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Congressman Collins and Conflicts of Interest

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
7

By Now, you have probably read about Congressman Chris Collins (R-NY), who has “suspended” his campaign while promising that he would be vindicated after the FBI accused him of insider trading. He allegedly alerted his son to dump stock in a drug company whose premier drug failed clinical trials, causing the shares to drop 90% of their market value.

The story is worse than what has been widely reported.

“The three-term congressman’s infectious enthusiasm for Innate Immunotherapeutics, the tiny biotech firm, led to his indictment on Wednesday, when he and several other investors were accused of insider trading. Prosecutors said that he tipped off his son to the poor results of the company’s clinical drug trial for a notoriously intractable form of multiple sclerosis before they were public, allowing the son and others to dump their stock and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Collins sat on the company’s board until May, and at one point was its largest shareholder.

“The stock scandal has rippled through Congress, where his favorite stock tip had enticed at least seven former or current House Republicans into investing along with him, his two grown children and other friends. It provided new ammunition for Democrats seeking to take back the House, and forced Mr. Collins to announce on Saturday that he would not seek re-election to a fourth term.

“In his statement, Mr. Collins called the insider trading charges “meritless” and vowed to fight them to have his “good name cleared of any wrongdoing….”

Mr. Collins may have been the largest investor in health companies on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but one-third of its members also bought and sold biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device stocks, an analysis by The New York Times has found. Republican Representatives William Long II and Markwayne Mullin served with Mr. Collins on the panel’s health subcommittee and invested in Innate. The subcommittee weighed in on topics ranging from the Food and Drug Administration’s authority over speeding up approval of new drugs to the Affordable Care Act.

“Beyond Innate Immunotherapeutics, Mr. Collins, among the wealthiest members of Congress, has held leadership roles in other biotech companies that were little known or mentioned on Capitol Hill. Until this past week, he was chairman of the board of directors of ZeptoMetrix, a private lab company based in Buffalo that he co-founded and that has received millions of dollars in federal contracts, according to government records. He also reported owning between $25 million and $50 million in shares of the company, but has since transferred an unknown amount into his wife’s name, a company spokesman said. In June, he sold as much as $1 million of stock in Chembio Diagnostics, a medical tests and equipment manufacturer, according to his ethics disclosure forms.

“Mr. Collins did not disclose these ties in committee hearings when topics overlapped with his business interests, including the development of a test for the Zika virus and whether the F.D.A. should more closely regulate some types of lab tests. Earlier, in 2013, he brought up the experimental drug that Innate was developing in a hearing about brain research, but did not mention his financial stake in the company.

“Mr. Collins had no business serving on this publicly traded company from the get-go,” said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a Washington ethics watchdog organization, who noted that such a practice was not permitted in the Senate. “The House needs to update its rules.”

“Since 2012, a federal law has prevented members of Congress from trading stocks based on confidential information they receive as lawmakers. Members of both chambers are permitted to hold stocks and members of the House of Representatives may serve on boards as long as they disclose it. Generally, lawmakers don’t have to recuse themselves from a vote or other action that might affect their holdings unless they are virtually the only investor who would benefit…

“His involvement with Innate surfaced in December of 2015, and came up again during the confirmation of Tom Price for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Price’s active investment in pharmaceutical and health care stocks drew scrutiny — and calls for an investigation — from Democrats. Mr. Price divested from his stock in Innate before becoming secretary, and later resigned from his Cabinet post after his use of expensive charter flights on government trips became public.

“By comparison, little attention has been paid to Mr. Collins’s connection to ZeptoMetrix, a company he helped found in 1999 that supplies viruses, bacteria and other products to laboratories around the country.

“Mr. Collins has said that his 50-percent holdings in ZeptoMetrix are in the name of his wife and daughter. The family’s interest in the company ranges from $25 million to $50 million, according to Mr. Collins’s financial disclosure forms. They earned $1 million to $5 million in interest from ZeptoMetrix. His wife, Mary Collins, receives a salary from the company, according to the disclosure….

