Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition writes about the results of an investigation conducted by the Ohio Department of Education.
ECOT is the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. It is a for-profit online virtual school. It has one of the lowest graduation rates of any school in the nation. Its owner, William Lager, is one of the biggest campaign contributors to Republicans in Ohio.
ECOT’s waste felt at the school district level
The Ohio Department of Education (ODE) has determined that a sample of ECOT students participate, on the average, one hour per day-one fifth of the time required. If that holds true of ECOT’s enrollment, of the $108 million ECOT extracted from school districts in FY 2016, a total of more than $80 million was collected for time students were not participating in instruction.
589 districts are suffering funding deductions flowing to ECOT. On the average, the deduction is $183,175 per district. Columbus Public Schools lost $11,618,822 to ECOT at the high end and Indian Creek lost $177 last school year.
The ECOT scheme drains scarce resources from school districts–and for what? Student participation, an average for 20% of the time required. Hence, for a district like Northridge Local in Licking County, over $100,000 of its $154,000 flows to ECOT for time students are not participating.
The district-by-district deduction data should be of concern to school officials and their constituents.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s not a waste. It serves their purpose.
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The tax-paying saps, who hope that good schools will keep property values up, suffer, not knowing that their hard-earned dollars enrich guys living elsewhere. Those Ohioans voting Republican, get what they deserve. Ohio school boards that fail to invoice government in Columbus, IMO, lack rectitude and are fiscally negligent.
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When we have an unregulated system with little to no accountability, the opportunists and schemers emerge to rob public funds that should be going towards legitimate instruction for the state’s school age population. Taxpayers should be livid with the policymakers in Ohio. They are failing at being stewards of the public trust, and the public should hold them accountable.
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It may well be true there is little accountability with ECOT. Yet, there is little accountability within too many of our public schools. I tutor children and work with my grandchildren on a daily basis:. We do not even teach manuscript handwriting while ignoring the fact it is important in learning how to read; we don’t teach any rules of spelling, how to see the patterns , and understand the rules of spelling; but we give the weekly tests; we fail to teach reading ,or grammar; or composition development. When the teacher was asked why, she referred to her rights under the union. When people go to the school, or go to the school board, they are ignored. I think Ohio Department of Education needs to have greater oversight over local public schools. A school district’s effectiveness is only as good as the elected people who represent the community in an objective non-partisan manner. When that fails, parents need to have some avenue where their concerns , based on facts, are taken seriously. After all, the business is to provide quality instruction to all children.
In early September of last year, second grade students were given an assignment: research an animal, develop a report, make a diorama,, and prepare to tell the class. The teacher did not teach the children how to do research, write a paragraph, write a three paragraph essay, and how to present an oral report. This goes to direct teaching. I worked with my granddaughter and taught her all the skills needed to do this assignment. She took her assignment to school and was not only eager, but ready to speak before the class. What happened is an insult to this profession and the children whom we serve ; the teacher put these dioramas and projects out in the hallway; they collected dust up to late March. This was brought to the attention of the school board, curriculum director, and superintendent, and asked .what should have been taught prior to assignment , and why didn’t the teacher honor the hard work of children, and parents, who did this assignment? It was ignored. This is not how you run a business; this is not how you run a school ; this is not how you teach children. Simple as that.
Like Ms. Ravitch, I am a product of a women’s college where we were offered a rigorous academic program, and challenged to make a difference in the world. My calling was to be a teacher. Those of us, who entered this profession did so having sound pedagogical background , understanding that we must continue to intellectually develop in our field, curious about the world, and willingness to serve. I would like my granddaughters to have the opportunity to go to a college with the same standing as Wellesley, and my college. If this type of “quality” education continues they will not have such an opportunity. Primary grades, and primary grade teachers, play an important role in the final outcome for learners. Instead of looking at broad political issues, let’s closely examine the learning environment where each child spends up to six hours a day. one classroom at a time.
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False claims about the connection between competition and school improvement, feeds this travesty. Hypocritically, Republican politicians claim that duplication of services is inefficient, while creating a whole system of charter school duplication so that, IMO, they have donors to their campaigns and/or so that, they can serve the Walton’s goal to impoverish labor.
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If duplication of services is inefficient, then their obvious goal is to get rid of public schools.
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As I’ve posted, my kids attend public schools and we support them. But a dismal, two tiered math program forced us to look for alternatives. In one class, the teacher (soon to retire) told the kids this was the class for “dumb” students. It was a dangerous class with my daughter threatened, sworn at, and called racial epitaphs. She moved to another class with a teacher that admitted he did not like teaching. The class was poorly run and ineffective. So our only option was an online class. My daughter would login for a few minutes, review the lessons, then complete the assignments offline. Often, the offline assignments took hours to complete. But it worked.
With 30,000 families attending online schools in Ohio, it is worth asking why they choose that option. I think it is a hushed secret that many public schools and traditional charters use the online schools to offload difficult students, improving their state ratings. A NYT article from Petrilli of Fordham said as much. In fact, there are public schools starting their own online schools as “credit recovery” or similar, very much like ECOT. So I hesitate here because it is a fair question to ask where these 30,000 students will end up and will Republicans running Ohio just ignore them – out of sight, out of mind. I don’t have much faith in Ohio leaders given their past performance on education.
