This paper was recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. While it gets technical fast, the conclusions should be of great interest to early childhood educators. While there is much that cannot be reliably measured, what is clear is the importance of the first five years of a child’s life.
You can download the paper here.
In this insightful and harrowing article, we can see clearly the contours of a devilish plan, hatched in the corridors of ALEC and other corporate-controlled entities. The centerpiece of the plan is the destruction and privatization of public education, which all of us own and paid for with our taxes.
Read it and get involved. Join the Networkfor Public Education. Join your local advocacy group. Never despair. Don’t stop fighting.
It begins like this:
It was the strike heard ‘round the country.
West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.
It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people.
If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life.
Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, and Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, help illuminate why this is happening, who is behind it, and what’s at stake as the educational system that once united Americans and prepared them for a life of social and economic mobility is wiped out of existence.
The Plan: Lower People’s Expectations
When Lafer began to study the tsunami of corporate-backed legislation that swept the country in early 2011 in the wake of Citizens United—the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums to influence the political system—he wasn’t yet clear what was happening. In state after state, a pattern was emerging of highly coordinated campaigns to smash unions, shrink taxes for the wealthy, and cut public services. Headlines blamed globalization and technology for the squeeze on the majority of the population, but Lafer began to see something far more deliberate working behind the scenes: a hidden force that was well-funded, laser-focused, and astonishingly effective.
Lafer pored over the activities of business lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – funded by giant corporations including Walmart, Amazon.com, and Bank of America—that produces “model legislation” in areas its conservative members use to promote privatization. He studied the Koch network, a constellation of groups affiliated with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. (Koch Industries is the country’s second-largest private company with business including crude oil supply and refining and chemical production). Again and again, he found that corporate-backed lobbyists were able to subvert the clear preferences of the public and their elected representatives in both parties. Of all the areas these lobbyists were able to influence, the policy campaign that netted the most laws passed, featured the most big players, and boasted the most effective organizations was public education. For these U.S. corporations, undermining the public school system was the Holy Grail.
After five years of research and the publication of The One Percent Solution, Lafer concluded that by lobbying to make changes like increasing class sizes, pushing for online instruction, lowering accreditation requirements for teachers, replacing public schools with privately-run charters, getting rid of publicly elected school boards and a host of other tactics, Big Business was aiming to dismantle public education.
The grand plan was even more ambitious. These titans of business wished to completely change the way Americans and their children viewed their life potential. Transforming education was the key.
Lisa Haver and Deborah Grill pose this question in an incisive article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
There was a national media flap when billionaire investor Stephen Schwarzman offered his alma mater in Abington, Pennsylvania, $25 million in exchange for renaming the school, putting his name over six entrances, and changing the curriculum to meet his demands. Ultimately, the board refused some but not all of his requirements.
Haver and Grill worked in the Philadelphia public schools. They say, “Welcome to our world,” where the Uber-rich have owned the public schools for years and run them into the ground.
”In November 2011, the state-imposed School Reform Commission (SRC), absent any public deliberation, approved a multimillion-dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In return, the SRC agreed to several conditions, including yearly charter expansion, implementation of Common Core standards, more school “choice” and testing, and permanent school closures. No one elected Bill Gates, typically portrayed in the media as just a very generous rich guy, to make decisions about Philadelphia’s public schools. But his mandates have had devastating and lasting effects on the district, much more than renaming one school.”
No one elected Bill Gates. An unelected board outsourced control of the Philadelphia public schools to an unaccountable billionaire. Why? Money. No evidence. No research. No wisdom. Just money. Goal: Privatization. Means: Silence the public.
“Here in Philadelphia, the Gates Compact conferred authority upon the Philadelphia School Partnership (PSP) “to provide funding …to low-performing or developing schools.” PSP has since raised tens of millions from a stable of wealthy donors; most has gone to charter schools, in keeping with Gates’ pro-privatization ideology. PSP’s influence has grown in the last seven years: the group now funds and operates teacher and principal training programs, oversees a website rating all Philadelphia schools, and holds the district’s yearly high school fair. PSP’s money, like Schwarzman’s, always comes with strings attached, whether that means changing a school’s curriculum or a complete overhaul of faculty and staff, as its 2014 grant to two North Philadelphia schools mandated.”
