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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

Chris Cotton: Ohio’s End-of-Course Tests Are a Sham

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2018 //
47

Chris Cotton teaches high school English in Ohio. He posted it on the Facebook page of NE Ohio Educators and given permission to post it here.

He writes:


Harnessing Student Anger on Ohio’s EOC Tests

I’ve been working on my preparations for next year. I teach English to a class of remedial-level sophomores who are several years behind in reading level. I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall trying to figure out how to prepare them for Ohio’s EOC (End-Of-Course) tests. My first feeling is that I can’t prepare them. It’s simply not possible.

I also teach AP seniors, and parts of these tests (ELA I for freshmen and ELA II for sophomores) would be very difficult for those students. In fact, most educated adults would struggle. I struggled with them myself.

I’ll give a little sample from the one (and there’s only one) released ELA I test on the Ohio Dept. of Ed. website. This test for freshmen asks the students to compare two passages: one from King Lear, and one from Shakespeare’s source material, written 40-50 years earlier.

In freshman English it’s traditional to teach one Shakespeare play (usually Romeo and Juliet). But that comes, even in honors classes, with a great deal of teacher support and scaffolding.

I read King Lear in a college literature class, and it was a challenge then, even with a textbook that had at least five times as many explanatory notes as the ELA test. Here is an example of lines that have no explanatory notes on the test:

“Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,
With shadowy forests and with champains rich’d,
With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,
We make thee lady. To thine and Albany’s issue
Be this perpetual.”

Imagine seeing this on a high-stakes test if you’re a student reading at fourth grade level. There isn’t even a note saying that Lear is pointing at a map (“this line to this”). How many adults could tell you what “champains” are, or “wide-skirted meads”? There’s inverted sentence order, archaic pronouns, apostrophes that look like typos. “Albany” is a person, not a city, with an “issue” of some sort.

We are deliberately inflicting pain on young people. I know my kids, and I know they will feel humiliation when they begin this test. Many of my kids believe that the world and school especially are out to get them. A test like this is confirmation. Most of them will simply give up after reading the first line of the passage. It’s too painful.

So, I’m trying to figure out a way to prepare my students to not give up at the outset. They need to do as well as they can, due to the “point system” we have in Ohio for graduation. In one course, I can’t teach them all the material covered by this “end-of-course” test (because that’s impossible). I don’t even think I can “teach to the test.” No, what I have to do is teach against the test.

A lot of my students have a great deal of anger, much of it directed at school (sometimes for fair reasons). How can I work with that anger, so it doesn’t lead to self-destructive capitulation, but instead to energy for getting as many points as possible.

So I’m pulling together a unit of some sort predicated on the fact that these tests are a scam. If I can validate their anger, could I then redirect it in a direction that helps them?

I have a few questions for the other teachers on this site:

What do you think of this basic idea? Is it crazy?

Is there any text or materials you would suggest for reading?

I’d like to show a movie as part of the unit. I know there are many on the topic, is there one you’d recommend?

Thank you very much,

Chris Cotton

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Ohio, Testing

Ohio: Andrew Brenner, Listen to the People

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2018 //
9

Andrew Brenner is chairman of the House Education Committee in Ohio. He has a knack for making provocative and unfair statements. A few years ago, he said that public schools were “socialism.” He also regularly blocks people on Twitter if they disagree with his extremism. His critics have started their own Facebook page.

Denis Smith has written a genial open letter to Andrew Brenner. He thinks Andrew should revere the First Amendment even more than the Second Amendment, because it comes first.

He should listen to his constituents. He might learn that he is out of synch with their views.

Categories Freedom of Speech, Ohio

Stephen Dyer: Who is to Blame for Ohio’s $1 Billion ECOT Boondoggle?

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2018 //
6

Stephen Dyer, former legislator in Ohio, now a fellow at Innovation Ohio, notes that Ohio’s Republicans are scurrying to denounce ECOT, which is now a criminal investigation. Some are even returning campaigning contributions. How did ECOT manage to survive for nearly 20 years while providing a low-quality education and receiving $1 billion from the state?

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition said in a post today that the owner of for-profit ECOT was very generous in distributing campaign contributions to influential officials. He wrote: The ECOT Man really covered all the bases when doling out campaign funds-county prosecutor, legislators, party caucuses, governors, attorney generals, secretaries of state, state treasurers, supreme court justices and probably other office holders. The money doled out came from tax dollars that should have been used to educate students.

