The worst-performing school in Tennessee is K12’s for-profit Virtual Academy.
If it were a public school, it would have been closed by now.
But K-12 is profitable and it hires good lobbyists so there will be no sanctions.
“Students at the Tennessee Virtual Academy, an online school run for profit, learned less than their peers anywhere else in Tennessee last year, data released by the state last week show, but efforts to crack down on the school have been delayed by heavy lobbying on its behalf.
“Results from standardized tests show that students in the Tennessee Virtual Academy made less progress as a group in reading, math, science and social studies than students enrolled in all 1,300 other elementary and middle schools who took the same tests. The school fell far short of state expectations for the second year in a row.
“But the school will remain open this year after an effort by Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration to rein in the school if it failed for a second year was turned back by the school’s owner, Virginia-based K12 Inc. The company, which relies on online learning to educate its students, waged a public relations campaign that involved the school’s teachers, some of its parents and lobbyists.
“Nearly a year after Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman declared the Tennessee Virtual Academy’s results “unacceptable” and demanded an immediate turnaround, the school stands to collect about $5 million in state funds this school year. Last year, the school took in an estimated $15 million.
“Critics say the results fit a pattern for K12’s schools nationwide. The company has opened online schools across the country, taking advantage of state school-choice and charter school laws.”
Meanwhile, Jeb Bush and ALEC continue to promote online virtual charters as the wave of the future, the very essence of “personalized and customized” learning, and the Obama administration remains silent as these low-quality “schools” proliferate, empowered by campaign contributions and lobbying. (Paid for with your tax dollars.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once again, Mark Leibovich’s new book, This Town, adds insight into the money/power-addicted political culture that is directing this disaster known as the deliberate destruction of public school systems nationwide.
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I live in Pennsylvania, another charter school haven. I gag a little every time a Connections Academy ad comes on TV because I know my tax dollars helped fund it. If the public at large knew what was happening I honestly don’t think it would be happening much longer.
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Connections Academy is one of the best online schools you can go to. Ive been with them for 5 years and Ive never been more challenged with work in my life. They are far better than any public school Ive been to.
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I don’t go a day without seeing a TV commercial or a facebook ad for K12 in Tennessee. Every time, I think how that is our tax dollars at work, and I think what a shame it is that those dollars are not being spent to benefit students and public schools in our communities.
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Your tax dollars are paying to advertise and recruit new students for the worst school in the state of Tennessee!
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I even see these ads online — just emailed my state representatives about this and another tax payer issue – PRIVATE LOBBYISTS GET PUBLIC PENSIONS IN 20 STATES – and suggest you do the same — DEMAND ACTION NOW
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_PRIVATE_LOBBYISTS_PUBLIC_PENSIONS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-08-25-10-19-51
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Virtual charters have a terrible reputation in Ohio.
They were initially marketed to the most vulnerable students; teenagers who had had one or more encounters with a juvenile court. The schools were first discredited among the people who work with those children because we sometimes had to work hard to get them back into a public school and out of the rip-off charter.
After that vulnerable population was targeted, they expanded to all public school children in Ohio. They advertise heavily, and both Jeb Bush and John Kasich have made appearances to sell the for-profit charters to parents. We’re now on what I consider stage two of the discrediting of virtual charters. It will take a while, but they’ll lose market share just as they (eventually) lost market share among the vulnerable kids they initially targeted.
It’s both interesting and horrifying to watch school reformers go from state to state and peddle these products. States could save a lot of time and money if they would simply look to states like Ohio (where the current “innovative!” reforms have been status quo for more than a decade) instead of just accepting the K-12 sales pitch.
These reforms aren’t new. They’re simply marketing the same products in new states where they haven’t failed yet.
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Perhaps Mr. Huffman could lobby his colleagues in the Gates camp for some research money to measure the deleterious effects on children when they transfer out of the virtual charters and are re-enrolled in their local public school.
Reformers collect data on teachers constantly. Why is the data-gathering so narrow?
What is the effect on the local public school from the constant disruption of moving from charter to public? It looks like many Tennessee students have traveled back and forth. What is the effect on the stable population of students who stay in the public schools?
Has anyone ever measured the effects of “charter churn” on either students or the local public schools that act as “receiving schools”?