“A spokeswoman for Mr. Collins on Friday pointed to statements that he made during a hearing in 2016 about bioresearch labs that disclosed that he founded and led a lab company. However, Mr. Collins did not reveal during the hearing that he remained on its board, nor his ongoing financial stake.

“In January, the outgoing chief executive of ZeptoMetrix, Gregory R. Chiklis, sued the company in New York State Supreme Court, accusing the company of financial irregularities, including paying “phantom employees” annual salaries of $500,000. Mr. Chiklis also said that Mr. Collins “unilaterally” made most decisions.”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, For-Profit, Fraud

This is What Privatization Looks Like: Schools Bought and Sold

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2018 //
16

Why should taxpayers subsidize corporations that buy and sell schools to one another as one fails and the other picks up the offloaded franchise?

Vote them all out of office in November!

Reader Chiara wrote:

“By June of this year, White Hat’s once prolific presence in Ohio had shriveled to a single online school — Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy (OHDELA) — and 10 “Life Skills” centers, which deliver computer-based GED courses to academically faltering teens and young adults.

Virginia-based Accel Schools, which is amassing an education empire the likes of which hasn’t been seen since White Hat dominated the Ohio landscape, has bought out the contract for OHDELA.

Utah-based Fusion Education Group (FusionED) is taking over contracts for seven of the Life Skills centers, including the North Akron branch in a Chapel Hill storefront at 1458 Brittain Road.

Life Skills Northeast Ohio on Larchmere Boulevard in Cleveland has hired Oakmont Education LLC, a company associated with Cambridge Education Group. White Hat could find no buyer for the last two centers, which will close at 4600 Carnegie Ave. in Cleveland and 3405 Market St. in Youngstown.

Information on White Hat’s off-loading of assets came via the schools’ sponsors: the Ohio Council of Community Schools, which oversaw OHDELA and two Life Skills schools, and St. Aloysius Orphanage, a Cincinnati social service provider. ”

This is what privatization looks like. These schools are 100% taxpayer-funded yet they’re being bought and sold by private entities.

All they’re doing is replacing one garbage contractor with others.

Ohio needs to clean house of state-level politicians and get some new people in there.

This situation will not improve until we break the stranglehold these contractors and their lobbyists have on state government.

Old wine, new bottles.

https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/local/schools-out-for-white-hat-david-brennans-pioneering-for-profit-company-exits-ohio-charter-scene

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

The Best Quote of the Year

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
7

Do you remember that the 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” warned about the terrible condition of America’s public schools, setting off the frenzy of “reform” that has now fermented into high-stakes testing, privatization, profiteering, closing schools, firing teachers and principals, and enriching testing companies?

Here is a description of the composition of the Commission that wrote the report:

The commission included 12 administrators, 1 businessperson, 1 chemist, 1 physicist, 1 politician, 1 conservative activist, and 1 teacher. … Just one practicing teacher and not a single academic expert on education. It should come as no surprise that a commission dominated by administrators found that the problems of U.S. schools were mainly caused by lazy students and unaccountable teachers. Administrative incompetence was not on the agenda. Nor were poverty, inequality, and racial discrimination.

Perhaps the most famous line in the report was this one:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

A reader of this blog who goes by the tag “Ohio Algebra Teacher” offered a new version of that famous line:

If a foreign country had inflicted upon our public education system what Ed Reform plutocrats and their toadying political sycophants have implemented upon it, we would have considered it an act of war.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Ohio: Supreme Court Rules Against ECOT and the Virtual Charter School is DEAD!

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2018 //
26

It has taken nearly 20 years, and cost Ohio taxpayers $1 billion or more, but the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) died in court this week.

The owner William Lager became a millionaire many times over, supplying goods and services to his corporation.

The “school” had a high attrition rate and the highest dropout rate of any high school in the nation, but it was protected by politicians who received campaign contributions from Lager. The contributions were piffle compared to Lager’s profits.

After embarrassing stories, the ECOT authorizer withdrew its sponsorship. The state, after years of ignoring the horrible performance of ECOT and its huge profits, eventually got around to auditing it and found many phantom students and asked ECOT for an accounting. ECOT insisted that when students turn on their computer, they were learning even if they didn’t participate in activities.