Some Republicans are trying to blame Democrats too, since there was a Democratic governor in 2009. But Dyer points out that Governor Ted Strickland tried to slash the appropriations for e-schools by 70%, and Republicans threatened to block the entire state budget unless the cut was restored.

It’s very simple. Gov. Strickland’s budget that year called for a 70 percent cut for Ohio eSchools. That’s right. If Gov. Strickland’s budget had passed unamended, ECOT funding would have been cut by 70 percent, effectively ending the school 10 years before it actually shut down, which would have saved Ohio taxpayers about $700 million that went to the school since then. Not to mention the lives of thousands of students ECOT failed to graduate.

By the way, of the 3,794 students who actually did graduate ECOT the first year of the 2009 budget, only 109 have college degrees today. Just by way of reference.

However, Ohio Republicans still controlled the Senate during the 2009 budget. I was in those budget negotiations and I can tell you that we were told in no uncertain terms that if the 70 percent cuts stayed in the budget, there would be no budget for the 2009 session — severely crippling Ohio’s potential economic recovery from the Great Recession.

When Dyer ran for re-election, he was targeted for defeat by a group that included ECOT.

The Republicans own this scandalous waste of taxpayer dollars. They should be held accountable.

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

Categories Accountability, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

ECOT Stuff Up for Auction, Right Now: Who Will Get Proceeds? The State or the Charter Owner?

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2018 //
9

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy is a steadfast critic of charter schools, which, he says, have absorbed $10 billion in funds that should have gone to Ohio public schools. Now that ECOT is in bankruptcy, the state is trying to claw a few million of the $1 billion that ECOT collected since 2000, when it was founded.

Phillis writes:

Auctions of charter school stuff-another manifestation of tax dollars squandered

The ECOT auction is just another going-out-of-business sale in the charter industry. About 250 charters have closed in Ohio and many have had auctions. These kinds of sales recover only pennies on the dollar.

The ECOT exposure has helped shed light on the waste, fraud and corruption in the industry. Previous charter closures and auctions usually had gone unnoticed by the general public.

Ohioans should assume that the ECOT auction ends the charter fiasco.

Of course, the charter fiasco will go on in Ohio even after ECOT is dead and buried and its stuff auctioned off.

The auction is today. You are not to late to pick something up if you bid online. Maybe a pencil engraved ECOT as a memento of a Teapot Dome type scandal in Ohio, a tribute to privatization and corporate reform. DeVos wants more of the same. Hold on to your wallet.

Goodbye ECOT: School auction begins today; key computers not included
Updated May 11, 2018

By Jeremy P. Kelley, Staff Writer Dayton Daily News

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is auctioning its corporate headquarters building and most furnishings and business equipment beginning at 4 p.m. today, according to a news release from the auction firm Gryphon USA.

The auction includes everything from flat-screen TVs, tools and furniture to first-aid kits and pencils, according to Richard Kruse, president of Gryphon Auction Group and court-appointed deputy interim master for ECOT.

Kruse said the computer servers used by the school are not included in the auction. Auditors and prosecutors have suggested there could be evidence of criminal activity by ECOT on those servers.

“The media and government attention has been focused on the servers used by the school, but those are not included in the auction,” Kruse said in the news release. “Due to this, the auction is proceeding on schedule.”

ECOT was Ohio’s largest online school, at one point claiming more than 15,000 students, but the Ohio Department of Education said an enrollment review showed the school was not counting student participation correctly. The state began clawing back millions in funding that ODE said the school should not have received, eventually leading ECOT to close in January.

More than 2,000 students from southwest Ohio were listed as enrolled at ECOT in 2016-17, including 627 who lived in the Dayton school district, 168 in Hamilton, 94 in Springfield and dozens from suburbs ranging from Kettering to Troy.

ECOT’s headquarters building, a 138,000-square-foot facility originally built as Southland Mall, sits on 26.5 acres in south Columbus, near the intersection of U.S. 23 and Interstate 270.

The auction is viewable to the public online at http://www.ecotcre.com for the real estate, and http://www.ecotauction.com for the rest of the items. The online auction is open for bidding until June 12.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Ohio: K12 Inc Asks State for Exemption for Transfers from Closed ECOT

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2018 //
16

The largest virtual charter school in Ohio was the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT). Its for-profit owner William Lager collected over $1 billion in taxpayer dollars since it opened in 2000. He gave campaign contributions to state officials, and they looked the other way. They even spoke at his commencement ceremonies. When the state actually audited ECOT, it found inflated enrollments and went to court to collect money from Lager. ECOT lost its authorizer, and Lager declared bankruptcy.

