The NCAA recently announced that it would not recognize credits from 24 virtual charters, all run by K12. One of them is the Ohio Virtual Academy.
Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coslition writes:
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA): Will not accept credits from Ohio Virtual Academy after 2013-2014 school year
The credits from Ohio Virtual Academy, (OVA) operated by Michael Milken’s K-12, Inc., will no longer be accepted by the NCAA. (Michael Milken is the former “junk bond” guy). This year, OVA is extracting $85,171,828.28 from Ohio schools for students whose credits will no longer be accepted by the NCAA.
Why did the Governor, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Board of Education and the legislature not discover this fraudulent educational programming before the NCAA did? The report card of OVA has been available to these state officials for several years.
By the way, the CEO of K-12, Inc. had been paid in the range of $4-5 million annually before leaving the job a few months ago. This was in addition to several million dollars in company stocks.
There are other privately-operated, for-profit online schools in Ohio that have a similar report card to the OVA operation. The NCAA may wish to look at those operations. State officials should be first in line to investigate the efficacy of all of the for-profit online charter school operations.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net |
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
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According to the National Education Policy Center, in the 2010-11 school year, K12 enrolled 65,000 students nationwide at an average of $7,393 in public revenue per student. Average costs for charters and public schools are higher, at $9,258 and $11,708, respectively.
So, the question is, what are kids, parents, and communities getting for their money?
It would be interesting to review these programs in detail. How much transparency is there regarding the materials? Do any other readers of this blog know the answer to that? From the K12 website, it looks as though most anyone can purchase a course, and the course offerings are really extensive. I reviewed some K12 stuff a few years back, and the bit of material that I reviewed wasn’t, by far, the worst online educational material that I’ve seen. (I’ve seen a lot of stuff that is truly awful.) The material that I saw looked, to me, like the sort of thing that one finds in the better home schooling study guides–nothing to write home about, but not completely dreadful. It would be very interesting indeed to learn more about this–to do a thorough review of the curricula. The NCAA finding is fascinating and has me curious. I would love to have the opportunity to look into this in a lot more detail.
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I hate the hard sell of online ed. “You’ll get a course from Stanford!”
Yeah, or, state legislatures will use The Miracle of 21st Century learning pitch to fob cheap, commercial garbage onto lower income schools to cut staffing costs. What are the guarantees this won’t become yet another feeding frenzy on public school budgets? The complete lack of prudence and care ed reformers have shown the past 10 years regarding gimmicks in public schools?
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As a sports fan I find it amazing that the NCAA took a stand on ANYTHING that promotes academic achievement… If the NCAA finds the virtual courses unacceptable they must be REALLY awful!
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Fat chance.
All the growth in Ohio charters is in the online sector. They won’t be shutting them down anytime soon:
“In recent years, however, e-schools have been the primary driver of charter growth. (E-schools are considered “charter schools” under state law.) Consider Chart 1, which shows the eight-year enrollment trend for students who attend a “start-up” charter school.[1] From 2005–06 to 2012–13, the percentage increase in e-school enrollment (up 99 percent) easily surpasses that of brick-and-mortar charters (up 44 percent). As a result, e-school enrollment has increased as a percentage of overall start-up charter-school enrollments: in 2006, e-schools accounted for 28 percent; in 2013, they accounted for 35 percent. The rise in e-school enrollment has occurred despite a statewide moratorium on new e-schools from 2005 to 2013.
The explosive expansion of e-schools leaves me with a number of questions. Are e-schools high-quality education options? (The value-added scores of e-schools are abysmal, leaving doubts in my mind about their effectiveness.) Who is regulating, monitoring, managing, and governing these schools? (Try and find either the management team or the board of directors of ECOT on their website.) Why are parents selecting e-schools for their children? How long do they stay? Finally, what does the rapid rise of e-schools mean for the charter-school movement in general? ”
As in all ed reformer analysis, there isn’t any mention of “eschools” effect on public schools.
Their only concern is the effect on the “charter school movement” although “eschools” have huge churn and the kids end up in and out of their local public school. What is the effect of “eschool” churn on public schools? No one knows or cares, apparently.