ECOT attorneys argued that the state illegally changed the rules on how to count students in the middle of a school year, and that state law did not require students to participate in class work in order to be counted for funding purposes.

Perhaps foreshadowing the final decision, as attorney Marion Little’s argued before the court in February that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow should get full funding for students even if they do no work, Chief Justice O’Connor interjected, “How is that not absurd?”

After a long battle in court, the Supreme Court voted 4-2 to support the state in its decision to force ECOT to pay back money for students who never received instruction.

Since opening the school in 2000, Lager went from financial distress to a millionaire, with his for-profit companies, IQ Innovations and Altair Learning Management, collecting about $200 million in state funding for work done on behalf of ECOT. At its peak, the school was graduating more than 2,000 students annually, but also had the highest dropout rate in the state.

Lager and his associates also donated $2.5 million to Ohio politicians and political parties, the vast majority to Republicans, with the ECOT scandal boiling into a major issue ahead of the Nov. 6 election featuring the gubernatorial race between DeWine and Democrat Richard Cordray.

Be it noted that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a huge fan of online charter schools and was an investor in K12 Inc., which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Farewell, ECOT. You won’t be missed. Besides, K12 Inc. and other e-schools are rushing in to Ohio to grab your market share.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Scandal, Virtual Charter Schools

Major Media Remove the Conspiracy-Theory Infowars from Their Sites

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
51

YouTube, Facebook, and Apple have agreed to remove the pernicious, fake content produced by Alex Jones of Infowars.

This is good news. Jones has created a brand based on lies, hoaxes, and fear-mongering. His most disgusting conspiracy theory was his claim that the Sandy Hook massacre was fake, a stage production with child actors, stage managed by the Obama administration to advance the war against guns. Jones is being sued for defamation by parents who lost children at the Sandy Hook massacre. Some have been pursued by stalkers and received death threats.

In its daily news brief, CNN summarized the story:

“Some of the web’s top gatekeepers have unleashed a serious crackdown on content from Infowars and its founder, Alex Jones. Infowars is the site (and Jones the man) that pushes baseless conspiracy theories that often create real-life damage (like the Sandy Hook hoax over which several more families this week sued Jones for defamation). YouTube, Facebook and Apple yesterday removed content from Infowars, claiming it violates their policies, such as YouTube’s barring “hate speech and harassment.” YouTube’s actions probably most damage the brand, which had multiple channels with millions of subscribers and more than a billion views.”

To learn more about Alex Jones, watch John Oliver.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Lies, Media

Arne Cashes in Again

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2018 //
46

Arne Duncan just was invited to join the board of Dreambox, a digital math program selling technology to schools. Dreambox also got $130 Million from a new investor. Board members of private corporations typically get $100,000 or more to show up for a few meetings and add prestige to the board. Nice work, Arne. I assume Dreambox doesn’t know that Rave to the Top was a flop.

Categories Duncan, Arne, For-Profit, Race to the Top, Technology

National Education Policy Center: Virtual Charter Schools are a Sham and Waste Taxpayers’ Dollars

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2018 //
7

The National Education Policy Center recently issued a bulletin about the negative results of virtual charter schools. To see all the links embedded, open the NEPC report. Betsy DeVos wants more of these fraudulent “schools” to open.

It is no secret. The news media is full of reports about problems with cyber schools. Some recent examples include:

In January 2018, the nation’s largest virtual school, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), closed. There was a subsequent failure to determine what happened to 2,300 of 11,400 students. The school shut down after the state of Ohio found that ECOT had overstated its enrollment by more than 9,000 students, resulting in a $60 million overpayment.

The Akron Digital Academy quietly closed last month because it could not repay the state the $2.8 million it owed for failing to correctly track enrollment. Akron Public Schools dropped its sponsorship of the school in 2013 due to problems such as poor student performance.

The state of New Mexico is in the process of shutting down the state’s largest virtual school, also for poor academic performance.

