K12 Inc. leads the online education industry in raking in profits from public education budgets. The company's
business model, as Stephanie Saul at the
New York Times details, is to "squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards"; Pennsylvania's "state auditor general, Jack Wagner, said [the amount per student the state pays online schools] is double or more what it costs the companies to educate those children online." Then the company turns around and uses the money it has gained by shortchanging students and teachers to advertise for new students and lobby state officials to allow it to take on more students, open more schools, receive more state money.
The details, in state after state, are so devastating that we need to start looking at state legislators who pass bills that benefit K12 and other for-profit online education companies as the equivalent of legislative champions of payday lenders and puppy mills. There's the fact that, as the Washington Post previously reported, K12 "locates" its online schools in poor counties that receive increased per-student funding, collecting that extra money for online students from even the richest counties in the state. The New York Times finds that K12 spent $26.5 million on advertising in 2010, and when parents call an 866 number, they encounter "workers, called 'enrollment pals,' [who] are paid bonuses based on the number of students they sign up, according to former employees knowledgeable of the operations." That means that many students sign up and quickly stop attending—though whether K12 stops collecting money is an open question:
The state audit of the Colorado Virtual Academy, which found that the state paid for students who were not attending the school, ordered the reimbursement of more than $800,000.
With retention a problem, some teachers said they were under pressure to pass students with marginal performance and attendance.
Students need simply to log in to be marked present for the day, according to Agora teachers and administrators.
Even the students who really want to be there and learning, meanwhile, get little support, as teachers report being responsible for far more students than the official student-to-teacher ratios reported by K12:
At [Pennsylvania K12 school] Agora, enrollment has reached 8,836, up from 6,323 in May, according to figures released by the school. As of late November, the total number of staff members — 408 — was lower than last year. Some high school teachers said they were managing as many as 270 students, even though they had been told they would have 150. Agora officials said last week that they hired 25 teachers in the past couple of weeks.
Some Agora teachers have been asked to take on extra students at the rate of $1 per student, per day, according to a newsletter from the Pennsylvania State Education Association.
Those teachers, of course, are already paid substantially less than most teachers in brick-and-mortar schools, so K12 not only saves by not having school buildings to rent or maintain and by hiring too few teachers for the number of students enrolled, but also by underpaying those too-few teachers. For K12, that adds up to hundreds of millions in profit, and a $5 million paycheck for its CEO. For students, it adds up to low proficiency and graduation rates. For teachers, it adds up to exploitation.
Is your governor or state legislator, or your local school board, pushing to let K12 Inc. into your area?