiaries of this system. 

Better education results are a worthy goal.  Unfortunately, this is a failed billion dollar experiment.  The results speak for themselves.  Check the report cards.  A few individuals profit greatly, obtain fancy titles, money and perks and promise that someday they will produce results.  What a scam.

ECOT Exposed

Very well done!

Cashing in on kids

http://cashinginonkids.com/

Another website following who is cashing in on the charter schools and how creative but unethical companies operate on this billion dollar business.

ECOT

ECOT's third grade students passing percentage for the third grade reading guarantee was 52.9%

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.

Some big bucks here

http://www.plunderbund.com/2013/12/10/ecot-founder-living-very-well-off-ohios-school-funding-dollars/


Sorry kids, but it is good to be king!  Meanwhile the teachers are being paid less than their counterparts.

This weekend we posted about Ohio’s largest charter school, ECOT, being recommended to receive a “bonus” check of $2.9 million that would be quickly rerouted into ECOT owner William Lager’s other private businesses. This is not the first raise that ECOT has received this year. Through the Kasich budget passed this summer, ECOT received the largest increase in state funding for any charter school in Ohio at $4.8 million. This far surpassed the second largest increase of $1.35 million given to Ohio Virtual Academy.
It’s good to buy friends in high places…
Since 2004, Lager, the ECOT CEO, has been donating to Ohio political campaigns with staggering regularity and in staggering numbers for someone whose main livelihood is providing a “public” education to Ohio children:

Lager began profiting off of Ohio taxpayers shortly after opening ECOT at the turn of the century. In 2000, he founded Altair Learning Management Company to “manage” ECOT’s operations. This company began receiving millions in funding that same year according to ECOT’s annual filings with the State Auditor’s office. In FY01, Altair began receiving 10% of ECOT’s funding as a management fee. As enrollment increased, the total amount of funding began to increase, but that wasn’t enough for Lager. In FY05, Lager to increase the management fee to 14%, realizing a raise of nearly $2,000,000.
Finally, in FY08, Lager figured out a way to pocket even more taxpayer dollars. He coordinated a decrease in the Altair’s management fee down to 4% while creating a new contract with Altair to provide curriculum to ECOT at an annual cost of over $8 million dollars.
The next year, FY09, Lager created IQ Innovations, a for-profit software company to develop and provide services to ECOT, while still using Altair as the school’s management company. That first year, FY09, IQ Innovations was paid over $5 million by ECOT and the figure has increased every year since.
The chart below shows the year-by-year breakdown of the payments from ECOT to William Lager’s for-profit companies.

Such grand figures help to explain how Lager can afford to make such astronomical political donations year after year and why, as we mentioned over the weekend, the last thing Lager and his companies need is for Ohio’s Controlling Board to approve another $2.7 million in state taxpayer dollars supposedly allocated for public school funding to be directly funneled into Lager’s pockets.

And deep pockets they are.

In 2002, Lager purchased a $300,000 condominium in downtown Columbus where he could be close to his pals in the legislature and oversee ECOT’s operations. While the small, 1,200 sq ft condo apparently served him well for many years, Lager recently found the need to upgrade. On November 1 of this year, Lager added to his personal real estate portfolio, purchasing a $995,000 mansion (4,600+ sq ft) in Upper Arlington.

What public school superintendent/CEO could donate over $1.3 million to political campaigns over the span of a decade and turn around and purchase a $300,000 condo and a million dollar home? Let alone do so while avoiding the ever-watching eye of the state’s media? Can you imagine how bat-shit crazy the Dispatch would go if this story was about the superintendent/CEO of the Columbus City Schools? What type of outcry would this generate about the misuse of precious taxpayer dollars that we should be spending on educating our children?

The bottom line? William Lager is grandly profiting off of taxpayer dollars that are supposed to be going to our schools.

What can we do?

Start by contacting the State Controlling Board members (see contact information at the end of the post) before they meet this week to Approve the Straight A Fund recipients and tell them to DENY the additional $2.9 million award to ECOT that will further line Lager’s pockets.

Then continue contacting your state Representatives and Senators and tell them to STOP this egregious misuse of OUR public school funding dollars!

And then make plans to vote out Lager’s close friend and ally, Governor John Kasich, in 2014.

State Controlling Board Members (click on a name to send an email)

Randy Cole, President
(614) 728-8778

Sen. Bill Coley (R)
(614) 466-8072
Sen. Chris Widener (R)
(614) 466-3780
Sen. Tom Sawyer (D)
(614) 466-7041
Rep. Jeff McClain (R)
(614) 466-6265
Rep. Ross McGregor (R)
(614) 466-2038
Rep. Chris Redfern (D)
(614) 644-6011

Virtual Drop Out Schools, follow the money!

Another excellent article;

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-s-charter-school-dropouts-soar-push-state-in-opposite-direction-of-u-s-1.490893


"Charter schools such as Life Skills, operated by Akron-based White Hat Management and targeting dropouts, are sending Ohio spinning off in the wrong direction. Dropout rates nationally are on the decline, but Ohio’s rate is on the rise.
Granted, some dropout charter schools graduate nearly half of their students on time, a notable feat considering students enter these programs at least a year behind their peers in traditional high schools.
But that’s not the norm.
Many dropout charter schools, including White Hat’s chain of Life Skills centers, consistently report single-digit graduation rates. Over the course of last school year, more students dropped out of Life Skills than attended on the average day.

In the 2012-13 school year, more than 5,300 dropouts — a quarter of all Ohio dropouts that year — attended one of two online charter schools: the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow or Ohio Virtual Academy. Collectively, these two charter schools have a dropout rate 45 times higher than traditional public schools, and 10 times higher than the state’s eight largest city school districts.
Another 6,829 students ­— about a third of all Ohio dropouts — attended charter schools designed specifically for dropouts, among them Invictus and Life Skills. Last year, these dropout charter schools enrolled one percent of Ohio’s public school students but accounted for roughly the same number of dropout events as did public district schools, which enrolled 91 percent of Ohio’s students."

Ohio taxpayers are funding this mess.  Single digit graduation rates are shameful.  No private business would survive with results like these.