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Diane, could you please explain your comment, “If it were a public school, it would have been closed by now.”
I’m NOT defending the school’s performance at all. But the newspaper article that you quote says that the state has a policy of intervening in a school if it fails for 3 years. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the state’s policy
. But I wondered what you think would happen to a district public school that had a low record of performance for 3 years. Below is a portion of the article:
http://www.tennessean.com/interactive/article/20130825/NEWS04/308250064/Tennessee-Virtual-Academy-hits-bottom-gets-reprieve
“Haslam intervenes
In January, the Haslam administration introduced a bill that would have let it limit enrollment or shut down any virtual school that failed for two consecutive years. Without taking aim at the Tennessee Virtual Academy specifically, the measure was seen as an attempt to rein in the school.
K12 Inc. fought back. In committee rooms and legislative offices, the school’s teachers and some of its parents shared stories of students who had benefited from the program. Behind the scenes, the company’s longtime lobbyist, the powerful Nashville firm of McMahan Winstead, worked against the bill.
K12 succeeded in getting the bill amended in March. The most notable change was an extension of how long a virtual school could fail before the state would step in — to three years from two years.
State Rep. Harry Brooks, chairman of the House Education Committee, says the policy falls in line with the state’s treatment of failing teachers and traditional schools.”
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I can answer your question about low performing public schools. They are placed in the ASD otherwise known as the Achievement District. The ASD’s superintendent is Chris Barbric who along with Kevin Huffman was a Teach for America teacher in Houston. The ASD then turn over the operations of the school to the likes of KIPP Academy who runs the school as a charter school.
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K12 fought back with taxpayer dollars! The people of Tennessee are working hard everyday and many of the parents of public school kids work for minimum wage. They can’t even provide all their own children need for school each day. Their tax dollars are used to fund a PRIVATE corporation run by millionaires that has one goal and one goal only! That is to bring a profit to its shareholders each quarter.
This is wrong. If K12 wants to be a virtual school then let them do it without public monies!
Americans need to look at public schools as a public good & along with that comes good public oversight. Politicians who keep funding their friends who are out to make big bucks on the backs of the taxpayers need to be voted out of office!
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“K12 Inc. fought back. In committee rooms and legislative offices, the school’s teachers and some of its parents shared stories of students who had benefited from the program. Behind the scenes, the company’s longtime lobbyist, the powerful Nashville firm of McMahan Winstead, worked against the bill.”
K-12’s lobbyist got results!
School reformers rolled right over the parents in Chicago and Philadelphia.
How great it is that privatized charters are using the same defense Donald Trump is using for his rip-off Trump University, that the self-reported “approval” ratings of both Trump University and the privatized charter are in the 90’s.
Donald Trump at least has the decency to limit his scams to adults.
When we asked the juveniles who come through county courts what they were doing all day when they were “attending” a cybercharter they told us they were playing video games. Of course they were. Their parents make 20,000 a year. They’re working all day. No one was supervising this “school”. The state paid millions of dollars out of education funds for this scam. People in the court system who work with juveniles in this county eventually caught on, we sent them all back to school, but apparently it will take a decade for education reformers to figure it out.
Ah, the joys of a deregulated publicly-funded K-12 system. K-12’s CEO took home 5 million dollars last year.
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Um, I’m not sure about Chicago (someone who knows might respond here), but in Illinois, 18 school districts fought the invasion of K-12, & denied their applications. Watching a video of a school board hearing (I believe it was Naperville, IL), I yelled, “YES!” many times: the Board members were thoroughly prepared with questions & rebuttals, as were the school administrators. Questions & comments came fast & hard, such as,”Since you don’t have a brick-&-mortar school, why are you asking for $8K/student? You have no maintenance costs, no transportation costs, no lunchroom costs…what is your budget?” (BTW–2 school board members voiced the uncovered fact {these were people who did their homework!} that K-12 was spending a chunk of this “budget” money on…advertising costs! (To the tune of $2.5 million, I believe.)* The K-12 rep. said that they have a line-item budget but–when asked by a Board member if she could read it, he stated that he did not have a copy with him, but would provide one by week’s end (never did). An administrator asked a similar question about 10 minutes late, receiving, again, a promise to provide information within the week.
