William Lager owns the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), which according to the New York Times, has the lowest graduation rate in the nation. ECOT is a virtual charter school, where students take instruction online. The state recently reacted to public criticism and decided to audit ECOT. It found that the school’s enrollment was vastly overstated, which meant that ECOT was receiving millions of dollars each year for nothing. ECOT went to court and argued that the state had no right to audit participation rates (attendance), but the court did not agree. Unless the decision is overturned on appeal, Lager will have to refund $60 million to the state.
Since 2000, ECOT has given $2.1 million in campaign contributions. Since 2010, 99% of Lager’s contributions have gone to Republican legislators. In the brief period when Democrats controlled the House, Lager gave them nearly $200,000. Since 2000, ECOT has received nearly $1 billion in state funds for its perennially failing school.
Think of it: an investment of only $2.1 million in campaign contributions generates nearly $1 billion in state funding for a low-performing school. What a bargain!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ECOT doesn’t worry so much because even with the total lack of oversight and regulation people will eventually figure it out and stop signing up.
What worries me is the big ed reform push to cram cheap, garbage online learning platforms into public schools. It’s a much bigger market and one they’re absolutely salivating over. ECOT is bad enough. Think about what happens when they push ECOT into every public school.
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ECOT or CBE everywhere are possibilities when elected representatives can be bought by corporations. They then no longer represent the best interests of the people they were elected to serve.
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The post begs the question, what are teachers, parents, taxpayers, students and the unions doing, in the district that includes Mercer County, to make sure that the Chamber of Commerce-supported candidate, for Ohio state school board, doesn’t get elected?
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Or according to the never-ending wikileak revelations, you can buy democrat legislators… highly powerful ones… at premium prices. What’s your point?
For decades, a political special interest has been extorting money from teachers paychecks to buy legislators, negative media influence and even things like fund charter school trash websites… all for protectionism and to keep US public education from evolving with the students who rely on it. Your point?
I just interviewed an ECOT parent from Dayton OH and upon walking her daughter into her first day at traditional public school (through metal detectors) was greeted with an interesting welcome message from the administration.
Due to her 7-year-old daughter’s ethnicity… “She was guaranteed to get bullied”
Soon thereafter, the 7 year old girl was not only behind in her academics but also bullied and tripped (assaulted) in the school hallway. She found herself in pain in the school nurse’s office. After a call to the parent, the nurse failed to fully hang up the phone and the parent overheard the nurse telling the little girl to quit crying and acting like a baby (verbal assault).
The 7 year old girl was later diagnosed by a doctor with a broken collar bone.
Where have the democrats OR republicans been on education for it to have gotten to this? Certainly not in Dayton. Seems like both sides have been asleep at the wheel?
The girl and her mother are healing now. As a student, the little girl is excelling and their entire family quite passionately believe that ECOT is the reason why.
With all do respect, you continue to drive your party line political narrative on our public ed system (our kid’s futures) Your efforts could be described as a number of things but let’s just call them -Unproductive.
I would ask that you kindly keep your politics out of my child’s classroom.
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Jeremy,
You work for an ethically challenged corporation that has over billed the state of Ohio by $60 million in the past year alone. Your boss William Lager gave $2.5 million to legislators and has received nearly $1 billion of public funds to run America’s worst school.
Surely, your talents permit you to get a job fracking for a more ethical employer.
Glad he lost the lawsuit to escape a state audit of enrollment .
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Jeremy,
As the article cited points out, Lager has bought politicians from both parties. They come cheap in Ohio.
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We are talking about the faux education sham you work for, not your child.
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The New York Times called ECOT. The worst school in the nation. And you think this is the school of the future? I hope you are getting paid a lot to peddle this tripe.
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You seem pretty rattled by a thoughtful response to your divisive tripe.
The NYT’s hit piece was just a piece of a larger anti-kasich media puzzle they were lining up while he was running for pres. They committed the ultimate sin of omission in that piece too by only publishing a 4 year “on time” graduation stat for a school that disproportionately accepts overage students… who are already years behind when they arrive at ECOT. The saddest part about that is that it was intentional and intentionally dismissed some of the most incredible achievements of the school and students. The even more tragic thing about the half-stat itself is that it rewards the failing schools that the students used to attend while penalizes ECOT for helping them achieve their diplomas… even if a little late. ECOT even provided the NYT access to staff and students as well for their reporting. Somehow none of that made the paper.
