Today is beat up on ECOT day. It makes an easy target. Its owner William Lager rakes in tens of millions of dollars from taxpayers, which he profits from, and he uses a small portion of the profits to reward his benefactors in the Republican party of Ohio. Meanwhile his school has truly horrible results, but accountability is not for him! He has really good friends who take care of his operation.
But it is even worse than it appears.
Bill Phillis, a former deputy commissioner of education in Ohio (and now in his 80s, fighting to restore integrity to education), posted this newsletter on his Ohio Equity and Adequacy blog:
ECOT: If we can’t rig enrollment data and make staggering profits, we will have to close
In an early year of ECOT’s operation, this money-making machine was required to pay back a million dollars to rectify enrollment/student participation issues. In the context of the return of funds gained illegally, an Ohio Department of Education (ODE) person signed an agreement that ECOT would only be required to offer educational programming in order to receive funds, whether or not enrollees participated.
Now that ODE is in the process of auditing student participation, ECOT is protesting by legal action and engaging in political tactics to stir up their supporters. Their bevy of highly paid lobbyists is on high alert.
Some observations:
ECOT is demonstrating a high level of brazen behavior in protesting an audit of their suspicious enrollment/student participation practices. Possibly they believe their record of huge campaign contributions will give them cover.
The ODE person who signed a contract that has allowed ECOT to collect funds for students not participating should be investigated and prosecuted.
The provision of online programming ECOT-style can’t possibly cost as much as ECOT receives per student. The profit certainly must be really huge.
Personnel in districts losing students to the failed ECOT machine should be outraged and make every attempt to recover those students.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Do you want to know the definition of BRAZEN? Are how about chutzpah?
ECOT is suing the state to prevent it from auditing whether students log in and receive instruction. ECOT thinks it should be paid whether students log in for a minute or not at all.
Accountability is only for the little people, to paraphrase the billionaire Leona Helmsley. (She said “taxes are only for the little people,” but she was wrong. She went to jail.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ECOT is actually wound thru a lot of Ohio’s ed reforms. Here’s another one:
“Employees with the Ohio Technology Consortium (OH-TECH), a collaboration between OhioState and the Ohio Board of Regents, reported that a project to implement a statewide K-12 learning management system is failing because a key vendor, IQ Innovations (IQ), repeatedly did not meet the requirements of its agreement with OSU. OH-TECH employees also indicated that Board of Regents staff caused them to be removed from parts of the project and other responsibilities because they reported these issues.”
“IQ is a Columbus-based corporation that works with states, districts and schools to implement distance learning technology. Documentation suggests that IQ shares its Chief Information Officer with the Electronic Classroom for Tomorrow (ECOT) and Altair Learning Management. In addition, multiple OSU employees who were interviewed indicated that John Conley, Assistant Deputy Chancellor of Educational Technology at the Ohio Board of Regents is a former employee of IQ.”
It’s not bad enough that ed reformers created this giant for-profit charter, now they hope to shove the same cheap “online learning” product into every public school too.
Click to access Investigation-Report-OH-TECH.pdf
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I could go to a half dozen sights Truthdig ,Truthout, Alternet … …. to get my acid reflux going or raise my blood pressure , I come here first because I can accomplish both just by scanning the home page. A microcosm for everything else that is wrong in America today.
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Click to access aa-oig.pdf
Well, the State of Ohio’s whole charter industry and online programming is corrupt. Has been. not much hope on the horizon for any remedy with all of the political blindsiding of audits.
At the federal level, I tripped on some information that suggests the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Education is understaffed and under pressure to cut the budget. The budget request for FY 2017 is $61,941,000. Here are some excerpts treating the “justification” of that budget.
Begin quote.
On the investigative side, the OIG must devote considerable resources to combat a dramatic increase in the number of fraud and corruption cases involving charter schools and local school districts. A large number of these complex and resource-intensive investigations involve subjects who are geographically dispersed, which results in greater travel costs for OIG investigators. ….
Although the OIG issued a report recommending that the Department implement program improvements to reduce distance education fraud, the number of these cases still represents about 25 percent of all the OIG investigations. p. AA-10
Charter Schools — The OIG will continue to conduct criminal investigations of fraud in charter schools. Since FY 2005, the OIG has opened 69 charter school investigations resulting in 44 indictments, 34 convictions, and over $12.6 million recovered to date.
State and Local School Corruption — The OIG will continue to focus significant resources on allegations of bribery and theft involving State and local public school officials. From
FY 2008 to FY 2015, the OIG investigations involving State or local education agencies have resulted in 175 indictments.
Distance Education — The OIG will continue to conduct criminal investigations involving fraud resulting from the vulnerabilities associated with the delivery of distance education. Investigations in this area represent about 18 percent of all the OIG investigations.
p. AA-16 (Notice a discrepancy between 18 percent here and 25 percent on p. AA-10).
There are many other issues highlighted in this budget request. Some pertain to dtat security, others to fraudulent subcontracting of audits…yep, audits:
“The OIG must continue to assess and report the Department’s efforts to identify, address, and mitigate improper payments and provide oversight of work performed by non-Federal auditors, including single audits and compliance audits of the recipients of Department funds.” p. AA-10
Swiss cheese “accountability” within and well beyond the Department of Education
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These costs could be avoided if there weren’t charter schools. Ohio Republican politicians are against duplication of services and in favor of centralization except when it comes to putting money in the pockets of the campaign donors from the charter schools.
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In the comment section of that Dispatch article there’s one commenter desperately defending ECOT. It’s pretty funny.
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Probably the ECOT PALS dad. He’s got a daughter at ECOT.
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I noticed, too, some of the posters may have a bit of self interest – a university professor and public school music teacher. What is interesting is the varied opinions. But I suspect this is money driven – brick and mortar charters (Fordham?) backed by out of state billionaires looking to eliminate competition.
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I support our public schools. My own kids, though, did not always find success. We have one child with disabilities that had to leave the home district due to a vastly underfunded and ineffective intervention program. He did find success at another public school, but it cost money. We also are fortunate to have a school within a school as an option. But even there, surrounded by excellence, was a teacher who should consider another career. We were forced to seek out an online course because of that.
So, I understand the need for options. Online schooling did end up being one of our options. It worked when the public school did not. I have no doubt ECOT gives kids a chance who are not succeeding in public or traditional charters. It is worth careful consideration.
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Policy decisions, which are written at the highest levels, must be designed for the good of the whole. Accommodation is then made at the individual level.
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It is the dilemma when policy decisions favor the good of the whole but deny the individual. The solution is to always allow appeal and consideration of the individual. Nothing worse than a faceless, stagnant bureaucracy that employs top down decision making.
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