Again, never happened. K-12 rep. was unable to answer questions about how his programs would adequately service special ed. kids.
K-12 answered with mumble-jumble. A parent & Education Hero, John Laesch, showed up at meetings, organized people, and helped orchestrate the fight. As a result, two Illinois lawmakers
were enable to sponsor a bill placing a ine year moratorium on virtual charters, which passed in the General Assembly.
*Meanwhile, K-12 has been advertising in the Chicago/Illinois area.
I have seen the commercials a number of times late at night on Lifetime. The thrust of the commercials is toward parents–don’t they want this for their kids AT HOME? “AT NO COST TO YOU!”
And the commercial includes an effusive endorsement of the K-12 program from a…long-time CPS principal! AND—“97% of parents are SATISFIED!”
So–couldn’t sell it to the schools or the state–then SELL IT DIRECTLY TO THE PARENTS! Encourage parents to pull their kids out of public schools to stay home (& do the parents stay home all day with them?!) so they can attend (virtually, of course)
the worst performing schools.
Hopefully, Illinois parents are too tired to stay up and watch K-12 commercials.
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I see the K-12 ads on TV in New York City. I’m assuming this is the same company. Thank you for informing us that these are paid with tax-payer dollars, as I did not know that and I’m sure others didn’t either. I’m not surprised to learn who is behind funding these ‘schools’.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-schools-insider/post/k12-inc-chief-executive-ron-packard-paid-5-million-compensation-package-in-2011/2011/12/09/gIQASUiGiO_blog.html
K-12’s CEO paid himself 5 million dollars in 2011. All public funds. All money that was intended to go to education.
I hear you have an ethical attorney general who goes after for-profit education rip-offs like Trump University. Perhaps you could direct him to this one.
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I have a chapter in my new book about virtual charter schools. Virtual charter, real scam.
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You should hear the radio blitz around Michigan for virtual charters. They’ve even targeted Kindergarten children. I’ve seen an ad on tv where a former Chicago principal talks about how great an opportunity it is for children. Unbelievable. It’s even come to districts advertising for kids to enroll. How much money is being wasted by all of this??
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Can the public school get a special adjustment for the 50% of kids who shuttled out of the charter and back into public schools? Presumably they lost some ground in the privatized charter.
It would be a shame if reformers closed the public school based on the low scores of the returning charter students. That hardly seems fair to the stable population of local public school students. How do public schools win at this “disruption” game, anyway?
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It seems to me that another issue that has been exposed is that many of these private schools are owned and operated by people from out of the state, making them all the more capable of escaping anything more than a slap on the wrist if the schools don’t produce good results. Also, it has been mentioned that Pearson is an English company, not American. I surely with this Congress would rein in the out-of-country ownership of more and more of the U.S. But, I also think that states should have the only rights for the education of students in their own state!
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One other thing that isn’t mentioned when they’re selling online charters but should be, is that the teenagers we spoke with in Ohio cheated. They had family members or friends do their work, because they were completely unsupervised and “high risk” kids anyway.
It was a game to them. Ohio was handing out high school credits to the wrong individual. They didn’t do the work.
We’re not educators, so we just made sure the kids we had in our system got back into a real school, but it might be something reformers want to consider as they move all (well, not “all”- low income and middle income kids) to cut-rate online “learning”.
Probably key to have a real human being occasionally interview the subjects of these awesome education experiments. Reformers would learn a lot.
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Where was this in Ohio? There were a few questions about tests in Columbus believe. And, I don’t know if any districts here have gone full-scale into the PARCC tests. I know my district has been teaching to the CORE and to the OAA for years …at least 7 … but they aren’t on the computerized tests yet. The district report cards we got say right on the top “No district grade until 2015”.There are a bunch of modules and ODE tests that students are doing this year (MAP) and the “grades” on the report card were merely a breakdown of the regular OAA scores to look like the scores would be when broken into the subgroups. In this manner they are supposedly easing the students and staff into the new tests, but of course they are already doing the 10 evaluations per year plus using the VAM to evaluate teachers.
