The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow may become the Electronic Classroom of Yesterday.
ECOT may lose its sponsor and may be forced to close unless some other entity eager to collect 3% of every dollar steps forward.
http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180110/ecot-losing-sponsor-could-close-next-week
ECOT has collected over a billion dollars from Ohio taxpayers over its 15 or so years, thanks to campaign contributions of a few millions a year.
Governor Kasich and other state officials have spoken at its graduation ceremonies. The New York Times said that ECOT has the lowest graduation rate of any high school in the nation.
ECOT recently was required to repay the state of Ohio over $60 million for inflated enrollment and phantom students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The biggest scandal wasn’t the falsified attendance numbers. The biggest scandal was this:
“nearly $200 million in payments to companies run by school founder Bill Lager”
ECOT takes in public money and then subcontracts with a set of for-profit companies all run by Bill Lager or his family members. It was impossible for the public to find out where the money was going because charter regulations are (deliberately) lax- Lager himself lobbied to KEEP them lax so he could operate in the dark.
The only oversight came from the ed reform chorus in Columbus – that’s why it took 15 years for the public to find out about it.
If this had happened in my local school district it would have been uncovered in a year because public schools have local regulators (the county auditor reviews their financials) and they have annual reporting requirements. The county auditor HAS to review their financials because public schools are a “taxing entity” in Ohio- they have the ability to levy local taxes. That’s what triggers the local review.
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