You are certainly entitled to plug your ears, close your eyes to the current state of our public ed system, but that won’t do anything to improve it. You can even ignore history and the crushing grip of influence that has stifled the system you pretend to care about… but again the world will continue to turn and parents will continue to choose what’s best for their kids.
At some point maybe you’ll realize that your cause is not noble… or maybe that you’ve lost your way. The democrat/republican/other party parents, students, teachers and staff that choose schools like ECOT are actually working on moving the system forward while you babble on about one side of the political narrative. Crazy enough, those bipartisans are working side-by-side and making a difference together.
Imagine that.
I would again ask that you kindly keep your politics out of our children’s classrooms.
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Nothing thoughtful about a screed by a paid shill for the worst school in America, whose owner has pocketed hundreds of millions intended for public schools
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Diane: as far as I am concerned, you and your politics are welcome in my kids’ classrooms any time. They would benefit mightily from clear sighted, dispassionate reasoning and a willingness to put the public’s interests first.
Jonathan, kindly stop thinking that you hold the keys (and the permission slips) to MY child’s classroom.
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Aker uses the Rush Limbaugh argumentation technique, anecdotal evidence, often distorted beyond recognition, generalized as if it was true of the whole. I presume the Ohio taxpayers wouldn’t have to foot a bill for legal fees against ECOT, in the amount of $500,000, if evidence showed the school’s success.
And yes, Ohio’s government has been a disgrace, which has led to the fleecing of Ohioans on many fronts.
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You assume too much. My anecdotal evidence comes from walking and talking people from all “parties” including my 5th year ECOT student daughter and the hundreds of independent testimonials I’ve personally procured in my spare time just since February.
I interview ECOT parents, students, grads and teachers most of whom align themselves politically as democrats. I stood at ECOT graduation last year and spoke face-to-face with some of the 2300+ graduate’s families and friends. In less than 1 hour, I was approached by hundreds with their stories and 3 separate times with a word for word quote I’ll share with you now. “ECOT saved my life” – Over 500 of these graduates were disabled. Many took city busses to attend the ceremony and many of these kids arrived at graduation with babies of their own. Please don’t tell me about anecdotal evidence. You’re way out of your depth. Do you want to know who peddles anecdotal evidence? Do you want to know who hasn’t visited ECOT, talked to actual teachers/students and tried to learn about why so many are making this choice? The list is long. But people like Diane haven’t. Politicians who rail against ECOT in Ohio haven’t (mostly democrats). The Ohio Department of Education hasn’t. Even when newspapers like NYT have visit, they dismiss the voices of parents like me, our kids and teachers.
Despite the best efforts of many powerful political players, ECOT inserted itself with 0 students into the public ed space a little over 15 years ago and has grown on the backs of the demands and choices that 10’s of thousands have made in Ohio. ECOT has graduated 20K since opening it’s doors. Today, ECOT graduates 1 out of 20 in Ohio and has 15K+ currently enrolled. The human evidence is readily available. The question is how is it possible that Ohio legislators and bureaucrats do what they’re doing having never spent a minute in these classes? How can people like Diane push the narratives she pushes while dismissing all of these people and their choices in preference of politics?
Sadly, politics like Diane’s have infiltrated the Ohio Department of Education. Somebody is really scared of what ECOT has accomplished. The ODE dreamed up and is now trying to retroactively impose an asinine attendance rule of 5 hour daily logged on “screen time” for eschoolers.The rule is based in no education science or even theory and was not passed through legislature. I have 2 children enrolled in traditional brick and mortar school as well as my daughter at ECOT. My daughter spends anywhere from 1-5 hours a day “logged in” in addition to numerous offline hours to achieve a 4.0 and pass all of the same state tests as her traditional school siblings. Yet by this new rule, the state would consider her truant at ECOT (for last school year) and aims to rip my state tax dollars away from my child’s school (for last year). Make no mistake, this is an attempt to shut the school down on a calculated “secret” rule change. This rule is one of several coordinated attacks being played out by the ODE in our state and it has nothing to do with our children’s education.
