One thing that is starting to get some notice, but is still too far below the radar, is that while the state’s pile on more and more restrictive and demanding requirements for public schools, simultaneously they are pushing for reducing or eliminating those requirements for charters and virtual charters. As the Portland Press Herald noted in its expose of the LePage administration’s virtual charter games in Maine:

Digital education companies also have something less than an arm’s-length relationship with [Jeb] Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, the organization [Maine’s Education] Commissioner Bowen has leaned on in developing administration policy.

The foundation’s Digital Learning Now! initiative receives funding from Pearson, K12, textbook publishing giants Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, and tech companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, and digital curriculum developers Apex Learning and IQ Innovations iQity. The initiative – whose 10-point strategy has been formally embraced by the LePage administration – focuses on removing legal barriers to public financing of virtual classes.

The “10 elements” include dozens of specific policy directives, including for states to:

• eliminate restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios, enrollments, class sizes, budgets, providers, or the number of credits a student can earn;

• not regulate “seat time” in classes, or require that online providers, their teachers, or their governing board members be located in the state;

• avoid assessment of “inputs such as teacher certification, programmatic budgets and textbook reviews” and focus instead on “student learning data” from digital testing;

• fund digital learning “through the public per-pupil funding formula;”

• provide all students with access to “any and all” approved online providers;

• require students to take online courses in order to graduate;

• pay for the online classes of all students, including homeschoolers and those in private schools;

• ensure by law that full-time virtual schools are available for all students;

• deprive school districts of “the ability to deny access to approved virtual schools and individual online courses” even as they pay for their students to use them out of their per-pupil budget allocation.

“One of the striking things about these reforms is the extent to which they remove control of the schools from democratic governance and turn them over to corporate decision-making and appointed bodies,” says Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center. “Education policy is now being made to some degree by people who have a financial stake in what they are making policy about.”

Digital education companies also have something less than an arm’s-length relationship with Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, the organization Commissioner Bowen has leaned on in developing administration policy.

The foundation’s Digital Learning Now! initiative receives funding from Pearson, K12, textbook publishing giants Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt and McGraw-Hill, and tech companies such as Apple, Intel and Microsoft, and digital curriculum developers Apex Learning and IQ Innovations iQity. The initiative – whose 10-point strategy has been formally embraced by the LePage administration – focuses on removing legal barriers to public financing of virtual classes.

The “10 elements” include dozens of specific policy directives, including for states to:

• eliminate restrictions on online student-to-teacher ratios, enrollments, class sizes, budgets, providers, or the number of credits a student can earn;

• not regulate “seat time” in classes, or require that online providers, their teachers, or their governing board members be located in the state;

• avoid assessment of “inputs such as teacher certification, programmatic budgets and textbook reviews” and focus instead on “student learning data” from digital testing;

• fund digital learning “through the public per-pupil funding formula;”

• provide all students with access to “any and all” approved online providers;

• require students to take online courses in order to graduate;

• pay for the online classes of all students, including homeschoolers and those in private schools;

• ensure by law that full-time virtual schools are available for all students;

• deprive school districts of “the ability to deny access to approved virtual schools and individual online courses” even as they pay for their students to use them out of their per-pupil budget allocation.

“One of the striking things about these reforms is the extent to which they remove control of the schools from democratic governance and turn them over to corporate decision-making and appointed bodies,” says Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s National Education Policy Center. “Education policy is now being made to some degree by people who have a financial stake in what they are making policy about.”

(See: http://www.pressherald.com/news/virtual-schools-in-maine_2012-09-02.html?searchterm=K12)

And in Louisiana, Bobby Jinal’s administration has come in for similar scrutiny: http://cenlamar.com/2012/09/12/bobby-jindal-and-john-whites-voucher-scam-violates-the-louisiana-state-constitution-and-they-know-it/