One of the biggest scams in the charter industry is the virtual charter. Every study shows that they have high attrition rates, low test scores, and low graduation rates. A study by CREDO concluded that going to a virtual charter was almost like not going to school at all. The virtual charter gives the students a computer; the students logs on (or doesn’t); and a teacher monitors a large number of screens. For that service, the company providing the computer and the teacher is paid full state tuition. It is a very lucrative business.
In Ohio, where charter fraud is rife, the biggest charter of all is ECOT, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. The owner, William Lager, gives generously to elected officials. Until now, they have treated him kindly, enabling his school to be unaccountable. This year, however, in response to the general stench around the Ohio charter industry, the state audited ECOT and discovered that many students never logged on. They asked for a refund of $65 million. ECOT went to court to block the state action. It insisted it had no obligation to ensure that students actually attended the classes it made available. The court ruled against ECOT
ECOT appealed the lower court judgment. The appeals court rejected ECOT’s appeal.
ECOT, Ohio’s largest online school, has lost a court appeal that would have blocked the state from trying to “claw back” as much as $65 million the school received last year, while e-schools across Ohio are asking state legislators to protect their funding.
The schools are asking state legislators to add a “hold harmless” provision to another bill in the next few weeks to stop the state from using attendance reviews of the schools to take millions of dollars of state funding away from them.
Nine other online charter schools could also have to return portions of their state funding after they could not meet new state expectations for documenting how many students they have taking classes.
House Education Committee Chairman Andrew Brenner said schools have asked to be excused from penalties while legislators debate a better way to fund online schools next year.
“There’s been a couple of discussions, but nothing is concrete,” said Brenner, a Powell Republican..
“This is an issue that’s more widespread than just ECOT,” he added. “This impacts a ton of schools. It something we’ve got to have a good conversation on.”
Sounds like Mr. Brenner is looking for a way to enable ECOT to evade accountability.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Sounds like Mr. Brenner is looking for a way to enable ECOT to evade accountability.
Exactly. Stall, just like Betsy Devos has done for years, failing to pay fines for violating Ohio election laws–as reported today by Politico.
They’ll rubber stamp her confirmation in spite of her flouting Ohio law.
The ed reform borg has spoken. She passed. She meets the single requirement- she’s spent a career bashing The Enemy: public schools.
I can’t believe we’re paying public employees to launch an assault on the schools our kids attend. We must be the dumbest people on the planet. We’re funding this!
And, I assume, if his vote doesn’t affect outcome, Sen. Sherrod Brown will vote, “no”, on DeVos’ confirmation, to preserve the illusion of two parties. Otherwise, it’d be a “yes” vote, so that he can continue to get money from the U.S. Dept. of Ed., to expand the Walton’s privatization.
I hope they enforce it but I wouldn’t count on that money being returned to the public schools from whence it came.
DeVos owes the state 5 million and has for a decade. They’re all too scared of her to collect it or something.
I hope lawmakers are enjoying those ECOT donations they all took. That money came from public school children. If they had any decency they’d return it to the public school children who had their state funding share reduced to bankroll this scam.
Some “adults” huh? Makes me proud.
Charter schools were scoring poorly in Ohio so the lobby got together and requested special lower standards for charter schools.
It had probably become embarrassing that the public schools they all vilify were out-performing their preferred sector.
To their credit, the OH Dept of Ed rejected this blatant end run around “accountability:
“The Ohio Department of Education bluntly rejected arguments by charter school advocates who want to add a California measure to Ohio’s accountability system, calling the proposal “neither valid nor useful.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/11/29/ohio-education-department-finds-no-value-in-charter-backed-progress-measure.html
If politicians in Columbus can think of a way to screw Ohioans to get money for themselves, their family members, friends and/or their party, they’ll find it.
Diane,
Your blog post title is as factually incorrect as most of the content of your relentless school hate posts. Nothing has been decided in the ECOT proceedings yet. And just because you desire it to be true doesn’t make it so. At some point before you retire, you may want to try gaining and sharing perspective in your posts from somewhere else besides other biased media sources…. Like maybe by learning from actual students parents and teachers at the school you dream of destroying. I certainly understand that blind regurgitation is an easier path to fill the content demand of your blog but when other people’s children, their futures and many educators jobs are on the line, I’d hope you’d project a little more responsibly.
