The Idaho Virtual Charter Academy outsourced the scoring of student essays to India, according to local reports. The company involved, K12, has been criticized for its business practices and its poor academic results; its bottom line is cost-cutting, not academic quality. Its virtual schools typically have high student turnover, low test scores, and low graduation rates, yet the corporation is profitable because it continues to lure students with a promise of a “customized,” “individualized,” “personalized” education.
One of the most important responsibilities of teachers is to give tests and grade them, to know what their students know and don’t know, and to help students who need extra help. Having the essays scored in India removes that function from teachers and places it in the hands of readers who may not understand American idioms or cultural references.
Investor Whitney Tilson recently announced that he would sell the stock of K12 short. This education company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and makes handsome profits, despite its poor academic results.
One of the big investors in K12 is the billionaire Albertson family of Idaho, whose foundation has been placing advertising across the state disparaging public education and touting the virtues of charter schools and virtual schools.
Terry Ryan of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently moved to Idaho to lead the battle for charters. Ryan supports both charters and vouchers.
According to a story in an Idaho paper:
Ryan also is excited about his seat on the nine-member Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho. The group of national experts will focus on the unique issues and challenges of rural schools in Idaho. ROCI is sponsored by the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation.
“Albertson’s’ vision is very compelling,” Ryan said. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help make Idaho a leader and a model in education.”
Ryan is a nice, amiable guy whom I knew when I was on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Ohio, where Terry Ryan worked on behalf of charters for many years, has some of the worst charters in the nation. The biggest charter chain in Ohio is White Hat, which has made its owner very rich. The charter founder, a non-educator, is a major contributor to Republican candidates. His schools are never held accountable for poor performance. They fail and fail, and get more money. Currently, ten of the boards of his White Hat charters are suing the company to try to get information about how the money is spent. The owner takes 96% of public dollars and says how he spends it is proprietary information and not available for public scrutiny, not even to the board members of his charters.
Idaho, beware of the privatization movement. In a matter of years, you will have no public schools, just charter schools, vouchers, and virtual charters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Just when you thought you’d heard everything…unbelievable! Outsourcing essay scoring to India — sounds like a Carl Hiaasen plot. Sadly, truth is stranger than fiction.
Tom Clancy observed:
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
ge2/2r: Unlike the edufrauds, Tom Clancy was actually acquainted with American cultural history:
“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” [Mark Twain]
Did Mark Twain get it from someone else? I don’t know, but they say reading and joy of learning leads to a lot of unintended[?] consequences like knowledge and judgment and good sense and passing along witticisms…
And remember: some of the loudest voices about outsourcing claim that it is inevitable because nobody here—NOBODY!—can do the work because they don’t have the proper low-level skills.
Rheeally?
I may have missed something, but there are a lot of people in this country who could have graded the essays. Really!
Finally, this classic quote from the above posting: “Investor Whitney Tilson recently announced that he would sell the stock of K12 short. This education company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and makes handsome profits, despite its poor academic results.”
Everyone knows how I stand on Drivel Driven Data Mismanagement, so I will repeat here [short form] Edushyster’s secret sauce of “education reform”: “handsome profits” + “poor academic results” = $tudent $ucce$$.
Accountabullity, er, accountability rules!
🙂
In the 1990s, my brother worked in HR for a contract help-desk company. His company got a job grading essays for some standardized test. He scoured his hiring area looking for qualified people (degree in something related to the subject being tested, or an education degree) to read the essays for what they were willing to pay. Nada. So the qualification for the job was reduced to able to read English. He still had a very hard time finding readers. The problem was not that there were no qualified people in his metropolitan area. The problem is that they were paying so little, no one wanted the headache.
I”m trying to think of a public school system (of old) where anyone on the boards of education, the superintendents of schools, administrators or teachers became “very rich”!
It’s amazing how corporate reformers love to compare how much the US spends per pupil and contrast this against some dubious test score data. They claim we cannot afford to pay all these greedy union teachers. Their solution is to turn schools into businesses and somehow think they can spend far less per student, divert huge amounts to public money to private profit and that the schools will magically be fixed of all problems by this reallocation of money into their pockets.
Just saw this on HUFFPOST LIVE… a ‘march’ for charter schools in NYC…. as if their corporate backing made them ‘victims’ of the public school system:
http://live.huffingtonpost.com/r/segment/brooklyn-march-for-charter-schools/524ef73678c90a750c000331
“One of the most important responsibilities of teachers is to give tests and grade them. . . “,
NO!, NO!, NO! AN important responsibility of a teacher is to ASSESS the students’ learning which may or may not include “tests” and to accurately assess what the student has done on that assessment which can then help the teachers—“to know what their students know and don’t know, and to help students who need extra help.”