The PSP meetings are closed to the public. Its board members are wealthy suburbanites.
There is something to be said for democracy. Why has Philadelphia prevented its citizens from having any role in the o ersight of the public schools? Could those who have a genuine stake in them do worse than the rich dilettantes who control them now?
A reader recently noted that the multi-billion dollar Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative had hired Dr. Bror Saxberg to lead their efforts “to improve and accelerate the use of learning science and ‘learning engineering.” Before joining the CZI in 2017, Saxberg was “Chief Learning Officer” at the for-profit Online Kaplan “University,” where he worked for eight years. Before that, he was “Chief Learning Officer” for nine years at Michael Milken’s for-profit virtual charter chain K12 Inc., which is notorious for high atttrition and poor results. He also co-authored a book with Rick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. The announcement said that he is “widely known through education for his work on the science of learning,” but I confess I never heard of him until now.
What is a “learning engineer?” Let Bror Saxberg explain it.
Read the article to understand. Here is a nugget.
“We need learning engineers. By this phrase (first used, as far as I am aware, in the 1960’s by Herbert Simon, the computer-scientist and Nobel-prize winning economist), we mean people who are deliberately trained and focused on designing and systematically improving learning environments at scale in measurable ways. They make use of the current and new science of how learning and motivation work, and they do collect careful measurements, but the focus is on improving success and impact at scale, within constraints (economic, regulatory, practical), not research per se.
“If we are designing a new chemical factory, we very likely don’t want chemists designing that plant: they’re neither experienced nor interested in regulatory, safety, or economic issues, nor do they possess the mix of mechanical and other skills needed to do the job. That’s why there’s a demand for a large group of chemical engineers: approximately 30 thousand of them currently (rounding to the nearest thousand or so) work in the US.
“There are approximately zero thousand true learning engineers working in the US, rounding to the nearest thousand, who are trained and following learning science, and also working at scale within real-world constraints to design, build, and measurably iterate based on outcomes. The lack of folks like this will hold back the entire enterprise of implementing more efficient, effective, higher-yield learning environments: we will miss targeting learning efforts on what experts actually decide and do (versus what they merely say they decide and do); we will continue to include inefficient methods for learning that cause many to fail unnecessarily; we will use technology in more arbitrary rather than targeted ways (which, in failing to produce intended outcomes while being “cool”, will cause investment to continue to cycle from boom to bust); we will not generate valid and reliable evidence that we could use to target interventions early and effectively (and, indeed, we may drown in bad data that we “should” be using).
“We can do better than this. We can begin to train more people on learning engineering fundamentals, to improve their own decision-making as teachers, teacher-trainers (teachers have minds too, so this is its own learning engineering challenge), purchasing decision-makers, publishers, edtech developers, venture and other funders, philanthropists, policymakers and more. We can begin laying out more clearly what learning environments would look like if they had been well-designed as learning engineered environments, and hold folks increasingly accountable to reach that standard. We can become more alert to the quality and use of learning and learning interventions data, so that we are aware of what evidence is “good enough” to make real decisions about learning environments, either at scale or for individual students.”
Well, you would not want chemists to design a new chemical factory, nor would you want teachers to design a school of the future.
Get ready for the Learning Engineers. They are coming to redesign your workplace and your life.
Can we ask for a practical demonstration of “Learning Engineering” before we unleash this new wave of innovation on our children, teachers, and schools? In one state, school district, in one school? Anywhere?
This is a historic moment. Teachers have walked out in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Kentucky.
Today they walk out in Arizona and Colorado.
There will be more.
Huffington Post invited me to explain the reasons for this mass rebellion here.
I referred to the work of Bruce Baker and the Education Law Center about school funding, comparing the states. And I referred to the work of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities about the failure of many states to fund schools since the recesssion of 2008.
The bottom line: do we care about our children, our future, our society?