I have no current party affiliation. My interest is with my children and our family’s choices. Even though, I was a voting democrat for 20 years, my work studying the charter school issue has pulled me away from the state democratic party primarily because of the hypocrisy on display with this issue. A party that claims to support individual liberties and things like woman’s reproductive rights but not the rights of parents to choose what school to send their children to is a party conflicted. These so-called democrats really lost their way on this issue. They could be a champion for children, families and teachers but instead are choosing to blindly follow the campaign donations being extorted from educator’s paychecks and delivered to them by the unions.
Recently, I heard a soundbite from past democratic governor that has cemented my decision to move to the independent party. The governor said he didn’t care about all of the great things happening with students and teachers at charter schools because charter schools donate to republicans. It’s disgusting. There are real people and real families like mine on the other end of these politics.
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Jeremy Aker,
Be honest. You are a paid PR flack for William Lager and ECOT. You admitted it previously. We know that Lager has collected nearly $1 billion since 2000 while giving $2.3 million to politicians, mostly Republicans.
You are not persuading anyone, ECOT has the lowest graduation rate in the nation, at 20% (excluding the Silver State charter school at 16%).
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Aker,
(1) The “powerful political players”, e.g. Cliff Rosenberger, Batchelder, etc., are the ones who have enacted or failed to enact (influence) legislation that favors charters. I could speculate why (money). Rewriting history should embarrass you. (2) Ownership of the assets that taxpayers bought for kids, should not be the property of charter operators. It’s a fleecing of the taxpayer. (3) To your credit, you didn’t deceive on the issue of calling charters “public”, like the U.S. Dept. of Ed. does, in its service to Wall Street and the tech sector. (4) If we’re talking hypocrisy, the Waltons are the biggest funders of privatization of public schools to achieve “competition”, while in a substantial number of markets they operate as a monopoly. Also operating as monopolies, are all of the Ohio newspapers, that have advocates for charter school competition, on speed dial.
BTW, a woman and her doctor making a decision about her pregnancy isn’t the same thing as a buyer choosing between a Coke and a Pepsi. The comparison you make, may qualify as the most disgusting false equivalency, I’ve heard the self-serving craft.
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To Jeremy Aker:
Please show some of your intelligence in recognizing that education is about “INTERACTION”, CIVILIZATION, and MUTUAL RESPECT from mutual UNDERSTANDING among all learners at all levels from kindergarten to post secondary education.
There is plenty of free digital education on internet or television special program or software at very reasonable cost to all parents.
Why should both Republican Party and some of “fake” Democrat Representatives take s bribe/donation at 2.1 millions to GAIN 1 BILLION of our tax fund through ECOT scheme?
You must gain some small trickle down in salary in order to express the way in which all intelligent tax payers DO NOT agree with your illogical thought or argument, Back2basic
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Sorry, it should read that:
Why should both Republican Party and some of “fake” Democrat Representatives take “a” bribe/donation at 2.1 millions
“”to let William Lager who GAINS 1 BILLION of our tax payers fund through ECOT scheme that is supposed for INTERACTION and CIVILITY in Public Education?”” Back2basic.
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I love this quote.
“… education is about “INTERACTION”, CIVILIZATION, and MUTUAL RESPECT from mutual UNDERSTANDING among all learners at all levels from kindergarten to post secondary education.”
This quote embodies what ECOT and the fight for school choice represent at every word. Thank you.
You may be lacking some information and experience about how ECOT works. Each day, over 800 ECOT teachers interact and teach live online with 15,000+ students across the state of Ohio regardless of their socioeconomic status, personal circumstances or even their family’s political party affiliation. There are clubs, field trips, science fairs and proms too. Students like my daughter benefit from an extremely student-centered approach in safe and distraction free learning environment.
You may be surprised to know that if you asked my 14-year old what she thinks the biggest benefit of ECOT is… she’d tell you it’s the classroom diversity.
Finally the beginning of your post seems to conflict with the end of your post. The democrats and republicans are equal opportunity corrupters. They both are running schemes and the outcomes of these schemes hurt everyone. You can’t honestly post about mutual respect and understanding while dismissing opinions of other taxpayers, other students and other educators that don’t subscribe to your politics.
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ECOT was cheered along every step the way by some of the biggest names in ed reform:
“The nation’s largest online public school with over 10,000 students, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, (ECOT) will celebrate a decade of online learning in Ohio with its 10th annual commencement on Saturday, June 12 on the campus of Ohio State University.
