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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe GOP's Biggest Charter School Experiment Just Imploded
How a washed-up lobbyist built a charter school empire and siphoned millions from public schools.
JAMES POGUEJAN. 19, 2018 2:20 PM
The west side of Columbus, Ohio, is a flat expanse of one-story houses, grimy convenience stores, and dark barrooms, and William Lager, in his business wear, cut an unusual figure at the Waffle House on Wilson Road. Every day, almost without fail, he took a seat in a booth, ordered his bottomless coffee, and set to work. Some days he sat for hours, so long that hed outlast waitress Chandra Filichias seven-hour shift and stay on long into the night, making plans and scribbling them down on napkins.
The dreams on the napkins seemed impossibly grandiose: He wanted to create a school unlike anything that existed, a K-12 charter school where the learning and teaching would be done online, and which would give tens of thousands of students an alternative to traditional public schools across the state. It would offer them unheard of flexibilitya teen mom could stay with her child and study, while a kid worried about being bullied could complete lessons at home. And it would be radically cheaper than a traditional classroom, since there would be no buildings to maintain, no teachers unions to bargain with. At the timethe late 1990sit was a revolutionary idea. Lager called it, in the heady days when the internet seemed to promise a solution to every problem, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.
But back thenbefore Lager had his mansion and lake house, before he rose to become a hero of the school choice movement, before Jeb Bush flew in to give ECOTs commencement speech and Betsy DeVos helped him and his cohort transform Ohios educational landscapeFilichia, the Waffle House waitress, could tell Lager seemed broke. Balding, round-faced, and concentrating intently as he scribbled, she even once caught him trying to pass off photocopies of discount coffee coupons. But he didnt plan on using a Waffle House as his office forever. One of these days Im going to have a real big business, she remembers him telling her, and you can come work with me, and you wont ever have to work anywhere else.
Lager kept his promise, sort of. His back-of-the-napkin vision soon became an improbable reality, and though shed never gone to college, in 2000 Lager hired Filichia, and eventually, she says, she became one of ECOTs registrars. In that role, the 24-year-old had a front-row seat to watch the companys growth. As it expanded from an upstart to a juggernautthis year it educated some 12,000 students across Ohio, and two years prior its student body was the largest in Americashe began to turn on Lager, angered that the school seemed to provide some students with a sham education, functioned more like a profit center than an educational institution, and ignored its own attendance policies, a fact later corroborated by court documents. I am a single mom, so obviously I needed money and stayed there, Filichia told me. But after so long, when I saw how bad these poor kids were doing, I couldnt do it anymore.
Yesterday, after 17 years of operation, the school came to a spectacular end, and many of Filichias concerns suddenly seemed prophetic. (Lager and ECOT officials did not reply to repeated requests for comment.) Despite years of critics raising similar concerns, the schools demise happened quickly, after two Ohio Department of Education reviews from 2016 and 2017 found that ECOT had overbilled taxpayers by $80 million for thousands of students it couldnt show were meeting the departments enrollment standards. As a result, last summer the state ordered the school to begin paying back almost $4 million per month in school funds, which ECOT claimed it was was unable to do. Then, last week, the schools charter sponsor, the Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West, claiming concern that ECOT wouldnt have the funds to last out the year, suddenly announced plans to drop the school. Many of ECOTs 12,000 current students learned on the nightly news or read in newspapers that unless an emergency deal could be worked out, the institution was in imminent danger of folding up before the start of next semester, set to begin on January 22, leaving many parents confused and panicking, with only days to choose a new school and get their child enrolled.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/the-gops-biggest-charter-school-experiment-just-imploded/
Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)heavily regulated and have an oversight commission. Or have this.
Maybe the heart of the problem is that this IS what RW want...a stock market education system.
brush
(53,805 posts)AllyCat
(16,205 posts)lindysalsagal
(20,715 posts)The laws, you get cheated. So stupid.
Ms. Toad
(34,084 posts)I have arguments with my spouse all the time - who is on the board of another for-profit charter digital school in Ohio.
Ohio has attendance rules, but those rules have not been clear - and the digital academies argue they are unfair - to online schools.
My spouse's argument is that if the student completes, and passes, the work required for the course/grade level why should they be required to be logged in a certain number of hours. Not all of the work needs to be done while logged in - it could be done offline and uploaded later (for example). Body-in-building attendance rules are not well suited for online education.
As someone who has benefited from online education (informally - but it was a class taught by Harvard under the same requirements as had I been present for the class) - and as someone who uses online teaching informally currently for the equivalent of full courses - my experience tells me that my spouse has a point has a point.
On the other hand, as a former public school teacher - and a product of public schools - I hate charter schools with a passion.
But, they are permitted in Ohio (and permitted to receive public funding). So in this instance, it is more a matter of designing rules that fit distance learning (public or private) AND monitoring of charter schools (requiring them to meet the same standards as public schools) that is the issue.
weissmam
(905 posts)if you hold them to the same accountability standards (no breaks) then lets see (but honestly) if that the case it will never work
Ms. Toad
(34,084 posts)it isn't a matter of getting a break that public schools don't get - it is a matter of creating realistic standards for attendance accountability.
In in-person schools, it is a body-in-the-building test. The on-line equivalent body-logged-in isn't necessarily a good equivalent - or an appropriate standard. Much of the distance learning doesn't require being logged in. If the requirement is that you be logged in, folks would log in in the morning, then log out at night, and go play in between. If you attempt to circumvent that by requiring periodic check-ins, it ties all activity to being near the computer - and attentive to the computer - which is disruptive to the off-line activities.
gibraltar72
(7,508 posts)had much the same experience. Bay Academy backed by DeVos crime family had a spectacular crash and burn. This scenario is repeated over and over again. As a failed pResident once said "Is our children learning"?
bucolic_frolic
(43,247 posts)The GOP brings a business model to everything to help themselves because that's the way they see the world
Some things should not be speculated upon
A gamble is a gamble
You can lose at the casinos, unless you are the house
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,362 posts)Just ask Trump about his bankruptcies.