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Saw my first ad for K12 on TV yesterday here in NY (not NYC). Sure makes the K12 “virtual school” sound like a complete panacea for parents and students alike. The K12 experiences in Tennessee and Virginia need to be broadcast immediately afterward to show the falsity of the rhetoric, if only there were a way to do it!
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We don’t have a sales team, we don’t have a PR staff, and we don’t put students in online courses and say “good luck.” The public needs to know that MNPS Virtual School is committed to supporting mastery learning and student growth in ways that a profit-making commercial company is not. I wager they will rally and attempt to retain their market by emulating some of our practices, and best of luck to them. See our website for what we do, and support in any way you can the Public Virtual School that is working every day to do it right.
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First the schools were against homeschooling now the parents it seems. A dedicated parent can teach her child more in one month than the school can in a year. Some parents just don’t have it that is true but it is a great opportunity for parents who care about their children and believe in early education without torture. I have a grandson in Tennessee public schools who turned 6 two days ago. He leaves home at 7.45 and gets back at 3.45 bringing with him two hours of homework. He is a bright little boy but after spending preK and K in public school he is still not a proficient reader and only doing addition for numbers under 20. What has this school been doing for two years? The schools waste time trying to teach things the children are not ready for. instead of teaching reading writing and arithmetic. Still vital even in 2013. The hours are way too long for a five year old and I would say even for an eight year old. Children need to learn the basics in depth which they can achieve at an early age with dedicated parents and without the long hours of study. The pressure they put on these children is wrong. They are stealing their childhood for no reason. My chilldren were homeschooled and in college at ages 14-16. My daughter is now going to homeschool her child.
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Seems like 20/20 should do a program on this. How about NBC Nightly news. Let’s have a special before some of the popular TV shows.
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From what I have seen, online schools can fill a niche. However, the problem is often that there isn’t enough parental supervision and in those cases, the child loses interest. Constant prodding and support are necessary for a child to succeed in so many cases. There are so many that want an “easy” way to get an education. They think this will be useful, but eventually drop out.
There are occasions where a child doesn’t fit in ir feel comfortable in a classroom for a variety of reasons. Online education might be a solution, with parental support. Sometimes the parent has issues with public education, and they prefer to avoid discussions of their children’s learning with teachers or others. They may believe that they have all the knowledge necessary for choosing what their children should know. Or they may have religious reasons for keeping their children out of public schools.
There are extremely gifted, curious, motivated children who may need more enrichment opportunities than can be found in an over-packed public classroom, so they may want to use online education.
Whatever the reason, if this exists for the students with public dollars, the tuitiin shoukd never enter private hands. If all of the ventures would work together for ALL children, there might be all the alternative initiatives available for ALL students. As it is, the warring interests are among the public, private, charter, and online schools. There SHOULD be no opportunity to resegregate students via this movement to privatize. JMO.
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It’s really hardto know where to begin with the ignorance in this post, but I’ll try:
1) TNVA *IS* a public school. It has a public school charter. It is operated by Union County. That you can’t even get that basic fact straight is telling.
2) It is far from the worst school in the state. The Memphis area public schools performed far worse on the TCAP state exams. Those schools are so terribly awful that the city of Memphis actually washed their hands of the whole system, gave up their charter to operate them and handed them over to Shelby County. I tried my best to find your condemnation of those schools, the Democratic Party officials that protect them, the school officials that allowed the schools to get that bad in the first place, etc. Strangely none of those exist, which exposes your entire post as hypocrisy on stilts.
3) Even those Memphis area schools aren’t being closed down, so your hypothesis that TNVA would have been shut down “if it were a public school” [which we’ve already established was wrong in the first place] is your third great error.
4) My daughter goes to TNVA. She is six years old and getting ready to start 5th grade curriculum. You want to compare test scores between her and the average student at a brick-and-mortar school? Let’s, shall we? You don’t have the first clue about the curriculum, the teachers, or how the school operates. If you did, you wouldn’t have embarassed yourself with such a stunning display of complete ignorance.
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Virtual charters are about as close to a Ponzi scheme as anything in education today. Look at the CREDO report on virtual charters compared to brick and mortar charters in Pennsylvania: or the NEPC report on K12. Or the long stories about virtual charters in the Washington Post and New York Times. They have high attrition, low graduation rates, and low test scores. The name of the game is profit. The article I cited was printed in a Tennessee newspaper. It said that the Tennessee Virtual Academy was the lowest performing school in the state. If it were a public school, it would be closed by now. But it’s your child and your choice. Good luck!
