Although the owner of the so-called Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow has collected over $1 billion in the 15 years he has owned the low-performing School, the State has demanded that he repay $60 million for inflated enrollment.
William Lager fought the judgment and lost in court.
Now the authorizer is cancelling its contract with ECOT.
We can call it the Electronic Classroom of Yesterday.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yay!
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Second your, “Yay!”
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This is a mess though, for the students. Ed reformers in this state literally had 2 years to plan for closure of this school and they did absolutely nothing to transition these families into other schools.
Lake Erie West should lose authorizing status. It is ridiculous that they allowed the entire burden of THEIR poor oversight and planning to fall on the charter students and the public schools that will be receiving the ECOT students.
Are we clawing back any of the 3% authorizing cut they got? We should. We can use it to cover the cost of getting these kids back into school.
What if a public school acted this recklessly? Just announced they did no planning and were closing? Charters and their authorizers act this recklessly because they CAN, because they know every single one of these kids has a public school district to return to.
What happens when one of these giant schools closes and Ohio’s public schools don’t have the immediate capacity to absorb the students? What then?
They take the public system for granted, like it will always be there to absorb the risk inherent in these experiments. What if it isn’t?
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C, It would be great if the ECOT students & families invited Betsy Devious to visit & discuss the ramifications of her highly touted “choice.” Invite her via social media, local news networks, lots of public attention.
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If this were your children, and all of this were going on, why would you keep your them enrolled there? Parents need to have some accountability too.
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Yes, Lake Erie West is on the hook for $800,000 and Altair $10,000,000. Auditor Yost has threatened to go after Lager, the owner, personally but the money is probably out of reach and in the Caymans.
The ECOT students are great, but they will bring special challenges. As teachers, we would have to make thousands of phone calls a year or do countless home visits to track down truant students. I do not know if those efforts are planned in the home districts. Under H.B. 400, it is now the primary responsibility of school districts to deal with truancy, not the courts. Good luck.
This whole effort to shut down ECOT was a personal vendetta by Kasich against Lager from the 2016 election. Students, parents, teachers are disposable.
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If these charter parents and students are angry that no one planned and no one even considered the fall out they should take those complaints DIRECTLY to the ed reformers in the Ohio statehouse who sat back and watched while this giant school slowly collapsed over 2 years. They knew it was collapsing but they all took donations from Lager so no one wanted to pull the plug last summer and close it in some kind of orderly fashion.
“Students first”, my eye. The students were the LAST priority.
Charter schools in Ohio are STATE schools. If these charter families are wondering why their school was treated like a fast food franchise that went out of business they can go ask all the state representatives why they sat back and did nothing to plan for this.
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Now, let’s see if they try to recover additional squandered funds from those who fed at the charter scam trough. Make them a take it or leave it offer of keeping the minimum wage for 1/2 the time actually worked and forfeiture of the rest.
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Electric Classroom of Yesterday — Good one, Diane.
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As teachers at ECOT, we tried. But holding students accountable for work was not the way the upper management wanted to operate. If you did, you got “the call” or, I was told, demoted. ECOT benefited a good number of students who were ill, bullied, disabled, or experiencing family breakdown and homelessness. But there were also too many who gamed the system and took short cuts.
In the end, Kasich will get to say he’s tough on schools as he runs for president, the ECOT owners and associates will keep millions, OEA shuts down a non-union school, and districts get some more cash – though some challenges to go with it.
Students, parents, and teachers lose as collateral damage in a political clash of titans between Kasich and Lager.
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