Blah, blah, blah.
Linda: Well said.
Jeremy,
I understand you are on the ECOT payroll, and thus you should try to be polite.
Trump’s election should be a bonanza for your company.
I have always been polite with you Diane.. even when you have not been in return. Your relentless assertions that I am on ECOT’s payroll are as factually incorrect as this post’s headline too. As I have explained to you before, I am the parent of a 5th year ECOT student as well as 2 soon-to-be 3 traditional school students and I started organizing a community of parents, alums and supporters of ECOT about a year ago with the motivation of my own 14-year old daughter who herself became sick and tired of the misrepresentations and flat out lies being spread by “reputable” news agencies, bought politicians and people like yourself. I am also a learning & development professional and technologist who happens to believe strongly in disruption. While the old school protectionists have been hard at work politicizing the charter school and school choice issues, our system has fallen too far behind to keep up with the diverse needs of many of my generation’s children … including at least one of my own.
Regarding Trump – my company supports small businesses so if the moves he ends up making helps them, then yes that would be a good thing.
Jeremy writes: “. . . our system has fallen too far behind to keep up with the diverse needs of many of my generation’s children.”
Assuming you mean the public schools, I’m wondering if you don’t see (I hate this cliche, but it works here) the “bigger picture” that has been the subject of so many of these posts here, my own included? (And BTW, as I am sure you know, to think that “old” is always “bad” is a mark of a state of mind involved in egregious ignorance).
Though your defensiveness and personal attacks are telling (me thinks you protest wrongly and too much), they are notwithstanding, so that what’s left is this, and if you are of a mind to listen for a moment:
If some public schools or aspects of them (and I do mean SOME, not ALL) have “fallen too far behind,” why strike a blow at **the entire structure of the relationship between
(a) a democratic (small-d) political ground and
(b) the educational institutions that accord directly with that ground, its’ existence, and its ongoing survival, regardless of school-related income? (see Jon’s note here.)
Look at the “larger picture” of the corporation, its motivations, and its “diverse” political ground. . . . I looked up their site to find their mission statement–I may have missed it, but I see no “larger view” identity or reference to citizenship, human psychological and social growth, community building, the arts, the whole child or anything of the sort–just “success.” I’ve read a good number of public-school mission statements. (I taught a masters’ class section that including teachers’ focus on their own schools’ statements.) Some are better than others, but all had a larger view than what I saw on your site. It’s not damning, but certainly telling.
Also, if you are not being paid by the corporation then you are volunteering, or being used by the corporation for their own ends just like your children are. I don’t think we can say that about those who “volunteer” to support public ed and the democracy it oh-so-rightly lives in.
Of course these corporations’ schools can and sometimes do provide a good education for the children who attend–they wouldn’t get your support if they didn’t offer that slick carrot, especially now when parent support is so crucial for their (and DeVos’) end: of strangling public education (or any public institution) until it looks bad to all and finally is erased from the to-be-capitalist “culture,” such as DeVos et al want it to be. Parents are in “placation-mode” now; the power moves come later when no public-education institution is left to “choose.” (Watch the stock market?) There’s a lot of money to be had in killing public institutions.
But whatever the present sparkle that the “new” corporate way puts out–and it does sparkle sometimes–the connection with “the bigger picture” remains split or entirely broken. (Read Jane Meyer on this.)
If you really want what’s best in the long run, then support and lobby to “reform” the public schools that need help–e.g., for smaller class sizes and teacher supports–whatever is needed.
And I’m glad if your children are getting a good education wherever they are.
However, those who are working for the support and revival of public schools (as do Diane and so many others here) are working for the maintenance of education that is directly related to and flows from the political ground that we all walk on, including the ground that you and DeVos presently walk on. Public institutions have moved to the firing squad now (pun intended) and when they are gone, we all will suffer the effects.
