Who is k12 inc

At K12 Inc. In addition, withdrawal rates at K12 Inc. For example, in , 2, students withdrew from Agora. In August , two Wisconsin school districts with online education programs--Grantsburg's iForward and Waukesha's eAchieve Academy--announced that they would not renew their contracts with K12 Inc. Rick Nettesheim, principal of eAchieve, told the paper that his school is glad to be free of the company: "It's been our experience that the interest of their shareholders is the most critical deciding factor when decisions are being made.

They may say they have the best interests of students in mind, and I'm sure their teachers care about their students just as much as our teachers care about students, but the people making decisions do have to answer to shareholders, and I think that's a conflict of interests.

CEO, Ronald Packard repeatedly describes growing student enrollments as the company's "manifest destiny. A state audit of K12 Inc. Wagner told the Times , and some of the money is also spent on lobbying. The funding formula in many states works like this, explains education experts: "The kids enroll, you get the money, the kids disappear, Gary Miron of Western Michigan University told the New York Times.

The problems with the K12 Inc. In January , a K12 Inc. The class action lawsuit was filed after a series of news reports in particular a New York Times article of December 12, [11] and an Associated Press article of December 16, found a mismatch between K12 Inc.

After the articles were published, K12 Inc. Shareholders claimed that "the company did not disclose the churn rates during conference calls" with stockholders or in the documents it filed. As a result, the plaintiffs contended, the price at which K12 Inc. In April , the NCAA issued a document announcing that coursework completed at 24 Kaffiliated schools would not count for student-athletes' eligibility.

K12's schools had been placed under "extended evaluation" in The NCAA did not provide an explanation of their decision when contacted by media. Much was learned about the business practices of K12 Inc. Dozens of former employees claimed that the company "used dubious and sometimes fraudulent tactics to mask astronomical rates of student turnover in its national network of cyber charter schools," according to the Huffington Post.

At the beginning of the school year, K12 Inc. By the end of that year, the school's enrollment had increased to 6, But almost 2, students withdrew from Agora during the school year. According to these former employees, the churn rate at the company's cyber schools was part of a "self-perpetuating cycle.

To increase revenues, the suit alleges, the company aggressively recruited as many students as possible," including some who were not properly prepared for K12 Inc. When students struggled, they claim, "company officials told teachers to keep the students on the schools' rolls by manipulating attendance data and inflating students' grades," according to NewsWorks.

These claims were listed by anonymous "confidential witnesses" in court documents. Many of the allegations come from people who worked for Pennsylvania's Agora Cyber Charter School, which enrolls roughly a quarter of the 32, Pennsylvania students that have opted for online schools. In one example, a former Agora teacher said that the school continued to bill the home school district of one special education student who was absent for consecutive days, even though Pennsylvania requires that cyber charter students who miss 10 straight days be reported as withdrawn.

The teacher stated, "What Agora does is keep the kid in inactive limbo and keep billing. Former employees also described the company's "high-pressure" approach to student recruitment, involving "call centers" with "enrollment consultants" who received "commissions and perks" for hitting "enrollment quotas" -- of parents who enrolled their children in the schools.

They also alleged that K12 Inc. According to the lawsuit, K12 Inc. In their lawsuit , K12 Inc. Jim Buckheit, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, told the New York Times , "Some of the cyber charter schools have fairly aggressive recruitment campaigns. They have vans, billboards, TV and radio ads. They set up recruitment meetings in area hotels and invite parents to come. The massive advertising pulls in parents, students and state money, but students often do not stay in the cyber school, and one study indicates that churn of students could be more than 50 percent in some schools.

The district denied the request, after consulting with the Florida Department of Education and citing state laws. But a former K12 Inc. According to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting : [48]. The Florida Department of Education released its preliminary report in April , in which the inspector general found that K12 Inc. Seminole County officials had also accused K12 Inc.

Another issue raising red flag is K12 Inc. Most states will only grant charters to non-profit c 3 tax exempt entities, which K12 Inc. News reports indicate that the relationship is often problematic under state law. A recent example comes from New Jersey. From the Newark Star-Ledger :. For all intents and purposes K12 controls and operates and profits from non-profit charter schools in blatant violation of most state law and IRS regulation.

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Teacher Involvement. Add a personal note. Start writing. We want to hear from you. Send an email or call us at In addition to receiving public money through its contracts with public district and charter schools, K12 also raises revenue by selling private online courses directly to families who cannot access any of its tuition-free online public schools.

The company receives additional money from corporate investors. In the years since its founding, K12 has been criticized for abusing its access to public funding by gaming the system in order to receive more money than it is entitled to. One way it has done this is to establish schools in poor districts, which may receive more funding than rich ones in some states.

In , K12 established a partnership with the traditional schools of Carroll County, Virginia. Though it enrolled students from across the commonwealth, all children who enrolled in the Virginia Virtual Academy were counted as Carroll County students regardless of where they lived.

Because Carroll county was a poor district, K12 was able to receive extra money from the state for students who were technically coming from richer, neighboring districts Brown and Layton, Because it receives so much public funding, K12 has also been criticized heavily for the amount of money it has channeled into non-educational ventures, particularly lobbying and advertising Vogel, Both of these organizations have advocated for policies that would encourage greater demand for digital learning tools like the ones produced by K12 ibid.

To some, these activities suggest that the company has a greater interest in raising revenues and appealing to investors than it does providing quality education services for its students.

This class-action suit came after chief executive Ronald J. And only 52 percent of Agora students had hit the mark in reading, compared with 72 percent statewide Brown, In , only a third of Kmanaged schools reached adequate yearly progress as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Program.

Yet, K12 remains the largest purveyor of online schooling in the nation. Because a typical online class is larger than a typical class in a brick-and-mortar school, most online teachers begin with a larger group of students than an average public school student would Brown and Layton, This has been found to be the case for K12 teachers, some of whom have said they were managing as many as students, even though they had been told they would have Saul, This is not addressed on the website, which makes no mention of either teacher sustainability or teacher diversity.

Though learning coaches do not receive any formal training from K12, they are provided with lesson guides, tools, videos and resources to talk to other parents of other current students ibid. According to the K12 website, the time commitment of the learning coach is expected to decrease as grade levels increase. As the complicated nature of its funding would suggest, the relationship between K12 schools and their surrounding districts has the potential to be highly fraught, particularly when they are competing with district schools for public funding.

Other impacts of K12 schools may be slightly more obscure, given the myriad of ways in which their services can be implemented.

K12 schools are either categorized as a Virtual Academy, which uses traditional K12 curriculum; an Insight School, which specializes in helping students overcome certain learning challenges; a blended school that combines classroom attendance with online learning; a Destination Careers Academy, which emphasizes college and career preparation; and finally, a District-Run School, where traditional public schools incorporate K12 curriculum in their classrooms using available technology K12, The sheer variety of these options makes it difficult to distinguish or even speculate on the overall effect that a K12 school might have on the environment in which it is situated.

While K12 Inc. In fact, every virtual charter in the districts studied performed worse than their respective district schools. Policymakers should be mindful of K12 Inc. K12 has done everything within its power to increase profits while mismanaging public education resources taken away from district schools.

March 31, Ash, Katie. Civil Rights Data Collection Department of Education. March 5, Accessed March 31,