Most of ECOT’s students have transferred to another online charter, the Ohio Virtual Academy, owned by Michael Milken’s for-profit K12 Inc.

K12 Inc. has asked the state to hold it harmless for the expected low academic performance of the transfer students from ECOT.

Will voters hold state officials accountable for allowing these frauds to continue collecting money from them?

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

Denis Smith: The Unexamined Charter Corruption in Ohio

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
4

Denis Smith oversaw charter schools when he worked for the Ohio Department of Education. Since he retired, he has documented the numerous instances of corruption that have gone uninvestigated.

The recent collapse of ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), which died while owing the state many millions of dollars for inflated enrollments garnered media attention. But the media ignored the numerous times that legislators accepted expensive gifts of foreign travel paid for by the Gulen charter chain.

Cliff Rosenberger, the powerful Speaker of the House, recently resigned because he had accepted junkets from the payday lending industry.

“Before he left on the series of overseas junkets to China, France, and the UK that sealed his doom, Rosenberger pocketed $36,843 in campaign contributions from ECOT and its founder, William Lager. In 2016, the former speaker served as the commencement speaker for the now-closed charter school in the midst of the Ohio Department of Education audit controversy which ultimately brought down the ECOT empire.

“While all of the current attention about Rosenberger seems to focus on payday lending and foreign travel, there has been zero commentary about a previous all-expense foreign junket the former speaker and several of his fellow Republican legislative colleagues enjoyed just prior to his election as leader of the Ohio House.”

Why is the press alert to the sins of the payday lending lobbyists, but indifferent to the depredations of the charter industry?

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy read Denis Smith’s article and posed these questions:

“The Speaker of the House resigned under a dark cloud precipitated by overseas junkets funded by the payday lender lobby. So why didn’t the Speaker resign after taking a trip to Turkey funded by the Gulen Islamic charter school lobby? Would the Turkey junket have had influence on the fortunes of the Gulen charter industry?

“But there is more, ECOT provided the former Speaker with $36,843 in campaign contributions plus commencement speaker perks. Would these “benefits” have had an influence on the way the former Speaker handled charter legislation?

“If the Speaker resigned due to payday lender lobby-funded trips, should there not be an investigation of those who have been fed a steady diet of ECOT campaign funds? These funds were laundered from tax money that should have been used for the education of students?”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization

Ohio: Democrats Slam Auditor Dave Yost for Failing to Audit ECOT, Until Now

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
4

Two years ago, the New York Times published a front-page story about the scandal of Ohio’s Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), which boasted “the largest graduation class in the nation” but also had the lowest graduation rate in the nation and referred to it as a “dropout factory.”

The article said ECOT was enriching its owner, not its students.

But while some students may not have found success at the school, the Electronic Classroom has richly rewarded private companies affiliated with its founder, William Lager, a software executive.

When students enroll in the Electronic Classroom or in other online charters, a proportion of the state money allotted for each pupil is redirected from traditional school districts to the cyberschools. At the Electronic Classroom, which Mr. Lager founded in 2000, the money has been used to help enrich for-profit companies that he leads. Those companies provide school services, including instructional materials and public relations.

For example, in the 2014 fiscal year, the last year for which federal tax filings were available, the school paid the companies associated with Mr. Lager nearly $23 million, or about one-fifth of the nearly $115 million in government funds it took in.

Dave Yost, the auditor for the state of Ohio, is running for State Attorney General. Recently, he has made much of his audits of the failed ECOT, which collected about $1 billion from taxpayers over its 18-year history but recently shut down when state audits revealed its inflated enrollments, and the state demanded repayment of $80 million.

The Democratic party of Ohio is calling out Yost for ignoring the ECOT scandals until this past year. Yost posted a “timeline” to show that he had been on top of the ECOT problem, but Democrats pointed out more than 20 omissions from Yost’s timeline.

Highlights from more than 20 omissions we identified:

*Yost’s timeline draws reporters’ attention to his 2015 and 2016 charter attendance audits. What it doesn’t say is Yost exempted ECOT and other e-schools from both efforts.
*Yost’s timeline does not include the three awards for bookkeeping the auditor gave the school.
*Yost’s timeline does not include the nearly $30,000 in campaign contributions he took from ECOT.

Innovation Ohio tweeted:

@innovationohio

As Dave Yost tries to mop up his disastrous handling of the ECOT scandal with his 7 years too late audit findings, see what he had to say just a couple years ago when he gave ECOT an ACCOUNTING AWARD for having “best practices in place” and having “no problems with the audit”

Betsy DeVos wants more ECOTs, more K12 Inc. online virtual charters. Study after study has shown that they are ineffective educationally but highly profitable. DeVos was an investor in K12 Inc., and probably divested when she became Secretary but whether or not she is an investor, she supports the online charter sector.