We (Diane, me, and others here) are not working for a private corporation whose interest in us, you, and our children is about them and their abstract and careless universe of capitalist intentions. It’s cancer-like–presently metastatic–and to the corporation, paid or not, you are just another a “useful idiot.”
Jeremy,
Which fact is incorrect? This one?
ECOT, Ohio’s largest online school, has lost a court appeal that would have blocked the state from trying to “claw back” as much as $65 million the school received last year, …
Losing this court appeal decision does not equal Diane’s headline of “must pay back” – This is just one decision from one judge in a much longer legal and legislative process. Never mind the facts though. Diane’s job is to pump out headlines and outrage. Maybe someday this blog will live up to it’s name of “a place to discuss better education for all” but I sincerely doubt it.
Jeremy,
Can you explain two ECOT “facts” for me?
1) In the FAQ of the ECOT PALS website,
http://www.ecotpals.org/faq/
I see the following claim
Despite having less than 1% of Ohio public school enrollment, 5% of Ohio’s graduates come from ECOT
The above statement implies that ECOT’s graduation rate is 5 times that of public schools. “Five times” means 500%. On the other hand, according to
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/high-school-graduation-rates-by-state.html
Ohio’s high school graduation rate is 80%. My conclusion is that ECOT’s graduation rate is 5 times 80%, that is 400%. This means for every student enrolling in ECOT, 4 students will graduate.
Here is the calculation:
Of the 100 enrolled, 1 enrolls to ECOT. Of the 100 enrolled, 80 graduates. 5% of this 80 is 4.
How is this miracle accomplished?
2) In the FAQ of ECOT, we can read the following question
How does the graduation rate and overall student performance compare?
for which the following answer is provided
The DOE’s calculation of a schools graduation rate is extremely misleading and does not reflect the many ECOT student success stories such as students who graduate after 5+ years in high school. These students count against ECOT’s overall graduation rate, but are some of our most treasured success stories. ECOT has now graduated over 18,000 students in its 16 year history. Graduation has grown from an initial class of 21 graduates in 2000 to 2300+ graduates in each of the last 4 graduating classes.
Does the above answer the question? I mean, I see quite a few numbers in the answer, but which of the numbers show any kind of comparison with presumably regular public high school performance and graduation rates?
Can you show me the raw data on which the statistics of this FAQ page is based?
It’s Aker’s recognition failure. Diane Ravitch’s posts are profoundly tied to the blog’s mission, as a place to discuss better education for all,
I bet that these charter operators calculate in these millions they will have to pay after they get caught, so these fines will not stop them. It just motivates them to be more careful with hiding their finances.
They will stop only if they start going to jail.
I mean, people go to jail for robbery worth only $500. These educational white collar guys steal millions from the public.
“The virtual charter gives the students a computer; the students logs on (or doesn’t); and a teacher monitors a large number of screens. For that service, the company providing the computer and the teacher is paid full state tuition. It is a very lucrative business.”
To be fair, the online teacher isn’t actually paid “full” anything. I worked full-time for the online arm of a prestigious East Coast private college ($50K a year tuition) and supervised eight other teachers. I also had my own teaching load; at one point, I was responsible for over 300 students. What I was worth to this school? $22K a year. Please trust me when I say that the lion’s share of those public school taxpayer dollars are not going to teachers, or to students, but into corporate pockets.
In the case of Ohio funding and ECOT – ECOT operates on close to $6K per pupil per year (state) Most major metro school districts like Columbus, Cleveland and Youngstown are running at upwards of $15K-$20K per student. Besides working with ECOT teachers and my daughter over 5 school years, I’ve personally interviewed several in the last year for the ECOT PALS community. They come from all backgrounds in education… even many from long runs in traditional schools and they have all been more than content with their jobs at ECOT. My dad was a public school teacher and I have 2 current pub school teachers in my family. It’s ok to stand up for teachers… I always do. But in 2016, you have to accept that some amazing teachers actually prefer to meet some learners where they learn best and to teach live online. Your private college experience is your own but does not define the online teaching experience, responsibilities, pay or rewards of all others.
Jeremy: Teachers are like the horses in “Animal Farm.”
