"Online, For-Profit Charter Schools Hit Another Snag"

[applegrove]

Online, For-Profit Charter Schools Hit Another Snag

by Bill Raden at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/charter-schools-k12_n_5914580.html?utm_hp_ref=politics


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The latest sign that the nation’s 14-year romance with the for-profit cyber charter industry might be cooling came this summer when the Board of Trustees for Pennsylvania’s scandal-plagued Agora Cyber Charter School discussed completely severing its relationship with K12 Inc., the nation’s largest for-profit cyber charter management and curriculum supplier.

The action came nearly three weeks after an August 5 vote by Agora’s board to not renew its management contract with the online learning giant beginning with the 2015-16 school year.

Agora had been the jewel of K12’s 29-state network of virtual charters, accounting for 14 percent of the company’s annual revenues of $848.2 million. So when news of the August 5 decision came to light during an August 14 K12 Fourth Quarter investor conference call, it sent K12’s high-performing stock into a nearly 13-point tailspin. The call-in’s moment of revelation can be heard here.

Investors had already been skittish following an avalanche of recent setbacks for the company, including:
•Last year’s loss of a management contract at Colorado Virtual Academies (COVA) — that state’s largest cyber charter — for the 2014 school year after complaints by parents and COVA about the company’s mismanagement of resources and misplaced priorities.
•Last month’s order by Tennessee’s education commissioner for the closure of K12?s affiliate there, Tennessee Virtual Academy, at the end of the 2014-15 school year, citing its dramatically poor academic performance.
•This spring’s formal opinion by New Mexico’s Attorney General that a Farmington, NM-based K12 affiliate is in violation of a state law forbidding a for-profit company’s involvement in managing a charter school.
•April’s decision by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) that it would no longer accept coursework from 24 virtual charters that use K12 to provide their online curriculum, including both Agora Cyber Charter and California’s largest online charter network, the California Virtual Academy (CAVA).




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[discocrisco01]

1. Learn

When we are going to learn when education is something that you cannot create for profit.