An Education Week resource, updated through 2017, includes hundreds of news stories, state audits, and reports about online schools, many highly negative, dating back to the early 2000s.

Some of the best and most updated information about these schools is provided in the NEPC’s Sixth Annual Report on Virtual Education, titled Full-Time Virtual and Blended Schools: Enrollment, Student Characteristics, and Performance. The report provides a census of the nation’s full-time virtual schools as well as institutions that blend online learning with face-to-face instruction. The report also includes student demographics, state performance ratings and, where available, analyses of school performance measures.

Michigan public radio station WKAR mentioned the NEPC report in a piece about another study that found that a quarter of the 101,000 Michigan students enrolled in online classes did not pass a single one. In an interview with the outlet, Gary Miron, author of the Virtual Education report, said: “We need a moratorium right now; we have to stop. No more growth for the schools; no more schools. The schools that are performing extremely poorly, we have to take sound steps to dismantle them.”

Ed tech-focused EdScoop devoted an article to the NEPC report’s findings, noting that: “While the average ratio in the nation’s public schools is 16 students per teacher, virtual schools reported having close to three times as many, and blended schools clocked in with twice as many.” In a piece about a rural school district that partnered with for-profit virtual education company K12 Inc., NBC News quoted the report’s finding that district-operated online schools tend to perform better than charter school versions. Yet the latter continue to dominate the sector. And despite the highly publicized problems with virtual schools, the sector continues to thrive.

“It’s rather remarkable that virtual schools continue to grow even while study after study confirms that these schools are failing,” Miron told NEPC. “Students are clearly being negatively impacted when they attend these schools, and revenues devoted to public school systems are being siphoned off to the private companies that dominate this sector.”
Why is this happening?

Based on interviews with more than a dozen policymakers, advocates, and researchers, a 2016 Education Week report concluded: The reasons are often a mix of weak state regulations, the millions of dollars spent on lobbying, and the support of well-connected allies.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Virtual Charter Schools

Politico: ECOT Collapse Hangs Over Ohio Elections like a Huge Lead Balloon; Major School Funding Ruling in New Mexico

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2018 //
13

Or the Sword of Damocles? Or a guillotine for politicians who feasted at William Lager’s full trough while the getting was good?

Politico Morning Education reports:

WILL A FAILED VIRTUAL CHARTER HAUNT REPUBLICANS COME NOVEMBER? Ohio Democrats for years have complained about the state’s welcome of virtual charter schools, which educate thousands of kids who log on at home.

— Then, in January, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — one of the nation’s largest K-12 schools — collapsed, leaving 12,000 Ohio students to find a new school. With that, Democrats believe they’ve found a politically potent issue ahead of the November midterms.

— Ohio Democrats on the campaign trail are charging that Republicans turned a blind eye to ECOT’s clear problems, while accepting campaign contributions from the school’s owner. The line of attack is creating a political headache for GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine and on down the ballot.

— “People should’ve held a big failing charter school like this accountable, should’ve stopped the millions of dollars from pouring into it over many years, should have investigated a lot of the rumors about inflated attendance figures,” Richard Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who is DeWine’s Democratic challenger in a closely watched race, told POLITICO.

— The GOP calls the Democrats disingenuous. They argue it’s Republicans like DeWine and State Auditor Dave Yost, the party’s candidate for attorney general, who are tackling the problem. “Republicans have made necessary reforms to Ohio’s charter school system and held bad actors accountable while Democrats have done nothing but hurl misleading attacks from the sidelines,” said Blaine Kelly, an Ohio Republican Party spokesman.

— The issue plays out as the Ohio Supreme Court decides whether the school must return $80 million to Ohio coffers, since the state alleges scores of students went sometimes days at a time without logging in. The school’s graduation rate was 40 percent. Read more from your host.

— Meanwhile, Cleveland.com reports that Ron Packard, the founder and former CEO of online learning giant K12 Inc., which has also faced scrutiny over the years, has acquired a different virtual school in Ohio, the Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy. Like ECOT, it has struggled academically.