And BTW, the pay for online adjunct teaching for me was similar to another writer here who worked for a similar private school: I received $2000/2200 per three-credit one-month course for teaching in a masters program for teacher education, less for on-ground. This was around ONE students’ payment for the course. And the courses often had 20 to 25 students.
Plus, I built the courses in their frames and spent several days of long hours in course development, long before the courses got started. One course, same price; online and available pretty much 24-7 of on-going conversations. (They only let us do one per month.) But of course like your teachers, I loved it–regardless, though I always winced when I looked at my compensation for the month–and no benefits or job security.
Jeremy writes: “But in 2016, you have to accept that some amazing teachers actually prefer to meet some learners where they learn best and to teach live online. Your private college experience is your own but does not define the online teaching experience, responsibilities, pay or rewards of all others.”
I’ve taught online for 7 years. Even adults have trouble holding their motivations in line. But is that all you can claim now? That some teachers like to teach live online? I liked it, but was never completely sure it was good for all students in every case, and the least of which would be for younger students. I also liked on-ground teaching know its advantages. And there is nothing that I know of that says students “learn best” online, even live. On the contrary. You want to show me the research on that?
But I also know that the younger students are, the more important are the tactile, social, and (as your site says), face-to-face learning and conversations are to the whole-child educational experience. That’s just good cognitional theory that takes account of well-known child developmental patterns. (It’s a ploy on the site, however, speaking to parents who of course get to give input and listen to the powers that be in “face to face” conversations.
But it seems, Jeremy, you are having trouble “accepting” the fact that, in that legal battle, the corporation lost? At least this time? And again, Putin has this right: Those who don’t understand who is “scrxxxing” and who is getting scxxxed, are just “useful idiots.”
Catherine – I didn’t come here to make claims. We all have experiences and perspectives to share. It seems that some of us just have opinions based on what we’ve read or assume. In my case, I have facts and long running direct experience regarding this school, teachers and students as well as a significant amount of diverse experience with online learning technology as it has evolved over the last decade. Something I haven’t seen from Diane or any other commenter since I started visiting this blog almost a year ago. You can continue to call me names but the idiot to me is the one who speaks more than she listens. ECOT opened it’s virtual doors a little over 15 years ago with 0 students. Today 15,000 students and over 800 teachers call ECOT home. How did this happen? It’s easy. People are making these choices for themselves, their children and their careers in education…. not their politics. With 20K total graduates and growing enrollment, I’m going to go with the people and my experiences on this one. I attended last years graduation of 2300+ and spoke directly with the people making these choices… many students who were disabled, over age, been the subject of violence and bullying, had to work full time, chose to raise their child or care for family members while attending school. I spoke with those like my daughter who thrive in a more flexible hybrid classroom and have goals to graduate early as well. In less than one hour, I spoke to 3 separate parents who said that ECOT saved their child’s life. I have no problem accepting the real world around me and correcting Diane’s false headlines and incendiary comments. There is an easy distinction here between reality of what’s going on with Ohio public education and what Diane and her loyal followers relentlessly project in this blog.
Jeremy Aker: I don’t doubt your experience or the “real world around you.” And I am truly glad for good educational experiences wherever and whenever they occur. However, the point that you are missing entirely has at least two interrelated parts:
(1) the school’s political foundations: like the foundations of your house or the wheels of your car–they are there working for you and those attending ECOT, but you don’t spend much time thinking about them–for now. But the political foundations of your situation are broken by virtue of some variable of privatization. If those foundations haven’t shifted yet, I wonder if you will recognize it if and when they do. But the movement from public to private schools, on the part of the privatizers, is a zero-sum game. As such, privatizers know that keeping parent support for the time being is essential at this point in the plan to privatize all (plenty of investigative literature out there, e.g., Meyer).
Part of that plan is older than your children, and maybe even you, and is about draining the life out of all-things-public, including public education. And for now, de-funding, bashing, and bad-branding public education is ongoing. While (for now) providing the basics for parent support in private schools is a necessary evil. Ultimately, what doesn’t make money goes away. (The whole privatization thing is based on some really questionable, even screwy philosophy–but of course this is not the place, but it’s there.)
