Attendance Scandal – ECOT Exposed

Siegel, Jim. Columbus Dispatch. May 19, 2016. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/05/19/state-questions-attendance-at-ecot-states-largest-online-school.html

The Dispatch reports that ECOT students may not be meeting the required 920 hours of learning time per year as required by law and also points out that ECOT’s owner, William Lager, is one of the GOP’s largest donors.

The initial review also flagged that student attendance records did not match the amount of time reported in Ohio’s statewide education data collection system.

ECOT, which enrolls nearly 15,000 students, is set to get about $106 million a year in state funding over the current two-year budget.

Millions of those dollars go to IQ Innovations and Altair Learning Management, companies closely associated with William Lager, founder of ECOT and one of the largest individual campaign contributors to legislative Republicans in the last decade.

Candisky, Catherine & Siegel, Jim. “Ohio to review charter school attendance after over payments to at least two schools.” Columbus Dispatch. March 8, 2016. http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/03/07/ohio-to-review-charter-school-attendance-after-over-payments-to-at-least-two-schools.html

Certain charter schools have been charging the state (taxpayers) for students they didn’t have. ECOT is one of the schools that will be audited.

ECOT canceled its initial review with the state in February. The review has been rescheduled for this month, Rausch said.

School officials from ECOT reportedly crafted a softened attendance-tracking amendment — floated recently in the Ohio House — which would require online schools only to offer the statewide minimum920 hours of instruction per school year but not require students to actually participate in those hours.