How A Virtual Classroom Company Made Millions On Software That Left Many Students Feeling Abandoned

[Nevilledog]

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Ken Bensinger
@kenbensinger
One teacher in St. Tammany Parish oversaw >1,000 students at a time during the pandemic thanks to the district's contract w/ Edgenuity, a for-profit virtual education company

A deep dive into a leading provider of online schooling by @ceodonovan

How A Virtual Classroom Company Made Millions On Software That Left Many Students Feeling Abandoned
Edgenuity offers to help schools pivot from “brick to click” during the pandemic, but to many parents, teachers, and students, the cost-saving program comes at the expense of a quality education.
buzzfeednews.com
10:27 AM · Oct 11, 2021

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/edgenuity-education-technology-virtual-classrooms-pandemic


At the start of the first pandemic school year, Angie Richardson sat beside her 13-year-old daughter, Sharon, in their Northport, Alabama, home as she watched lessons and completed assignments on a computer program called Edgenuity, which the Tuscaloosa County School System had purchased to provide a remote learning curriculum for students. When Richardson got COVID-19 later that fall, leaving her too sick to oversee her daughter’s schooling, Sharon had to navigate the virtual courses on her own.

That shouldn’t have been a problem: The software, which cost the district $370,000 during the 2020–2021 school year, provided no live instruction from a teacher but promised “on-demand tutoring” available six days a week.

But Richardson and other parents soon found that Edgenuity tutors were often unresponsive, sometimes for hours at a time. Another Tuscaloosa parent, Terri Burnette, recalled her son waiting for hours after clicking the “Tutoring Help” button when he got stuck on a math question about measuring angles. “But nobody came,” she said.

Calls and emails to district teachers didn’t always bring a prompt reply. By the time Richardson had recovered, she said, her daughter's education had become “a catastrophe.” Sharon ended up falling so far behind that the district required her to return to school in person.

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[jimfields33]

1. A lot of bad stuff happened during the pandemic

I always thought that kids should have all repeated the grade they were in when the pandemic started. Everyone would begin where they left off so no stigma. These kids will never makeup the lost year especially in lower grade school.