This just in! Cynthia Nixon calls for repeal of test-based evaluation of teachers. This law was passed to meet the non-evidence-based demands of Race to the Top. It has been a complete failure in New York. The American Statistical Association said in 2014 that individual teachers should not be evaluated by the test scores of their students. Highly flawed and inaccurate!
For Immediate Release
April 26, 2018
Contact: press@cynthiafornewyork.com
Cynthia Nixon Calls for Repeal of Cuomo’s Failed APPR Teacher Evaluation System
Diane Ravitch joins other educators in launching ‘Educators for Cynthia’ to elect a bona fide public education advocate who prioritizes learning, not testing in New York schools
BUFFALO, NY — On the eve of the New York State United Teachers Representative Assembly in Buffalo, Cynthia Nixon, candidate for governor, called on Andrew Cuomo today to immediately repeal the teacher evaluation system he championed. Known as the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system relies on high-stakes testing to evaluate teachers. Education historian Diane Ravitch and dozens of New York educators are rallying behind Cynthia Nixon’s demands with the launch of Educators for Cynthia. Signers include teachers, principals, school board members, superintendents, SUNY and CUNY professors, and former NYSUT statewide officers.
At the time APPR was enacted, Cuomo described it as “one of the greatest legacies for me and the state.” But it helped spur 25 percent of parents to opt out of state tests and was roundly denounced by educators and advocates. Cuomo has since tried to distance himself from the APPR, but it remains on the books, including requirements for additional standardized tests that serve no educational purposes other than to grade teachers.
“A couple years ago Andrew Cuomo described teacher evaluation based on high stakes testing as one of his greatest legacies, now he is hoping that parents and teachers have forgotten all about it,” Cynthia Nixon said. “Enough of the delays and excuses Governor Cuomo, it is time to repeal the APPR now.”
“Cynthia Nixon has a vision that will put education on the right track by refocusing New York schools on the dignity of teaching and the joy of learning,” said Diane Ravitch, education historian. “She will provide the resources our children need to succeed. Andrew Cuomo’s policies have disrespected teachers as a profession and undermined the education of our children.”
The “Educators for Cynthia” group cites additional education reform priorities Cynthia supports including: providing students a rich and balanced curriculum rather than one oriented around standardized tests; ensuring equitable school funding by fully funding Foundation Aid; and delivering fair and full funding for SUNY and CUNY to expand opportunity and improve quality.
“Our public school teachers must be treasured and lifted up for the hard work they do every day in the classroom educating our children. Instead, Andrew Cuomo has vilified and punished teachers, underfunded our neediest schools and deprived students of the educational opportunities and social and emotional supports they need, and placed SUNY and CUNY on a starvation diet which undermines the quality of higher education and decreases opportunities for students who need a leg up,” Cynthia said. “As governor I will make public education from pre-K through college a top priority, our children and our future depends on it.”
“Andrew Cuomo is the king of test and punish education reform,” said Marla Kilfoyle, a teacher in the Oceanside Schools. “He insisted that teachers had to be evaluated based upon standardized tests even though all the evidence said it was bankrupt idea. He has refused to repeal his own failed policy and Cynthia Nixon is a breath of fresh air. She has a strong record on standing up for our public schools and teachers and I am proud to support her.”
Anyone interested in joining Educators for Cynthia can do so at http://cynthiafornewyork.com/educators.
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Professor Kenneth Zeichner of the University of Washington has studied and written extensively about teacher education.
In this interview, he sharply criticizes the “independent teacher prep programs” that have sprung up in recent years to provide newly minted teachers for charter schools. The most conspicuous example of such a program is the Relay Graduate zschool of Education, which claims to be a graduate school but has none of the requisite features of a graduate school. No scholars, no studies of the foundations of education, no concern about Research. In effect, this school and others like it focus solely on discipline and test scores.
“Instead of making the status quo permanent by increasing the supply of under-prepared, inexperienced, and short-term teachers in high-poverty schools, we should seek to eliminate this situation. We should invest in a high quality college and university system of teacher education as has been done in leading education systems in the world. We should provide greater incentives for fully certified, and experienced, teachers to work for more than a few years in schools attended primarily by students living in poverty. Finally, we should make sure that the public resources in these schools and communities are comparable to those in wealthier communities.