— The changes proposed by Packard include requiring more in-person meetings between teachers and students and less advertising. “We’re trying to create the next generation model, which will be a more service-intensive design to get kids engaged in the process and have more face-to-face time,” Packard said.

Also in the same edition of Politico Morning Education:

BIG SCHOOL FUNDING RULING FROM OUT WEST: A state court judge has ruled that New Mexico has an “inadequate system” to fund the state’s schools that violates the constitutional rights of at-risk students. District Judge Sarah Singleton set an April 15 deadline for the state to rectify the situation.

— “Reforms to the current system of financing public education and managing schools should address the shortcomings of the current system by ensuring, as a part of that process, that every public school in New Mexico would have the resources necessary for providing the opportunity for a sufficient education for all at-risk students,” Singleton wrote.

— The ruling came in the consolidated lawsuits of Yazzie v. State of New Mexico and Martinez v. State of New Mexico. It’s unclear yet whether state state officials, who were reviewing the ruling over the weekend, will appeal it, WRAL reported.

— The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, which represented the plaintiffs, are holding a press conference at 10 a.m. mountain time today in Albuquerque to discuss the ruling. Watch it on Facebook Live. Read the decision here.

New Mexico has the highest percentage of children in poverty of any state other than Mississippi. Its schools are underfunded. This is a first step towards educational equity for the state. It has been firmly under the control of conservative Republicans and Reformers for the past eight years and is stuck at about 49th on NAEP. New Mexico schools showed no improvement during the reign of Reformer Hannah Skandera. There is a good chance that Democrats will sweep the state this fall and kick the Reformers out and replace them with educators who have ideas about how to help kids that don’t involve privatizing their schools or punishing their teachers.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, New Mexico, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

ECOT and Payoffs to Ohio Politicians: How to Avoid Any Accountability

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
2

I have posted many times over the years about the giant fraud called the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow in Ohio, or ECOT. Ohio doesn’t permit for-profit charters, yet ECOT was set up–like many “nonprofit charters”–to produce huge profits for its owner, William Lager, who owned companies with which ECOT contracted. Lager opened ECOT in 2001, and it was closed down in January of 2018 after collecting about $1 billion from the state. It was the largest school in the state. Lager gave generous contributions to politicians, mostly to Republicans, and in exchange, his school was never held accountable or audited. After a major expose in the New York Times showing that ECOT had the lowest graduation rate of any school in the nation and that Lager’s related companies were making large profits by providing goods and services to the school, Ohio officials began to take a closer look at ECOT. The major newspapers in Ohio began to criticize the cushy political deal that enriched Lager and delivered a subpar education to thousands of students.

When the State Auditor Dave Yost (who had received campaign gifts from Lager) conducted an audit, ECOT could not account for students it claimed. ECOT said in court that a student should be counted even if they didn’t get any instruction. The state tried to “claw back” $80 million for only the last two years of ECOT’s operation, ECOT chose to go bankrupt instead. Since 2001, ECOT has collected over $1 billion from the state of Ohio, all of it money that was subtracted from the state’s public schools, but ended up instead in the pockets of Lager and his friends in high political office.

What is striking is how little it cost to buy the Republicans! For a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions, they let this guy take hundreds of millions away from public schools.

Here are some examples of ECOT pay for protection from accountability:

see here.

Andrew Brenner, chair of the House Education Committee (who says public education is “socialism”) was a Lager favorite. He didn’t “take a dime” from ECOT, but he took lots of dimes from Lager.

Kasich has received over $30,000 for his campaigns from Lager, along with key legislative leaders. Kasich gave the ECOT commencement speech in 2011.

The state auditor got Lager cash and spoke three times at ECOT graduation ceremonies. Jeb Bush gave the commencement address to ECOT graduates in 2010.

Here is the most recent list of the candidates who received campaign gifts from Lager.

This is the background of the names on this list:

Looking at the list, here are the backgrounds of the top five individuals in the order that they appear.

