Ecot is Dead

They are officially closed.  It was a profitable run for the owners.  A terrible waste for most of the students.


The Tenth Period Blog has crunched some numbers:

"Here's the amazing thing. Between 2012-2013 and 2015-2016 (the school's most recent audited school year), Lager's for-profit companies received $83.6 million in public funds. Meanwhile, ECOT only paid $82.9 million for its teachers "

http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2018/01/ecot-in-receivership-ecot-paid-more-to.html

Others continue to survive despite their failing grades.

I heard an ad on NPR for OHDELA today another Ohio virtual school trying to profit on the demise of ECOT.

Time to start a dead pool.  Who is next?

A .0375 GPA, again......

Good article here.  Links to other reports, scandals and test results.


https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2017/10/18/virtual-charter-schools-foundations-performance


I have not posted much on this blog lately.  There has been lots of publicity on the virtual schools, none of it positive.  I am not sure there is a need.  They are no longer trendy and cool.  They are scams making some people very rich at the expense of the children.


ECOT is on its deathbed.  Trying to reorganize itself into some other structure to keep the school tax funds flowing.


Ohio Connections Academy, owned by Pearson Education, received its report card.  1 C, 2 D's, and 5 F's which I think works out to a .0375 GPA




"Some have blamed the fallout from ECOT for the disbanding of Ohio's largest charter school advocacy organization. In December 2016, the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools announced it would close at the end of 2016, after more than a decade in which it was an influential player in the state's charter school policy. Critics say poor performance by Ohio charter schools—80 percent of which received an "F" in the state's report card system—caused funder support for the alliance to dry up. In years past, the Ohio organization had counted the Gates Foundation, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation among its supporters, but by the end of 2016, none of those organizations were listed on the alliance website as current funders, according to the Columbus Dispatch."


Event the politicians are bailing. 


In the words or our President, sad, just sad, what a bunch of losers.  Too bad his education secretary does not see it as it is....

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

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.

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

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.

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

 

 

 

E-Shools in Ohio $224 million

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 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.

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."

ECOT Exposed

Very well done!

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.

ECOT free lunch

No mention of their failing report card.

Some good questions.

"Why charter schools are good for students families & Ohio"
How do you spin seven F's and a D?  I suspect we gloss over that part.

"Online schools-and how its changing public education"
We suck 220 million from the taxpayers and school systems of Ohio

Choice is good but results are important and should be included!

Somewhere somehow the taxpayers are footing this bill.  I hope it is an excellent meal.

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