“Relay currently promotes itself as a solution to teacher shortages, especially shortages of teachers of color. While they may have increased the percentage of teachers of color in their cohorts, they do not present retention data or evidence that they actually are contributing to solving the problem of teacher shortages or shortages of teachers of color. Most of their teachers are prepared in and for charter schools, and there is no public data as to where they teach post graduation, how long they stay, and how well they teach beyond the hand-picked testimonials they advertise.
“The teaching shortages in districts throughout the U.S. are real and very troubling, but fueling the pipeline with uncertified and underprepared teachers isn’t the solution. Most scholars who have studied these issues such as Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania and Linda Darling Hammond of the Learning Policy Institute, conclude that the shortages result from teacher attrition more than the underproduction of teachers, and that attrition is a consequence of low teacher compensation and benefits, poor induction and working conditions, as well the general blaming and shaming of teachers for the problems of society and the accountability systems that have been developed reflecting this view.
“What we need to do is to improve teacher compensation and working conditions, including access to high quality teacher professional development. We also need to ensure that the pre-service preparation for teaching they receive is of high quality.
“The shortage of teachers of color is also a serious problem, but it won’t be solved by investing in entrepreneurial programs like Relay. Subsidizing the preparation of teachers in the public universities that prepare most of the nation’s teachers as is done in other leading educational systems in the world will create the conditions for a well-prepared, and more diverse workforce.”
Eva Moskowitz just received a gift of $15 million from billionaire Dan Loeb, chair of the board of Eva’s Success Academy. Just last year, Loeb received negative public attention for comments widely regarded as racist after he chastised the leading Democrat in the State Senate—who is African American, saying she did more damage to children of color than anyone who ever wore a hood because of her criticism of charter schools.
Many people denounced Loeb’s remarks and called on him to resign, but Eva stood by him. Her forbearance was rewarded with his $15 million to her high school, which just graduated 17 students (of a class that started in kindergarten as 100). Loeb said he hoped that Eva could make her model “scalable.”
How a school with a shedding/dropout/attrition rate of 83% becomes “scalable” is mysterious.
The charter chain plans to open eight new high schools by 2033.
Here is the curious math.
Only 17 students were members of Success Academy’s first graduating class. All 17 are going to college. These are the students that survived the original 100 that enrolled in kindergarten.
That is many many millions of dollars invested to produce 17 graduates who are college bound.
Of the 32 students who graduated from eighth grade at Success charters, nine attended other high schools before going to Success Academy’s High School of the Liberal Arts. Five left before graduating.
Honestly, I don’t understand the math. I can’t figure out how this adds up to 17 graduates, but maybe someone else will and can explain it in a comment.
PS:
Eliza Shapiro explained the math of SA graduation rate to me.
“Basically 32 kids started their 8th grade year together at Success
9 left after 8th grade to go to other high schools and never enrolled/matriculated/entered SA HS
5 other kids enrolled at SA HS and left between the start of their freshman year to the present
That’s all I know! :)”
17 graduated. One may have been held back. Unaccounted for.
Teachers who worked at Chicago’s leading charter chain spoke out to NPR and described their discomfort with the strict disciplinary code. Some called it “dehumanizing.”
“The trend toward school choice has educators across the country looking at Chicago’s Noble Charter Schools — an award-winning network of mostly high schools that specializes in helping inner-city kids achieve the kind of SAT scores that propel them into four-year universities. But despite its prestigious reputation, Noble has a peculiarly high teacher turnover rate.
“And some of those teachers are speaking up about policies they describe as “dehumanizing.”
“Noble’s handbook lists more than 20 behaviors that can elicit demerits. The dress code, for example, requires students to wear light khakis, plain black leather belts,
“Kerease Epps, who taught at Noble’s Hansberry College Prep, made sure to arrive by seven o’clock every day to help students with curved lines in their hair avoid punishment.
”“Every morning, I would color in two of my boys’ parts,” she says. ”I had a hefty amount of eyeliner at my desk, so I’d just color in with black or brown eyeliner.”