1. Cheryl Grossman, former Ohio House Majority Whip
2. William Batchelder, former Ohio House Speaker who later became a lobbyist for Lager and other charters https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/ohios-term-limited-house-speaker-becomes-lobbyist-for-notorious-charter-operator/
3. Matt Huffman, currently Ohio state senator
4. Barbara Sears, former Ohio House Majority Floor Leader
5. Jim Buchy, former Ohio House member

Other noteworthy pols on the list include
Jon Husted, Secretary of State now running for Lieutenant Governor
Cliff Rosenberger, former Ohio House Speaker who went on an all-expense trip paid by the Niagara Foundation, part of the Gulen chain. His home was raided by the FBI just two months ago! https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/fbi-agents-are-rosenberger-house-and-storage-unit/u8X9Apyx9g3rs0u63n3mBL/
Josh Mandel, Ohio Treasurer
Andrew Brenner, Chair, House Education Committee currently running for Ohio Senate
Shannon Jones, former Ohio senator and author of the notorious SB5, which was designed to strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. http://action.weareohio.com/page/content/sb5history/
Mike Dewine, currently Ohio Attorney General and candidate for Governor (running with Jon Husted – above)
Mary Taylor, currently Ohio Lieutenant Governor – defeated by DeWine in the Republican primary in May)
Dave Yost, currently Ohio Auditor of State now running for Attorney General. COULDN’T MAKE THIS ONE UP – Yost gave ECOT an Excellence in Bookeeping Award in 2016. He also was an ECOT commencement speaker: https://ohiodems.org/today-ohio-history-dave-yost-gives-ecot-third-award-bookkeeping-2016/
Troy Balderson, currently member of Ohio House and candidate for Congress.

Jan Resseger brings the story up to date in this post.

Here is how the Ohio Supreme Court hearing—five months ago today—concluded, according to the Columbus Dispatch‘s Jim Siegel: “As ECOT attorney Marion Little finished his arguments for why, under the law, the online school should get full funding for students even if they only log in once a month and do no work, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor interjected. ‘How is that not absurd?’”

Now, you would think that by now the Ohio Supreme Court could have arrived at a decision on ECOT’s final appeal to stay in business—a case in which lower courts had found against ECOT at every level. But as citizens of Ohio, we await ECOT’s death without any kind of closure even though we all know that the school has already been shut down—totally. The school’s assets have been sold off in a widely publicized auction and it no longer provides services for students. The Supreme Court decision matters, because ECOT’s officials hope—if the Supreme Court finds for ECOT—the school wouldn’t be required to repay as many tax dollars and because the same officials say they hope to resurrect the school.

In just the past month, as we await the high court’s decision, and the state remains mired in the ECOT scandal: here are some things we’ve been learning.

For the Associated Press, Kantele Franko reports that 2,300 of ECOT’s supposed students are apparently unaccounted for. Nobody knows whether they have dropped out or left the state or perhaps re-enrolled someplace else. Franko explains that a thousand of the students were likely 18 years of age or older, but that 1,300 were school-age youngsters who ought to be considered truant if they are not re-enrolled. Franko quotes Peggy Lehner, chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee: “I think this just illustrates the whole problem that we’ve had with ECOT… You not only can’t tell how long the students signed on, you can’t even tell for sure if they even exist, so I am not surprised that there are students that they can’t track.” So far, however, the Ohio Legislature hasn’t passed any new laws to better regulate attendance at Ohio’s e-schools.

Thousands of ECOT’s students, at least those who are actual people, have enrolled at another virtual school in the state.

The primary beneficiary of ECOT’s closure and of this new law is Ohio Virtual Academy, a for-profit online school that took in 4,000 ECOT students mid-year. That boosted its enrollment more than 40 percent, along with its income and potential profit. With 12,000 students, the school is now Ohio’s online giant, replacing the mammoth ECOT.” Ohio Virtual Academy is the state’s affiliate of the notorious K12, Inc., a national, for-profit, online-charter empire. The legislation to protect schools serving students abandoned when ECOT closed was added quietly as an amendment to another bill just before the Legislature adjourned for summer break, and was opposed by several prominent Democrats. O’Donnell quotes Toledo Representative Teresa Fedor, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee: “Children move in and out of schools because of choice every day. It’s outrageous that Ohio taxpayers have to foot more profits for e-schools and then give them safe harbor.”