Click to access PA%20State%20Report_20110404_FINAL.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2012/07/understanding-improving-virtual%20
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“TNVA is a public school of the Union County School District and is available to Tennessee students in grades K-8. ”
Click to access TNVA_Parent_Student_Handbook-_2012-2013.pdf
Or you can call the Tennessee State Board of Education to check if you want:
http://www.tn.gov/sbe/contact_info.shtml
TNVA is a public school.
You are wrong.
Therefore, everything you claim about it being shut down if it were a public school is also false.
As far as the newspaper article you cited, it no longer exists. And even if it did, if it claimed that it was wrong. I cited the Memphis area schools and their utter failure. You have zero response and zero criticism of the brick-and-mortar alternative that these families face. I’ve provided the contact information to the State Board of Education so that you can verify this is true.
I can back up what I said. I have proven what you have said is incorrect.
You’re right that it’s my child and my choice. But that’s the only thing that you’re right about when it comes to TNVA. You owe me, my child and the school a retraction. Your decision as to whether or not to issue one will be illustrative of your character and your credibility.
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Tennessee parent, you have enrolled your child in an online school, not a real school. Someday you will apologize to her. She should be with a real teacher and other children.
Some people put their kids in schools led by snake charmers. In Tennessee, all kinds of things are possible in the name of choice.
Somehow I suspect you work for the “school,” which makes huge profits. It is part of Michael Milken’s business. The CEO comes from McKinsey and is paid millions each year.
Even hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson said he would no longer invest in K12 because of the poor quality of education.
But there is no opening a closed mind.
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Once again you display your complete ignorance of the topic:
1) My daughter has a teacher. Two of them as a matter of fact. One for her regular classwork, and one for enriched education. Both of them are Tennessee state certified teachers. They are supervised by Tennessee state certified teachers. They are wonderful and amazing teachers. I dare you to tell either of them that they aren’t real teachers.
2) It is illustrative that you think disagreeing with you and pointing out your complete ignorance of the subject means that I am employed by the school. I am not. But even if I were, it would be irrelevant. It doesn’t change the fact that:
a) you falsely claimed that TNVA isn’t a public school,
b) you falsely claimed that TNVA was rated the worst school in the state,
c) you falsely claimed that my daughter doesn’t have a teacher.
3) Your steadfast refusal to retract proven falsehoods despite being presented proof of their falsehood leads me to believe that these were not honest mistakes, but rather intentional efforts to deceive your audience. We’ve moved beyond “Oops I’ve made a mistake,” and well into “I think my readers are too stupid to know I’m lying to them.” You insult your audience and reveal your true nature by your continued insistence on standing by your falsehoods.
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LOL Unlike you, I just did a little homework on your claim that Whitney Tilson said he would no longer invest in K12.
http://www.businessinsider.com/whitney-tilsons-k12-presentation-2013-9?op=1
You’re right. He did. Because he shorted the stock. Since you’re so clearly uneducated on what that means, it means that he has a financial interest in making sure the stock price of K12 goes down. He loses money if it goes up. And A LOT OF IT.
He had lost a lot of money on that bet so far if had to cover his short positons, as the stock price chart which accompanied that article clearly showed. So he was desperate to drive that price down to save him from losing a bunch of money. You know how that adage of buy low, sell high works on Wall Street? Well, Mr. Tilson, sold low and was going to have to buy those stocks at a much higher price in order to actually deliver the stocks he had previously sold.
So, out of pure desperation, he made a presentation trying to convince other people that they shouldn’t want to own K12 stock: He actively tried to make himself money by artificially driving down the stock price.
LOL! And this constitutes proof that K12 is somehow a bad company? I don’t have any investment in K12, but even a fool can see that this is nothing more than a fool trying not to be parted from his money.
Or maybe you already knew that. Maybe you knew that this was purely a financially motivated presentation, and it’s yet another instance of you trying to deceive your readers by either omitting or outright falsifying information. Given your history, that wouldn’t be surprising either.
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