“Ann Baltzer taught chemistry at Hansberry. When one of her female students showed up with braids that included strands of maroon — the school color — the girl was told she couldn’t attend class. So she asked Baltzer to use a black marker to obliterate the maroon in each braid. The teacher looks back on that as not only unnecessary, but racist.
“To have a system that results in a white woman having to color on a black woman’s hair, and if I don’t, she’s excluded from education, there’s something wrong with that,” Baltzer says…”
Some teachers like the strict discipline and the culture change it promotes.
But turnover among teachers is high, in part because of the culture of the schools.
“It’s a completely dehumanizing system, both for teachers and students,” Baltzer says.
“One of the policies that made her most uncomfortable was demanding “level zero,” or complete silence, in the hallways during passing period, which she says teachers could activate by yelling “hands up.”
“Teachers were applauded if you had the ability to shut down the hallway,” Baltzer says. “We had no awareness that it would be inappropriate to shout ‘hands up’ at a hallway full of black children. And so we had white teachers shouting ‘Hands up’ and kids putting their hands up and going silent. That is insane.”
A whistleblower informed state education officials that ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) had used software that inflated its enroll,wants and its state reimbursements. He filed his complaint in early August but state officials ignored it until December.
ECOT’s lobbyist disagreed.
“COLUMBUS, Ohio — Education regulators are reviewing a whistleblower’s claim that Ohio’s then-largest online charter school intentionally inflated attendance figures tied to its state funding using software it purchased after previous allegations of attendance inflation, The Associated Press has learned.
“A former technology employee of the now-shuttered Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow said he told the Ohio Department of Education last year that school officials ordered staff to manipulate student data with software obtained following the state’s demand that it return $60 million in overpayments for the 2015-2016 school year. He also took his claims to Republican Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, whose office said they were incorporated into a financial audit being prepared for release.
“The employee spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions for speaking out. His concerns were first raised in an Aug. 3 email to the state a month before it released its 2017 attendance review of ECOT.
“The state challenged ECOT over how it claimed student time using the new software, called ActivTrak, after finding that it duplicated learning hours, according to Education Department spokeswoman Brittany Halpin.”
ProgressOhio reported:
Columbus – Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that the Ohio Department of Education is reviewing allegations that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) deliberately inflated attendance records in order to get more money from the state. Though a whistleblower initially contacted the Department in August 2017, officials did not interview him until December.
“Manipulating attendance records is the cherry on top of ECOT’s cake of fraud that it keeps trying to serve Ohio taxpayers,” said ProgressOhio’s Monica Moran. “While taxpayers are happy to see that these claims are being looked at, it seems that once again the state is slow-walking the investigation. Ohio regulators cannot put their heads in the sand like they did for years while ECOT was still operating.”
From the report:
“A former technology employee of the now-shuttered Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow said he told the Ohio Department of Education last year that school officials ordered staff to manipulate student data with software obtained following the state’s demand that it return $60 million in overpayments for the 2015-2016 school year…
The whistleblower told the AP that the first run on the new software returned results showing students with just more than half the hours needed to justify ECOT’s full reported enrollment — and, with that, its full state payment. He shared his assessment with the Education Department’s top lawyer, Diane Lease, in an Aug. 3 email.”
Another perspective, taken from a personal email to me from a parent in Ohio, including the whistleblower’s letter:
In an Aug. 3, 2017, email, a whistle-blower who calls himself ECOT Voice sent explosive information to ODE Legal Counsel Diane Lease. He said ECOT implemented a new system to intentionally inflate its attendance and warned ODE to get back-up documentation of the attendance padding. Instead, ODE took ECOT’s word for the higher enrollment.
ECOT Voice urged the state to “demand clear documentation of the role of the ActivTrak software, how the data aggregation process distinguishes academic work from other use of the student computers, how much idle-time is allowed between verified student interactions, and how that data is used in relation to the other verified academic sources (the iQity Learning Management System, the Blackboard Collaborate online sessions, and other imported sources).
I have met with, and spoken to, ECOT Voice multiple times and verified his employment with ECOT. He said ECOT purchased new software from ActivTrak that allows the school count as classroom time anytime a window is opened on a student’s laptop. The whistleblower estimated that the new software allows ECOT to improperly collect an additional $10-20 million per school year.