“Ryan is a nice, amiable guy whom I knew when I was on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Ohio, where Terry Ryan worked on behalf of charters for many years, has some of the worst charters in the nation.”
It is really alarming for a non-educator, a citizen in Ohio, to realize that Ohio reform is being sold as some kind of template.
We have huge problems in this state with reform. It was put in recklessly and without a lot of thought and we are now in a situation where our legislature is captured by for-profit charter operators and no one seems to be able to regulate them.
The governor of the state, John Kasich, put forth a laughably weak “suggestion” regarding regulation of charter schools and the legislature rejected it out of hand. They did that because they’re captured.
Mayors in both Cleveland and Columbus have no control over where public money goes or what schools are dropped into their cities.
This has now spread to Pennsylvania. Reading the accounts of Pennsylvania charters, they are where Ohio was five years ago.
I would urge any elected leader to spend some actual time looking at Ohio “reform”. Come see us. Drop the consultants and the ideologically committed “reformers” and see for yourself.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/07/new_charters_in_cleveland.html
Send this story to lawmakers in Idaho:
The ELECTED MAYOR of Cleveland has absolutely no say in the schools in his city. Reformers refused even a request that citizens be permitted to make suggestions:
“Mayor Frank Jackson’s new panel to provide quality control of schools in Cleveland had no say in plans to open five new charter schools in the city this fall.
All will start without any review by the newly formed Transformation Alliance — a committee of city, community and school leaders from district and charter schools — because of limitations on its powers.
Even though they acknowledge the limits, city and Cleveland school officials say the Transformation Alliance should have been able to make non-binding recommendations to the Ohio Department of Education on at least two of the schools because ODE is helping to create them.
That should have happened “in the spirit of things,” said Cleveland schools Chief Executive Officer Eric Gordon.
But an ODE spokesman says the Alliance did not have the authority to review the schools.
Of the five, four are new versions of Hope Academies run by White Hat Management. The fifth is a spinoff from one of the academies.
Jackson had sought approval from the Ohio legislature last year, as part of his broader Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools, to have the Alliance accept or deny any applications to open a charter school in the city. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run.
Legislators would not agree to Jackson’s request and instead gave the Alliance power to review just the organizations that “sponsor” or authorize the charter schools — and only when a sponsor’s license to sponsor schools is up for state renewal. Sponsors set goals and standards for the schools, then monitor their financial and academic progress.
Two of the nine sponsors operating in Cleveland never need to seek renewal because they have permanent licenses, while others are not up for renewal for a few years.”
Got that? The new panel to “review” charter schools has absolutely no power. None.
Far too many lawmakers in Idaho would view Ohio’s story not as a cautionary tale, but as a blueprint for public policy.
The groundwork for privatization continues to be laid in Idaho, despite the crushing defeat of the Luna Laws in a ballot initiative in 2012. Despite that resounding message from Idaho voters, the Republican-dominated Legislature simply sliced and diced the Luna Laws into smaller pieces, attaching the pieces to warmed-over versions of the original laws, all but one of them sponsored in the Legislature by the Idaho School Board Association.
Meanwhile, the Legislature broadened the ranks of recognized charter-school authorizers to include colleges and universities, and very quietly modified the makeup of the Idaho State Public Charter Schools Commission, which oversees all public charter schools and is the authorizing body for all virtual charter schools. Instead of a commission composed of current or former members of boards of directors of charter schools, current or former trustees of an Idaho school district, and a member of the public (all appointed by the governor), the commission now consists of three members appointed by the governor, three by the speaker of the House, and two by the president pro tempore of the Senate. The commissioners need not have any previous experience in education or in management in an educational environment.
You’ve given an example of why I have lost all confidence in our elected officials. They openly ignore the will of the people. The worst part is that the Republican Party has no respect for local control. I’ve really lost faith in people.
Idaho does not have any mayor run districts at this time. A lot of the public school closures have been mayor run districts. Do you know how this works? I am still learning.
Oops, Chiara I was wondering if you could explain how mayor run districts work. Idaho doesn’t have this. Also, since you mentioned Pennsylvania, Idaho has a professor coming from Penn State that is part of the Rural Opportunity Consortium of Idaho. Are you familiar with Marcellus Shale based training?
“All will start without any review by the newly formed Transformation Alliance — a committee of city, community and school leaders from district and charter schools — because of limitations on its powers.”
Do you see what they did here? They tricked these people in Cleveland. They set up a committee of local people but they have NO POWER. The Mayor cooperated with reformers and this is what resulted.