In any case, neither your nor my experience is the measure of all things. In this case, it doesn’t encapsulate but hides the reality above–a school’s political foundations that are a central part and influential of that experience; but that easily can remain outside of our awareness.
(2) Your (or my) singular experience used as measure and horizon also hides the larger view–concretely of other states and schools and their experiences. And so Diane includes but is not talking only about ECOT or Ohio. In particular, do you think the court has no valid argument about ECOT? But about other schools and states, instead of abuses and failures occurring here and there, from state to state, the blog collects to show trends of those abuses and failures. What’s going on in many parts of the country should disturb any parent who doesn’t have an “I’ve got mine, who cares about yours” mindset or who cannot see or doesn’t care to see what’s going on across-the-board as we speak, namely, in the new swamp.
I do hope, from the bottom of my heart, that all of these privateers have your child’s best interest at heart. At best, however,that interest shares the field with their interest in profit. Those split interests may be balanced presently; but that’s not been the capitalists’ habit or record. They refuse to self-regulate according to what’s best for all; and so they try to bad-brand government oversight to those who remain in their own experienced horizon and who are ignorant of long-term capitalist intentions. Kill regulations? To what end? . . . to dismantle democracy as we know it. If public education has failed, it’s in failing to educate this set of generations to understand their own democratic foundations and what it looks like when they are being attacked. No one on this side of the argument is an unknowing corporate lackey.
In education, to keep the flow of funding going, profit-making, on principle, is in competition with public schools whose political foundations are towards education-only and not towards capitalist profits. I do wish for you that you would at least consider the arguments put forth here and, in the privacy of your own life, and regardless of your present good-experience, raise some serious questions about others and what’s potential on the horizon considering your own school’s political foundations, especially in the light of what’s going on in Washington, again, as we speak.
Here’s an interesting (though the music is highly annoying), short video about how ECOT operates. In particular, ECOT’s owner Lager happens to be the boss of both the school management company Altair uses and IQ Innovations which designs the curriculum for ECOT. Is ECOT supposed to be profit or non-profit?
According to the webpage
http://www.iq-ity.com/
IQ Innovations also produces iQit, the virtual classroom software ACOT uses.
“school management company Altair uses”
I meant to write “school management company Altair Ecot uses”
Just for your edification, “ECOT EXPOSED” is the brainchild of Kevin Griffin – VP for the teachers union. He is paid with extorted money to protect union education at all costs…. not to improve it. Although, I’m sure many of the due paying educators don’t realize it, their hard earned money is going towards campaign donations, political lobbying and charter school trash sites… really bad ones at that. EXPOSED is just one example… there are more. Mr Griffin creates his sites and propaganda because he feels threatened by classrooms that are breaking away from the traditional model. Live online education that connects over 800 educators to 15K+ students each day in the state requires a significant focus on technology infrastructure to function and improve. It’s no small task and it’s not simple software. I happen to have quite a bit of experience in this space with both vendors and with implementing and managing learning management systems myself. IQ does not design curriculum. It’s the platform, tools, and classroom that aids teachers to deliver the curriculum online. The curriculum is designed by educators to meet the state testing requirements. It’s certainly a convenient diversion to call Lager and IQ’s motives into question but it’s just another weak armed jab. What IQ provides and continues to custom develop and support for ECOT students and teachers in nothing less than breakthrough and simply not available from a 3rd party. Let’s not forget about history. ECOT started with 0 students in the highly complex and rapidly evolving space of online ed over 15 years ago. Along ECOT’s journey to today the technology has evolved as well, it would be ignorant to assume that something like IQ would not have been born from ECOT’s rapid public adoption. Instead of talking about the owner of IQ with a teachers union officer, you should talk to some actual parents, teachers and students about the live online classroom experience that IQ helps to provide at ECOT. Before enrolling my daughter 5 years ago, I was skeptical that there could be an engaging and effective online classroom for k-12 students. I was floored after sitting in on some classes and it’s been amazing watching the platform develop and the teacher’s approaches in leveraging the technology over time.