It appears as if the “clear documentation” he urged Lease to obtain is readily available. I telephoned ActivTrack and spoke with both the salesman who handles the ECOT account and the CEO. They said ECOT purchased 20,000 copies of ActivTrak and provides ODE with two sets of reports: One that shows ALL time on the computer, another provides very detailed breakdowns of student activity.
We know that ECOT Voice’s warning was ignored because a Nov. 19, 2017, report in the Columbus Dispatch, states that ODE relied on ECOT’s attendance figures, clearly showing that the agency did not take ECOT Voice’s suggestion to “demand clear documentation of the role of the ActivTrak software….’’
From the Dispatch:
When the Ohio Department of Education audited ECOT’s attendance for a second school year last summer, the embattled online charter’s verified attendance went up more than 80 percent, and the amount it was forced to repay was $19.2 million, down from $60 million the previous year.
But documents show that the state used different methods during the second audit completed over the summer, as the two sides bickered over how to handle it. Instead of figuring out the attendance itself, as it had done in the previous year, the department asked the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow on July 31 to compile computer records showing how many hours a year students performed classwork.
The process did not go smoothly. By mid-August, according to correspondence between the charter school and the department, the department was complaining to ECOT that “the manner in which the data was provided did not allow the department to validate the summary data” with ECOT’s underlying daily attendance records.
On Aug. 30, ECOT submitted yet more data that the state used “as the basis for the final determination.” In the end, the department signed off on the much-higher attendance number, but with the following caveat: “This final determination was based on the records provided by ECOT to the department,” Aaron Rausch, the department’s director of budget and school funding, wrote ECOT on Sept. 28.
Exactly what all this means about the independence of the latest audit is unclear. Neither Rausch nor department spokeswoman Brittany Halpin would answer questions about the most recent review, which ECOT will begin challenging before an arbitrator next month.
Here is the full email that warned of attendance padding:
From: ECOT Voice <ecotvoice@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 3, 2017 at 4:24 PM
Subject: ECOT Related Inquiry
To: Diane.Lease@education.ohio.gov
Ms. Lease,
I am a former ECOT employee who was referred to you by Tess Elshoff. She declined to accept my approaching her due to pending litigation with ECOT.
As ODE is in the midst of evaluating the accuracy of reported engagement data from ECOT, I believe it to be an opportune time to express my concerns over the funding claims based upon that data. I am not an endorser of the change in how ODE is evaluating the services rendered and the resulting funding model change; nevertheless, I am also not supportive of claiming funds based upon suspect data.
While employed by ECOT (until July of this year) I had occasion to be present when strategies for calculating the per-pupil “educational opportunity” were considered, including various models tested by ECOT prior to submission. The primary concern I would raise relates to how statistics were gathered that may not have sufficiently distinguished between non-academic and academic usage of systems, as well as the methods used to assess whether students were active or idle while logged on may have been overly generous in allocating classroom time during inactivity.
As I understand, the typical audit of selected students is unlikely to delve into the original source data used to determine the duration of student work sessions and the assumptions that may have been encoded in the processing of the raw data. I would strongly advise that the audit process demand clear documentation of the role of the ActivTrak software, how the data aggregation process distinguishes academic work from other use of the student computers, how much idle-time is allowed between verified student interactions, and how that data is used in relation to the other verified academic sources (the iQity Learning Management System, the Blackboard Collaborate online sessions, and other imported sources).
While recent news reports indicate that a modest percentage of the audited students may have raised concern and identified need for further research, I am concerned that the scope of questionable data might be much larger. Internal opinion at the time of my departure was that actual verifiable academic engagement is not likely to be much greater than 50% of the enrolled FTEs (a bit better than the 41% of last year) but that submitted data will represent a much higher funding rate than that — even on the order of 80% or higher. A level many find difficult to believe.
Please consider this as a communication from a concerned citizen of the State of Ohio and forward its content as you deem appropriate for the purposes of completing an trustworthy audit of the public interest in charter school funding.
Regards,
E