Wow, incredible, outsourcing the grading of student essays to India. Because no one in the US is capable of grading those essays because of…………..drum roll…………ta da…………..extra drum roll………..”ourfailingschools.” Badda bing, cha-ching. It’s a win, win, win for the corporate reformers.
A few clarifications and elaborations in regard to the original post:
1. The Albertson Foundation has been claiming for years that it has no investment in K12, Inc., though the Foundation’s CEO, Joseph B. Scott, was an early investor when the company was founded in 1999 by former US Education Secretary William Bennett. Mr. Scott’s investment firm, Alscott, Inc. (which has the same physical address and phone number of the Albertson Foundation) “made $15 million” when it sold part of its holdings in K12, Inc., according to an Associated Press article by John Miller. William Bennett sat on the Albertson Foundation board of directors in 2002 and 2003. According to Miller’s article, “Thomas Wilford, Scott’s business partner at Alscott as well as the foundation’s chief executive officer, was on K12’s board of directors until just December [of 2010].”
2. The articles cited in the original post are not from “an Idaho paper.” They are from “Idaho Education News,” a web-based publication funded by the Albertson Foundation and staffed largely by journalists formerly employed by two of Idaho’s largest newspapers. “Idaho Education News” is closely modeled after “Colorado Education News,” which lists among its backers the Walton Family Foundation, the Daniels Fund, and the Gates Family Foundation.
3. “Idaho Education News” is one part of a multifaceted public-relations/lobbying/policy-making campaign orchestrated and funded by the Albertson Foundation. Other parts include the “Don’t Fail Idaho” campaign and a monthly speaker series called the “ED Sessions” that focuses almost exclusively on pro-reform and pro-privatization topics and presenters. It’s difficult to find much public discussion of education in Idaho that doesn’t draw from these sources or emanate from them.
4. The Task Force of the Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho mentioned in the post has among its members such reform luminaries as Andrew J. Rotherham, cofounder and partner at Bellwether Education Partners, and Marguerita Roza, senior research associate at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. In addition to staff at the Albertson Foundation, the Consortium will be advised by Mary Wells and Andy Smarick, principals in Bellwether Education Partners. In 2010, while announcing their new venture, Bellwether’s founders described it as “a new nonprofit consulting organization designed to strengthen the leadership and organizational capacity of entrepreneurial education organizations by offering specialized executive search, strategic consulting, leadership development, and thought leadership services. Like NewSchools [Venture Capital Fund], the idea for Bellwether grew out of Kim [Smith’s] astute understanding of education entrepreneurship and her desire to take action in response to identified needs. For the last several years, Kim has been incubating Bellwether within NewSchools, and so it is fitting that Kim will lead that organization beginning in spring 2010.”
5. Dr. Ravitch concludes her post with a warning: “Idaho, beware of the privatization movement. In a matter of years, you will have no public schools, just charter schools, vouchers, and virtual charters.” I’m sorry to say that Idaho is well on its way to that point already.
Forgot the link to the AP article:
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2011/feb/19/albertsons-heir-made-millions-k12-inc-promotes-it-idaho-schools/
You’d think after all the bad press and undocumented wholesale failure of K12, they would be doing anything possible to clean up their act before no one will hire them again. I guess they are just banking on winning the low bid every time.
“documented wholesale failure”
In reference to the truly despicable right wing anti-public school ideologue, Bill Bennett: “K12 was started by Republican operative and former Sec. of Education William Bennett but the company was forced to remove Bennett as chairman of its directors following a series of racist remarks and gambling scandals which threatened the company’s marketability.”
http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2011/05/ownership-society-news.html
Here’s a question teachers might find interesting: Does your pension fund invest in K12? Reading that Tilson was short K12 made me wonder what institutions were long. A quick googling shows that K12 Inc. stock is (or was recently) held by CALPERs, the Teachers Retirement System of Texas, the New York City Teachers Retirement System, the California State Teachers Retirement System, and the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System.
Research project: How much money are teachers pension funds investing in for-profit charter corporations?
There is one piece of good news re: K-12. Diane – on pages 187-188 of Reign of Error, you discuss K-12’s arrangement with rural Carroll County in Virginia which served as its “host county” so that K-12 could receive the higher per student in state aid because of its poverty level (amongst the highest in the state). Well, I read over the summer that K-12 is officially out of business in Virginia. 🙂 Apparently Carroll County ended the relationship because it wasn’t worth the diversion of its administrative resources when only 5-6 of its students (out of 250+ statewide, I believe) were enrolled. K-12 was scrambling to find a new “host county” in time for the new school year & was unsuccessful. A few parents of students in the virtual school were mad. So far, Virginia has mostly managed to keep out charter schools (despite Republican efforts to get ALEC legislation passed). We have only 4 charter schools (& none in Northern Virginia) the last time I checked.