Are you saying Lager doesn’t own the companies which draw profit from ECOT? Where can I see this publicly funded company’s raw data on graduates, enrollment and such?
You see, I had a little problem when I tried to understand how the company came up with 5% of OH graduates when it enrolls 1% of the student population.
Jeremy,
I am sorry that you work for ECOT. I hope you can find an employer that is more ethical in the future. An intelligent person like you should not have to waste brainpower defending Lager or a virtual charter school. I hope that the $65 million he owes the state doesn’t cost you your job, although it might be best for you to work elsewhere.
Máté – I think it’s pretty clear what I wrote. When you have 5 years running experience in the classrooms at ECOT and an deep understanding of what it takes to pull off this massive technical feat, then you know enough to know that who owns the company which supports ECOTs technical infrastructure is not that important. While some want to blather on about the politics and their perceived corruption of tax dollars, I’ll stick to topic and discuss a better education for all. I went to last school year’s ECOT graduation. Here’s some raw data for you 2300+ total grads, 500+ with disabilities, 300+ graduating early, and 1200+ graduating late – interesting fact about the late grads… this number includes the 65% of new ECOT enrollees that start at ECOT already at least a year behind … So the next time you read Diane’s, the NYT’s or other anti-choicer’s headlines where they misrepresent ECOTS grad rate… these 1200+ are the ones they’re dismissing. Apparently these kids and their achievements just don’t count. It’s especially sad when you get to actually meet these late grads and hear their stories.
Jeremy,
The best response to your claims about ECOT, which has made its owner William Lager a very rich and enabled him to give generously to GOP politicians is this article in The NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/us/online-charter-schools-electronic-classroom-of-tomorrow.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share
The story says this about ECOT:
“Despite the huge number of graduates — this year, the school is on track to graduate 2,300 — more students drop out of the Electronic Classroom or fail to finish high school within four years than at any other school in the country, according to federal data. For every 100 students who graduate on time, 80 do not.
Even as the national on-time graduation rate has hit a record high of 82 percent, publicly funded online schools like the Electronic Classroom have become the new dropout factories.
These schools take on students with unorthodox needs — like serious medical problems or experiences with bullying — that traditional districts may find difficult to meet. But with no physical classrooms and high pupil-to-teacher ratios, they cannot provide support in person.
“If you’re disconnected or struggling or you haven’t done well in school before, it’s going to be tough to succeed in this environment,” said Robert Balfanz, the director of the Everyone Graduates Center, a nonprofit research and advocacy group in Baltimore.
Virtual schools have experienced explosive growth nationwide in recent years, financed mostly by state money. But according to a report released on Tuesday by America’s Promise Alliance, a consortium of education advocacy groups, the average graduation rate at online schools is 40 percent.
Few states have as many students in e-schools as Ohio. Online charter schools here are educating one out of every 26 high school students, yet their graduation rates are worse than those in the state’s most impoverished cities, including Cleveland and Youngstown.
With 17,000 pupils, most in high school, the Electronic Classroom is the largest online school in the state. Students and teachers work from home on computers, communicating by email or on the school’s web platform at distances that can be hundreds of miles apart.
In 2014, the school’s graduation rate did not even reach 39 percent. Because of this poor record, as well as concerns about student performance on standardized tests, the school is now under “corrective action” by a state regulator, which is determining its next steps.
But while some students may not have found success at the school, the Electronic Classroom has richly rewarded private companies affiliated with its founder, William Lager, a software executive.
When students enroll in the Electronic Classroom or in other online charters, a proportion of the state money allotted for each pupil is redirected from traditional school districts to the cyberschools. At the Electronic Classroom, which Mr. Lager founded in 2000, the money has been used to help enrich for-profit companies that he leads. Those companies provide school services, including instructional materials and public relations.
For example, in the 2014 fiscal year, the last year for which federal tax filings were available, the school paid the companies associated with Mr. Lager nearly $23 million, or about one-fifth of the nearly $115 million in government funds it took in.”
Jeremy writes: While some want to blather on about the politics and their perceived corruption of tax dollars, I’ll stick to topic and discuss a better education for all.”
