ECOT is the largest virtual charter school in Ohio and among the lowest-performing schools in the state. It has thrived over the years because its founder, William Lager, has given generously to elected officials. The New York Times reported last year that ECOT had the largest graduating class in the nation, but also the lowest high school graduation rate in the nation.
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, an online charter school based here, graduated 2,371 students last spring. At the commencement ceremony, a student speaker triumphantly told her classmates that the group was “the single-largest graduating high school class in the nation.”
What she did not say was this: 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.
Virtual online charters, said the Times, are the new “dropout factories.”
Having abysmal results was not enough to cause a problem for ECOT. If it were a brick and mortar public school, it would have been closed down.
What caused a problem was that the state audited ECOT’s attendance and found that a substantial number of students were phantom. They either did not exist, never logged on, or logged on for a minute or two.
The state sued ECOT, and won a decision that ECOT owed the state $60 million for inflated attendance numbers. ECOT maintains that the state has no right to audit their numbers. Ha.
Now ECOT is flooding the TV space with heartrending advertisements about how the state is picking on the school. And, here is a true demonstration of chutzpah: ECOT is using taxpayer money to pay for the ads defending its right to avoid auditing.
State Auditor Dave Yost has called out ECOT for its audacity. Yost has ordered ECOT to stop using taxpayer dollars to attack the court’s order to repay the state $60.4 million.
Ohio Auditor Dave Yost has ordered ECOT to stop using taxpayers dollars on television ads attacking the state Department of Education’s decision to seek repayment of $60.4 million, saying the commercials are not proper expenditures “and are impermissible.”
In a letter to the giant online charter dated Friday, Yost said he was writing ECOT “to demand that you act without delay to cease and desist the expenditure of public funds” being used for ads.
ECOT has not yet responded, but it is maneuvering in the Legislature to get the debt deferred until it has time for more appeals.
In the latest ad, signed at the end by “Ohio’s children,” a former ECOT student says: “The Ohio Department of Education wants to end school choice and stop parents from deciding what’s best for their children. That’s why I and the over 36,000 students and alumni of ECOT are hoping our elected leaders fix what’s broken and save our school.”
Thank you, Auditor Yost, for upholding the law and requiring accountability even from a big campaign contributor!
As for ECOT, its results speak for themselves: Close it down.
Yost is currying favor for higher office.
He failed to do anything for too long, allowing ECOT to thrive and rob taxpayers.
Ya know, the owner/operator of ECOT has already stolen, oops, I mean made a shitpot full of money. Why not just shut down, go retire somewhere and we’d be done with his/her thieving ways.
Glad to see the auditor did this.
Close Them Down. Then lock Lager in a 6x6x6 cell and weld Will’s cell shut – not to be opened until the 22nd century.
This is just business as usual. You can be sure that the public will always pay (and keep paying) for the malfeasance of businesses as happened when the big banks were bailed out with trillions after committing massive fraud during the housing bubble.
Also, when big companies are actually forced to pay fines for fraud (which does appen on rare occasion) commit fraud, a substantial part of the fine is often written off as a tax deduction.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-80-billion-in-coporate-fines-can-become-48-billion-in-tax-breaks/
So the public pays and keeps paying.
You know, because as Senator Dick Durbin once noted about Congress, “Frankly, they [big banks and other corporations] own the place”
The only reason DS Betsy Devos wants these charter schools is her family can get richer and continue to scam this country. Look at what the walton family owns and follow the money. This country is on the way down badly with the sh*t we have in DC.
Just so you know, regular people who aren’t politically connected can’t do this in Ohio. They can’t stiff the state and get a “reprimand”.
If this were an average Ohio citizen the state would get the money- they’d do what they had to do- put liens on property, garnish wages, whatever it takes.
ECOT gets special treatment because they’re politically connected. The word for that is “corrupt”.
Ohio COULD do all kinds of things to regulate ECOT. They have the tools. Ohio CHOOSES to do nothing.
After all of the fleecing of Ohioans by contractor schools (documented) and the anticipated future fleecing… after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that assets bought by taxpayers for contractor schools did not belong to the community… U.S. Sen. Brown asked for federal taxpayer money to expand contractor schools in Ohio.
Oligarch-funded (Gates), Washington-based stink tank, Public Agenda, with Pete Peterson (Social Security destroyer) as an honorary board member, identified ODE as a “funder”. ODE and Ohio politicians burning Ohioans in every way possible.
This is what tech billionaire Sam Altman said in an interview I just read in the online New York Times California Today “section”): We’re not that far away from a world where all repetitive human work that does not have an emotional component like [that of] a doctor or a teacher is going to be done by software.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/us/california-today-sam-altman-y-combinator.html
What?
Teaching is repetitive?!
Teaching does not have an emotional component?!?
Teachers will be COMPLETELY REPLACED by software?!?!
Do tech executives understand anything about human beings or “human work”? Do they understand anything about child neurological or cognitive development? Do they know there is a social component to developing minds? Do tech executives know anything other than tech? Robot doctors? Really. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them had created robot friends for themselves so they could have as little interaction as possible with humans. It would explain some things.
You know, on second glance, I think I misread that quote this morning. Sorry to waste your time, Diane