Categories Accountability, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

Ohio: How Would You Grade John Kasich’s Legacy in Education?

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2018 //
19

 

When I saw that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute was grading the education legacy of John Kasich, I knew we would not agree. Its report begins by crediting Kasich for copying Jeb Bush’s simple-minded letter grading for schools, which makes less sense than giving a single letter grade to a child. Kasich tried to wipe out collective bargaining but was rebuked by the public in a referendum. He has given free reign with little or no accountability to charter entrepreneurs and presided over scandal after scandal in the charter sector, currently, the $1 billion wasted by ECOT. He has been indifferent at best, but certainly hostile, to the very concept of public schools, whereas his state was once a leader in advocacy for excellent public schools. Like all rightwing Republicans, he pushed for vouchers, and Ohio has a voucher program for “poor kids trapped in failing schools.” Ironically, the Fordham Institute commissioned a study of Ohio’s voucher program, led by David Figlio of Northwestern University, which determined that students who enrolled in voucher schools fared worse than their peers who remained in public schools.

During the Republican primaries of 2016, Kasich posed as the “moderate” in the race, and compared to the others, maybe he was. My friends in New York couldn’t understand why I thought he was a rightwing ideologue, no different from Jeb Bush, but pretending to be the “adult in the room.”

Bill Phillis, the retired Deputy Commissioner of Education in Ohio, and founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy, comments on the Fordham review of Kasich.

He writes (the comments in brackets are mine, not Bill Phillis’):

An April 17 Fordham review of the Governor’s education legacy shows Fordham and the Governor seem to be on the same page regarding education issues.
 
Fordham:
 
  1. The Governor established the A-F Report Card. Fordham laments that it is now in jeopardy. [My comment: good riddance to a dumb idea.]
  2. The Governor provided passionate support for the Third Grade Guarantee. Fordham says the jury is still out on the effects of it. [My comment: Holding back third-graders is a proven way of lifting your fourth-grade scores.]
  3. The Governor’s early efforts focused on lifting limitations on the creation of new charters and providing facility assistance, but then supported charter sponsor evaluations and additional charter school accountability. Fordham says charter accountability could be a lasting legacy for the Governor. [My comment: Charter accountability? That would be innovative.]
  4. The Governor attempted to eliminate public employee collective bargaining but failed. Then he championed Teach for America (TFA) and statewide teacher evaluations. Fordham wonders if these changes will last. [My comment: Swell idea to smash unions and introduce inexperienced, unprepared teachers who will leave in two years.]
  5. The Governor, early on, focused on expanding private school choice. Fordham laments that many of Ohio’s lowest income students have little opportunity to access private school choice. [My comment: Fordham funded research demonstrating that kids who use a voucher fare worse than kids in public schools.]
  6. The Governor eliminated the “evidence-based” school funding model. Fordham says the current school funding formula is a vast improvement over the evidence-based model. [Bill Phillis: Wow…how so? Me: Evidence and Kasich’s education policies have never actually met.]
 
Fordham relishes the fact that the money-follows-the-child idea is now an integral part of budget discussions.
 
Fordham, like Betsy DeVos, subscribes to the myth that school funds belong to the students-not the system-you know, the Ohio constitutionally-required system of common schools.
 
So what would be a great education legacy for a governor? A governor that would accomplish the constitutional requirement that the state secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools would go down in history as the “education” governor.
If you live in Ohio, you should subscribe to Bill Phillis’ newsletter.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
 
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Failure, Ohio

Ohio: Who Will Go to Jail for the Crimes of ECOT?

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2018 //
27

 

Stephen Dyer says there is now little or no question that crimes were committed by ECOT (the late, unlamented Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow).

Someone knowingly inflated enrollment to collect millions from the state.

Who done it?

“Because it now appears that we have a smoking gun indicating that officials at the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow formed the necessary mens rea to be charged with crimes.

“According to an Associated Press story today (which ran all over the place, but I’ll link to my former employer’s version), people at ECOT — at one point the largest single school in the nation — were ordered to deliberately inflate enrollment so the school could keep getting paid $100 million plus to “educate” children, even if those children weren’t actually at ECOT.

“ECOT infamously did a remarkably poor job of educating those who were, by the way. How poor? Only 109 of 3,794 ECOT graduates from 2010 earned a college degree within 6 years of graduating.”

B
Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools
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