Of 11 privately run cyber charter schools, only 1 is making Adequate yearly progress

Last edited Tue Feb 28, 2012, 03:33 PM - Edit history (5)

PA. has been making sure that private cyber charter schools receive the same funding per student as school districts that provide bricks and mortar students. Other states, such as Colorado, cap the amount they will pay cybers to better reflect actual expenses. It is a very profitable business.

If the results were there, then maybe the expense would be justified. However, according to Pa. Dept. of Education assessments, of the 11 privately run cyber charter schools in PA., only one is making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Eight are in corrective action.

http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/11/pa-cyber-charter-pssa-ayp-2007-2011.html

There is a 12th cyber charter school which IS meeting the AYP standard. However, that is jointly run by PUBLIC Intermediate Units and public school districts in southeastern PA.

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A report released in October by state General Jack Wagner showed that rates paid to all charter schools (cyber and brick and mortar) in the 2009-10 school year varied from $6,496 to $16,249 per student for regular education students, while special education student costs ranged from $12,333 to $111,033 per student.

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December 2011 NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/education/online-schools-score-better-on-wall-street-than-in-classrooms.html?pagewanted=all

Excerpt:

"Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.

By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers. Agora is one of the largest in a portfolio of similar public schools across the country run by K12. Eight other for-profit companies also run online public elementary and high schools, enrolling a large chunk of the more than 200,000 full-time cyberpupils in the United States.

Instead, a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.

Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students. Online schools typically are characterized by high rates of withdrawal. Some teachers at K12 Inc. schools said they felt pressured to pass students who did little work. Teachers have also questioned why some students who did no class work were allowed to remain on school rosters, potentially allowing the company to continue receiving public money for them. State auditors found that the K12-run Colorado Virtual Academy counted about 120 students for state reimbursement whose enrollment could not be verified or who did not meet Colorado residency requirements. Some had never logged in.

“What we’re talking about here is the financialization of public education,” said Alex Molnar, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education who is affiliated with the education policy center. “These folks are fundamentally trying to do to public education what the banks did with home mortgages.”

Guess who was the Senior Vice President with the corporation (K12 Inc./Agora) that is described above? Corbett's budget secretary.

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http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/22/21k12.h31.html?tkn=PRNFeKwIR/JXi5iPNpSKkGa5NBBVjRiwlUnm&cmp=clp-edweek

"Just over a month after the New York Times article was published, a K12 Inc. shareholder filed a federal lawsuit against the company. The suit claims its executives, specifically Chief Executive Officer Ronald J. Packard and Chief Financial Officer Harry T. Hawks, pumped up stock prices by misleading investors with false student-performance claims.

The suit also says that in 2011, on a conference call with investors, Mr. Packard said the Agora Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania produced test scores "higher than the typical school on state-administered tests for growth."

The New York Times article that caused stock prices to drop precipitously cited data that Agora students performed well below the average for Pennsylvania students in reading and math. Agora enrolls more than 8,000 students and, in fiscal 2011, accounted for 13 percent of K12 Inc.'s overall revenue."

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Guess who was Corbett's largest campaign contributor from 2007 to 2010? $334,286 from Vahan Gureghian, the man behind Charter School Management, Inc.

http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/06/follow-money-contributions-by-vahan.html

"According to Pennsylvania's Campaign Finance Reporting website, Mr. Gureghian has made over $1.3 million in political contributions since 2007 and was the largest individual donor to Governor Corbett. He also served on the Governor’s Education Transition Team."

Excerpt from an article in Philadelphia Magazine.

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/what_would_ronnie_say_about_montco_republicans_now/page1

"The way Gureghian's charter school in Chester works, the school itself is public. It receives taxpayer money. But a private, for-profit company—Gureghian's Charter School Management Inc.—manages the school's finances. It owns the buildings, leases them to the school, pays the teachers and, according to a 2008 report by the Inquirer, has collected $60.6 million in public funds since the school was started in 1999. "

Remember, this is the same school district where teachers were working for free last month because the district could not make its payroll.

Gureghian's company is involved in running the Chester Community Charter School. A recent lawsuit revealed that there are $5,000 per student in management fees.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/education/01winerip.html?pagewanted=all

New York Times article about the uncovering of a study that found hard-to-explain irregularities in standardized test results at several schools in Pa. The study emphasized cases in which there were an unusually high number of wrong answers erased and then replaced by the correct answer.

"In Pennsylvania, the 2009 statistical analysis that was unearthed by The Notebook has provided many good leads. Chester Community Charter, one of the state’s biggest schools, with 2,700 students, was among those most often flagged for suspicious erasure results. It also was flagged for questionable test scores: in 2009, 65.4 percent of eighth graders were proficient in math, compared with 22 percent the year before. To his credit, the state’s secretary of education, Ron Tomalis, has requested two more statistical studies, for 2010 and 2011, to better identify cheating patterns."

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http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2011/12/07/ahan-danielle-gureghian/

Gureghian, the Charter School Baron/Corbett buddy, just spent $29 million for a vacant lot in Palm Beach, Florida for his new mansion. He also has a mansion outside of Phila.