“The success of our students has been amazing to witness for all teachers and staff of ECOT, and we see it on display every year at commencement time”
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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a national leader in education reform, will be commencement speaker as he helps to recognize ECOT’s Class of 2010, the largest in the school’s history with nearly 2000 eligible students. Mr. Bush is founder and president of the Foundation for Excellence in Education and served as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007.”
Kasich was there the following year.
I think ed reformers must be contractually barred from entering a public school. We never see them in the unfashionable “public sector schools” unless it’s after Labor Day in an election year. Then they all become big supporters of our schools for as long as the campaigns last.
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To Jeremy Aker:
You are not any different from reformers who love to twist people’s words to seize an opportunity for your own gain.
Please get straight to the core of an argument WITHOUT twisting the meaning of words.
You can ask your 14 years old daughter a simple question:
“Would you take $2.10 for candy in one minute and give the businessmen $1000.00 from your OWN saving over many days?”
“Is it the smart and benefited trade for your future?”
In reality, the pool of all tax payers money is to cultivate ALL citizens, NOT PARTICULARLY for ONLY your daughter or for a specific few of any group like voucher, religion or charter.
Deplorable authorities can abuse their legal system and “twisted doubled meaning of all sounding words” in order to take in a fraction in amount of donation for their own individual GAIN/PROFIT. But they have gradually damaged AMERICAN excellent Public Education in a whole child concept for ALL learners in the past 20 years.
Do you know that:
1) the deaf is not fearful of the thunder? And
2) the blind is not fearful of the sunlight? And
3) all of reformers are not fearful to the universal law of cause and effect or their Karma which is like the shadow from life to death?
If your daughter is benefited from ECOT system at the expense of 1000 millions of dollars in the pool of taxpayers money accumulated over many generations in order to educate MILLIONS and MILLIONS of learners from many UPCOMING generations, then you are not ONLY deaf, blind and reformer, but also being inconsiderate = NOT civilized = savage = the beast in order to harm the COMMON GOODS to benefit your selfish gain.
I recognize your illogical argument so that I will not continue on replying your next post.I hope that your conscientiousness will be awakened in your heart and mind sooner. May God bless you so that your daughter will be more conscientious than you. Back2basic
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Whoa! Did you politicize your breakfast this morning? Seriously – who won the debate? The bacon or the eggs? Rumor has it the bacon had an insider who fed her questions in advance though so the results are entirely questionable. While you may enjoy calling me names, I have to put you on notice. My wife is the only one with permission to call me a savage beast. And Thank You again for proving through your comment that politics have no place in the classroom or between parents and the choices that they make for their children’s education. Thank you again for showing the hypocrisy and double standard of your illogical argument of “better for all” …. well but except me and the 124,000+ other Ohio charter families and the schools we choose. We don’t count. Finally thank you for the blessing but other folks need it more than I do.. Now off to read yet another sad story of an 11 year old in my state who was bullied to death in our.. I’ll use your words .. “AMERICAN excellent Public Education” system. Please send your blessings to her family.
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Jeremy,
Just think of the millions more for your boss if you can lure more kids in Ohio to attend ECOT, the worst school in the state. They won’t get an education, but they will be safe at home while your boss cleans up.
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Diane,
I have no boss and I am no millionaire.
Re: ECOT
You speak from conjecture.. I speak from balanced experience with both ECOT and traditional students of my own
You try to destroy schools… I try to support them
You fight to dismiss the choices of teachers, students and their families… I fight to give them a voice
You work hard to inject politics into public education debates… I work hard to remove politics from the debates
When I originally came here and read your site’s subtitle “A place to discuss better education for all” – I was excited, but after paying attention for awhile now, I think you should really consider a rebrand.
What is the purpose of your blog? Who exactly are you helping?
It’s ok – forget it. You never have answered a single one of my honest and thoughtful questions so I’m not expecting you to start now.
All the best,
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Jeremy,
William Lager is lucky to have you defending his overcharging of the state of Ohio by at least $60 million in a single year! When a legislator suggested that ECOT should be transparent and accountable, you responded by criticizing the legislator.
http://www.wfmj.com/story/32585720/some-bitter-about-tax-dollars-going-into-online-education-program
Why should ECOT be permitted to collect money for students who never log on?
You love the virtual charter, you don’t care that it has a graduation rate of 20%, but why should Lager avoid any accountability for the millions he pockets every year?
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