To add to the comedy/tragedy, Ohio’s State Attorney General Mike DeWine has suddenly decided it is time to go after Lager and try to recover millions. DeWine is running for governor. The current Governor, John Kasich, protected ECOT for years, as did DeWine.

What everybody wonders is why DeWine, who has been Ohio Attorney General since 2011, only decided to go after ECOT now in the summer of 2018—as he, Ohio’s 2018 Republican candidate for governor, actively campaigns. DeWine claims to have waited until another case set a precedent for cracking down on such conflicts of interest involving a charter school—this time a smaller charter school in Cincinnati. Now, says Mike DeWine, he can be assured that as the State Attorney General he has standing to crack down on charter school fraud.

Clearly, the ECOT scandal has become hot potato for Republican candidates seeking state office in the November 2018 election. Democrats across the state, reminding the public of William Lager’s huge political investments in Republican campaigns over the years, are also reminding voters that key Republicans including Mike DeWine—currently attorney general and Ohio’s Republican gubernatorial candidate in November, and Dave Yost—currently state auditor and Ohio’s Republican candidate for attorney general in November, have been ignoring for years Lager’s compromised position as the founder and agent of nonprofit ECOT who is also making huge profits by steering business to his own for-profit contractors.

Will Ohio’s voters remember in November that the state Republican party enabled Lager to shift $1 billion from their public schools to ECOT?

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Virtual Charter Schools

Indiana: Shift to Privatization Rife with Fraud and Abuse of Taxpayer Dollars

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2018 //
9

Imagine if you can, an “online agricultural school” for grades 7-12, where students might occasionally visit a farm, but such visits are not mandatory.

The Fort Wayne Jounal-Gazette, one of Indiana’s best newspapers, wrote an editorial with this example of the wastefulness of school privatization. The editorial was prompted by the NPE-Schott Foundation National Report on privatization. Indiana received a well-deserved grade of F.

The editorial says:

“Indiana’s friendly environment for education privatizers is summed up nicely by an audacious attempt to open an online agriculture charter school for students in grades 7-12. Billing the model as a “real virtual school,” organizers initially said the statewide school would offer occasional farm visits, but they wouldn’t be mandatory.

“The idea of an agriculture program taught entirely online seems ludicrous only if you don’t see the profit potential. Virtual schools are eligible to collect 90 percent of the basic tuition grant for each student enrolled, so the Indiana Agriculture & Technology School – with 100 students now enrolled – was set to collect about $460,000 a year, with limited expenses for instruction, textbooks or equipment. Fortunately, scrutiny of another Indiana virtual school seems to have pushed the state to demand some classes be taught face-to-face. Monthly visits to a Morgan County farm and as little as four hours of computer instruction a day suggest the school won’t be any more successful than the four F-rated online schools now serving about 13,000 Hoosier students, however.

“Indiana’s dismal record for oversight of online charter schools is one reason it earned its own failing grade in a report evaluating the extent to which states divert money from traditional public schools to private schools and charter schools operated by for-profit management companies. The survey, by the Network for Public Education and the Schott Foundation, which might be easily dismissed as biased except that its findings are irrefutable, notes:

• Indiana has three separate programs designed to funnel tax dollars from public schools, at a conservative estimate of $171 million a year. “Indiana law has continued to morph over the years so that prior enrollment in a public school is no longer needed to receive a voucher for private school,” wrote Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. “That means that taxpayers are now funding private school tuition previously paid for by parents.”

• Private schools receiving tax dollars are allowed to discriminate against students for whom English is not their first language by not providing services and can discriminate in enrollment on the basis of religion. “It is a system in which the school, not the parent, does the choosing.” Burris wrote in an email.

• Failing charter schools have been allowed to convert to voucher schools, so that they can “continue indefinitely,” Burris wrote.”

Read it all.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Indiana, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools
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