Alabama needs to fund its public schools properly but instead it is opening dubious charters and now a for-profit K12 Inc. online virtual school.
K12 makes a lot of profit but gets awful results. Low graduation rates, low participation, low teacher salaries. Just what a state would not want if it actually wanted to improve education.
Online virtual for-profit charter schools are the bottom feeders of the education industry. Even Reformer-Disrupters despise them.
Kevin Huffman (ex-husband of Michelle Rhee) was Commissioner of Education in Tennessee. He recognized that the Tennessee Virtual Academy was the worst School in the state. He tried to close it. He couldn’t.
Politics. Money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wake up Alabama.
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K12 Inc. depends on rapid expansion to keep solvent. More problems with K12 Inc. financially here: https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/parents-georgia-largest-public-school-worried-opening-day-looms/3hYPqct1cwF8HTAY4CUKqL/ and with their GA school here: https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/parents-learn-online-school-can-hard-reach-crisis/sXNC5YaAieL4t9r1P3VL5K/ and here: https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/parents-georgia-largest-public-school-worried-opening-day-looms/3hYPqct1cwF8HTAY4CUKqL/
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Years ago, K-12 was a struggling little operation. Then, the Bush Jr. administration passed its No Child Unpunished law, with its requirement that schools that failed to meet adequate yearly progress on standardized testing would have to be closed and replaced. But replaced with what? Hmmm. Somehow the Repugnican insider Bill Bennett became involved with K-12 as an alternative supplier of schooling at the very time when the federal law was requiring states to find alternatives! What synchronicity! Funny how these coincidences occur!!! And now, of course, online credit recovery is a big business for these online depersonalized education suppliers. There’s also a great market for this stuff not only as full-service alternative online charter school but as principal supplier of instruction for charter schools with brick-and-mortar facilities.
Isaac Asimov’s classic short story, “The Fun They Had”: http://web1.nbed.nb.ca/sites/ASD-S/1820/J%20Johnston/Isaac%20Asimov%20-%20The%20fun%20they%20had.pdf
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I read that Isaac Asimov story as a kid and always remembered it!
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Interesting that it imagines the words moving on the screen. As though they would scroll past the reader. And that homework would be put into a slot in the “mechanical teacher.”
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Alabama is late to the profiteering party so the greedy are trying to make up for lost time with this virtual iteration that claims to educate. I hope parents are wise enough to reject this “choice” as the track record for cyber schools is dismal.
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Isn’t it just astonishing that after failure after failure after failure, Alabama now wants to do this? The argument for state department people and administrators is that the credit recovery part lets them artificially boost their graduation rates. The kid who failed Algebra does the online class and makes it up. Sort of.
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All high-school kids in Florida are required to take one online course for graduation. My students told me that these are VERY easy.
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Can someone take Kevin Huffman’s screed and do a Mad-Libs insert of “charter school” into every instance that k12 Inc is referenced?
The irony is beyond sick…
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I am pleasantly surprised to hear that Kevin Huffman tried to do some good.
Maybe that’s why he has had custody of the kids.
&, as I’ve said on other posts, have been seeing K-12 commercials (metro Chicago area)
constantly during times vulnerable (or gullible–?) people would be watching: daytime tv & late, late night tv.
Constant.
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“At ALDCA, students can pair a solid academic foundation with hands-on learning experiences in growing career fields including, but not limited to: information technology, health and human services, and manufacturing.” How does an online academy manage “hands-on” career training?
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“Sucks out” – Bill Gates, John Arnold and the Koch’s have made their opinions against public pensions known. In Ohio, 20 years ago, the ratio of active teachers to beneficiaries was 1.8 to 1. Now, it is 1.1 to 1. Contractor (charter) schools erode teachers state pensions
The Education Commission posted a 50 state comparison focused on whether charter school teachers have access to a state retirement pension. I presume few TFA’s are in the pension system given their turnover. And, in cyber schools like ECOT’s teacher participation is unlikely as well.
In many states, the state retirement system was in lieu of Social Security and Medicare.
The system relied on mandatory participation which has been undercut by Gates’ privatization, a fact I am certain pleases the ruling class.
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