I think your teaching experience speaks well of you. And I understand your singular focus on it, and that you choose not to focus on other issues that others here are rightly concerned about, including me.
But I think your view that such talk is “blather” speaks not only to your ignorance of and closed mindedness about the larger matters that, in fact, concern your and other sites, which is not important to me in the long run, but also to your contempt for my own and others’ concerns, which I do care about–since you probably spread that contempt around as animals in a barnyard spread their excrement.
Your own view of your specific work is not to be critiqued here–but your contempt for others’ and our focus IS. If you cannot or won’t broaden your horizon in these matters, then kindly keep it to yourself? It’s most unbecoming to someone who claims to be an educator and, by that claim, who is supposed to model an open and inquiring mind.
“I think your teaching experience speaks well of you.”
Catherine, I do not think, Jeremy ever said, he had teaching experience. What I gather is that he might have done some teaching software development.
It’s important to realize that we don’t get clear facts from Jeremy.
Mate–oh . . . well . . . maybe I CAN put lipstick on a pig?
Jeremy “Here’s some raw data for you 2300+ total grads, 500+ with disabilities, 300+ graduating early, and 1200+ graduating late – interesting fact about the late grads… this number includes the 65% of new ECOT enrollees that start at ECOT already at least a year behind ”
How is this raw data? Here is how to present raw data:
Total number of OH graduates in 2016: 118,530
Source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_219.20.asp?current=yes
Again, 2300 is not 5% of 118,530 (as your PALS website states) but less than 2% of it.
My understanding is that the main problem between ECOT and the state of OH is that ECOT presented cooked numbers. Here you have a chance to show us the raw material. Do not help us understand the numbers, do not calculate percentages for us, just show us the source. We’ll do the rest.
Máté – Your understanding of ECOTs dispute with the Ohio Department of Education is not accurate. I happen to know quite well because my own child and I are victims of the ODE’s reckless actions. School funding in Ohio is based on enrollment. The ODE has been auditing ECOT and other eschool enrollment in a same manner for over a decade. ECOT and other eschools have successfully passed these audits for over a decade. At some point in the last year, ODE decided to arbitrarily update their internal manual on what data they use to validate student attendance… enrollment… and subsequent funding. The new data/attendance requirement was that eschool students must show 5 hours minimum of “logged on” time per day to be considered in class that day. On the surface and for those ignorant to how modern-day eschooling operates, I can understand how this measure can appear to be logical…. but it’s not. When you try to compare behinds in seat at traditional school to behinds on the other side of the screen at online school,,, it’s not a simple comparison. My superstar 4.0, national honor society and highly engaged ECOT student who passes all of the same state testing as her traditional school peers spends somewhere between 1-3 hours a day “logged on” to an interface that ECOT is able to document for the ODE’s requirement. In addition to these 1-3 hours, she completes much more educational activities both offline herself, on school sponsored trips, clubs and events and while logged into other learning sites outside of ECOTs online classrooms. Any logical person would assume that the ODE would account for all of this undocumented work in their measure but they haven’t. According to ODE’s new audit, my daughter was truant all last year. And regardless of her and her teachers work or her state testing scores. the limited state funding that ECOT received for her should be pulled from ECOT for LAST SCHOOL YEAR. There are a lot of things going on here but again I’ll refrain from getting too wrapped up in the politics and bureaucracy, I will say that the selective and retroactive enforcement of this new rule can be viewed as nothing less than a direct and coordinated attack. 5 hours daily “logged on” time is one of the most asinine things I’ve seen our ODE sponsor since I started paying attention to them a couple years ago. No educator worth their salt would agree that this is an effective measure of eschooler attendance… especially not as the single data driver behind determining enrollment for funding purposes. You see… I am angry and activated because this issue is directly affecting me, my child, her teachers and my tax dollars. It’s sad that most on this blog seem to be obsessed with their ride on the ECOT conspiracy train when what’s happening right in front of your eyes but behind the scenes with the ODE, the OEA and their various political operatives and organizations is so much more exciting.
I see. So why is ECOT and ECOTPALS give miraculous graduation percentages? Why should I believe that otherwise ECOT gives truthful numbers?