Also to consider, if the solution to poor student performance is shutting down schools, this strengthens the Reformers position to apply the same standard to struggling urban or rural public schools. I have no doubt much of the impetus for closing schools like ECOT is more likely out of state hedge funds and billionaires lead by Fordham, looking to eliminate competition in the charter sector. Then they can focus on public schools. A brilliant tactic right out of Sun Tzu, The Art of War.
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Sorry to hear about your daughters bad experience with a public school in Ohio. My kids had a different experience. I don’t think the goal is to shut down on-line schools, it is to make sure kid’s are getting educated. My son had a fever for a week and missed school. We got a letter threatening action if his absence was not explained. This is what a good school does to ensure students have an opportunity to learn despite the choice parents have.
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That is shocking that those two teachers were so crude, insulting and stupid. I’m sure most of the parents complained to the principal and maybe a few even went to the school board and superintendent. Teachers have gotten into trouble for much less of an infraction. A decent principal would have called these 2 jerks on the carpet, put a black mark on their evaluations and folders. At the least, they could have had their increments withheld. It’s fools like these that ruin it for all the good teachers. Very sad.
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Thanks. The one teacher was retiring. The other has had many complaints and parent insurrections, but the local union is strong. Unions protect 99.9% of the good teachers, but they do also tend to coddle the few bad ones. Unions are not perfect, but they are necessary. But parents need some remedy in these extreme cases. I have little confidence in our Ohio leaders to handle the online school situation. Personally, I support the many hard working, dedicated teachers in public, charter, and online schools. But I do realize they can’t be all to everyone and would like to see more deliberate thought than politics in Ohio education. I can dream.
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A perfect example of a rheephorm mantra, but I am spelling it out:
They do more [for themselves, a few adults and THEIR OWN CHILDREN] with less [for everyone else, the vast majority that includes OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN].
$tudent $ucce$$. Ain’t it grand?
😎
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Time to re-read Lisa Delpit’s OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN?
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Unions are obligated to defend all teachers who are accused of some crime/infraction/insubordination/whatever. The union is obligated to guarantee due process for a teacher. If the school board declines to follow through with the process for financial reasons, then that is on them. The school board always claims that it’s too expensive to get rid of bad teachers. In our legal system, even the worst monster criminal is guaranteed innocent until proven guilty, due process and legal representation and it is very expensive. Innocent teachers have also been falsely accused and railroaded. No system is perfect but due process is the best we can do. Just my 2 cents worth.
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The original post was not about bad teachers, it was about a bad business deal set up by Ohio and ECOT. ECOT wants paid to sign kids up. ECOT wants paid to offer a maybe good educational opportunity without checking that students benefit. That is it. Joining the gym doesn’t get you fitness (they will take your money), you have to put in work.
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ECOT is terrified for everyone to see how little time students spend engaged in learning. The constant focus on individual stories is an example of that. Sure, there is a small percentage of students helped by online education. I don’t think anyone is denying that. What they are saying is that you cannot justify the funding your receive based on the engagement of the overall student body.
If they could point to large scale data that shows that most students are consistently engaged in work they wouldn’t be refusing to release the information. They state that they don’t have the ability to to show summaries of student logins and this isn’t true. They might not be able to easily do this, and I think that is of their own making. It is a hassle to figure out how long students are logging in and what they are doing while logged in.
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1. Is ECOT allowed to use public funds for tv ads to beg to stay open?
2 . Since they had a VPN system to verify that students logged in, it stands to reason that ALL of their curriculum and any website for research could be and should be accessed through that secure login to verify student attendance.
3. This is the 2nd time ECOT has been told to fix their attendance for their students.
4. Millions of public funds have went in the pockets of their management company due to their lying, evasive practices, the ODE and David Yost should demand repayment from the last 10 years
5. How many other online schools in Ohio are complaining about taking accurate daily student attendance? NONE!
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These students spend 20% of the time required…for what? If someone can do her calculus homework in twenty minutes, what would be the point to then waste 40 mibutes–just because Joe Slow takes an hour to do his math homework….
This article begs the question, “What are the school district doing so poorly that they need so much monetary assistance?” My Catholic HS cost 1/3 the price that Hilliard HS cost the taxpayers because the employees of my parochial school had to be more resourceful (i.e. Less wasteful)…What does it matter anymore — with all this common core BS thrown our way?
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The few students who are able to be online for 20% of the time should be placed in accelerated or AP classes by ECOT to to assure they have their “butt in seat” time required by the state. The problem is that for those students as well as moat of ECOTs students is that they bill for 100% of the time. This is fraud and ECOT knows this. They should repay those public school districts that they fraudulently stole money from..ECOT knows it. They should have to pay back the millions
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http://conta.cc/2dx9a6k
http://www.10thperiod.com/2016/09/ohio-ecot-overpaid-by-40-still-would-be.html http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/09/26/state-to-ecot-enrollment-is-60-less-than-you-reported.html http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/09/ecot_attendance_inflated_by_9000_students_audit_finds_60_million_in_state_funding_in_jeopardy.html
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