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/ohio-gadfly-daily/e-schools-drive-ohio%E2%80%99s-charter-school-growth
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Cybercharters in Ohio have some very powerful political friends:
“IN JUNE 2010, FORMER FLORIDA Gov. Jeb Bush traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to give the commencement speech for the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, the state’s largest virtual charter school. ECOT, which provides K-12 online education for kids who never set foot inside a classroom, was celebrating its 10th anniversary and its largest graduating class—nearly 2,000 kids. Naturally, the event, held on the campus of Ohio State University, was webcast for those who couldn’t make it.
Bush served up the usual graduation platitudes about the future. Then he hit on the reason he was saluting this particular school: digital learning. It was, he said, nothing short of a revolutionary approach, a way to meet “the unique needs of each student so that their God-given abilities are maximized, so they can pursue their dreams armed with the power of knowledge.”
It wasn’t the first time Bush had praised the wonders of online education. Over the past year, he’s emerged as one of the nation’s most prominent boosters of virtual schools, touring the country to promote technology as an instrument of creative destruction against the public school system. Last December, he teamed up with former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise, a Democrat, to launch a new initiative called Digital Learning Now, which is aimed at tearing down legal barriers to public funding for virtual classrooms.”
We know John Kasich promotes charter schools to the detriment of public schools, but at least he was elected as the governor.
Why is Jeb Bush promoting online charter schools to the detriment of public schools in this state? Bush appears constantly at ed reformer events and in national media as an education expert.
Is anyone in media ever going to ask him why he promotes Ohio’s for-profit cybercharter sector, given that everyone who actually lives in the state knows what a disaster it is?
I know he doesn’t get any questions when he’s treated like a hero at ed reform “movement” events and ALEC meetings (he speaks at both venues) but one would think someone in media could ask him why he promotes these schools.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/jeb-bush-digitial-learning-public-schools
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The next time you hear a nation ed reformer bemoan the “politics” around education that they abhor and find so distasteful (but only when teachers unions are involved) point them to the history and “explosive” growth of Ohio cybercharters.
It is fueled 100% by political connections and political considerations. These guys put teachers unions to shame, as far as lobbying clout and tactics.
The idea that only one side is “political” (those dirty, nasty labor unions) while the ed reform side is pure as the driven snow, just floating above “politics” on a cloud of pure data and rigorous science is absolute nonsense, and they know it.
My big concern isn’t cybercharters themselves, but the fact that ed reformers are pushing online learning into public schools. Why will online learning in public schools be treated with any more care and caution by ed reformers than cybercharters have been? They have reams of data on cybercharters, yet they lifted the Ohio moratorium in 2013. What happens when they do this same hard sell in public schools?
The schools that will be the most vulnerable to the online learning pitch will be lower income schools, because they’ve had their funding gutted under ed reform leadership and they’re desperate to cut costs. How do I know ed reformers won’t turn my public school into a version of these online learning academies? Everyone knows the biggest expense for schools is staff. I don’t want a 5th grade class with 50 students and screens and low-wage “assistants” to replace teachers. I think that’s a rip-off, and it isn’t going to happen in high-income schools, it will be shoved off on low-income schools.
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If one reads the history of political promotion and deregulation of charter schools in Ohio, Jon Husted appears prominently, going all the way back to 2002.
Jon Husted is now the Ohio Sec of State. Here’s a piece about his actions in the state regarding voting rights:
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ohio-early-voting-cuts
ALEC is also a huge promoter of charter schools, and ALEC is also a huge promoter of voter ID and provisional ballot rules that make it more difficult for certain people to vote in this state (and other states).
Voting rights are a huge issue in Ohio, particularly right now, because voting rights supporters are seeking to amend the state constitution to protect access to the ballot. Are ed reformers comfortable with this political alliance between charter school promoters and those who would limit early voting in Ohio? How does this alliance square with the “civil rights issue of this generation”?
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Last year my son took an online class in geography, because he wanted to take several electives at school and couldn’t fit into his school day. I am a geography teacher. The “class” was awful. I could tell that the teacher had tried to make the curriculum interesting and relevant, but the testing was all minutiae and pointless. My son said the only thing he learned was to never take an online class again. And this online school has higher standards than a lot of the online schools in my area.
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