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.

The Ohio auditor

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

10th Period: Ohio Teacher Data: Charters Flooded with First-Yea...

10th Period: Ohio Teacher Data: Charters Flooded with First-Yea...: One of the signs of a healthy charter school sector is whether teachers want to teach in the schools. Teachers are like the canary in a coal...




Charter schools have driven down teacher pay.  The best and the brightest do not stay there at least not in Ohio.

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!

10th Period: Ohio's Dropout Recovery Schools Embarrassingly Poo...

Pearson is also trying to get into this market with their Nexus schools.




Follow the money.  Results are optional!




10th Period: Ohio's Dropout Recovery Schools Embarrassingly Poo...: The data on Ohio's dropout recovery charter schools is so bad I'm wondering if anything can ever really be done to repair this porti...

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! “