Here’s a collection of
articles on Pennsylvania cybers and charters, followed by some additional history on K12, Inc. and Pennsylvania Budget Secretary
Charles Zogby’s involvement with them.
March 9, 2013
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
Auditor
General: Fixing PA Charter Formula Could Save $365M/year
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
$4 billion taxpayer
dollars with no real oversight
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
FBI, IRS Raid Offices of
Cyberschool Pioneer Trombetta.
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2012/07/july-8-gov-corbett-says-its-time-to.html
Millions flow
to Beaver County-based PA Cyber
School 's spinoffs
By Rich Lord and Eleanor Chute / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette July 15, 2012 12:04 am
The Beaver County-based Pennsylvania Cyber Charter
School , which was
searched by federal agents Thursday, pays tens of millions of dollars a year to
a network of nonprofit and for-profit companies run by former executives of the
state's largest online public school.
Cyber-school empire under attack
By
Jonathan D. Silver / Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette March
18, 2007 12:00 am
In
the past seven years, Nicholas Trombetta has climbed from small-town Beaver County
school administrator to the head of a sprawling educational network fueled by
millions of taxpayer dollars.
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
Agora founder seeks to
delay defamation suit
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
Follow the Money:
Contributions by Vahan Gureghian
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/06/follow-money-contributions-by-vahan.html
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
Shameless; just (expletive deleted) shameless
http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2012/07/commentary-shameless-just-expletive.html
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
K12, Inc. Profits and
Questions
PA
Charter Schools: Publicly funded without public accountability.
K12 Inc. CEO paid $5M
compensation package in 2011
Pa.'s education secretary
resigns Charles Zogby, who engineered the state takeover of Phila. schools, is
joining a Virginia
company.
By
Ovetta Wiggins and Dale Mezzacappa INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS
POSTED: December
18, 2002
Pennsylvania
Education Secretary Charles Zogby, who engineered the state takeover of the Philadelphia School District , created one of the
nation's first cyber charter schools, and implemented controversial standards
for teachers and students, resigned yesterday to join a for-profit online
education company. Zogby, often
criticized for his efforts to change education, many of which centered on
privatization, ends an eight-year tenure with the administrations of Gov.
Schweiker and former Gov. Tom Ridge. He will become a senior vice president of
education and policy at K12, a Virginia-based company. He will leave his post
Jan. 3.
New groups express interest in running
Phila. schools
By Dale Mezzacappa INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: April 17, 2003
The School Reform
Commission made public yesterday the names of seven groups that would like to
manage Philadelphia
public schools or contribute educational services. Included are two local
universities, two nonprofits and three for-profit companies.
Among the latter is K12,
whose vice president for policy and education is former Pennsylvania Education
Secretary Charles Zogby. As the chief education policymaker under Govs. Tom Ridge
and Mark Schweiker, Zogby was the driving force that made Philadelphia the nation's largest laboratory
for outside and for-profit school management.
“Co-founded
by Ronald Reagan-era Secretary of Education William Bennett, K12 has some
27,000 students and revenue last year of more than $116 million, according to
the prospectus.
In addition
to Bennett, other former public officials hired by the company include Charles
Zogby, former Pennsylvania
secretary of education, and Sandy Kress, one of the architects of the federal
government's No Child Left Behind law.”
Officials who paved way for online schools now work
for them
Staff Writer Sept. 9, 2007
When two
companies came to Washington
in 2005 to open online public schools, they used a tried-and-true strategy to
gain a toehold in the state: Ask influential locals to open doors.
The
approach worked. As classes resume for the online schools' second year, the
companies have enrolled twice as many students as last year.
K12 Inc.
and Insight
Schools Inc. together are receiving at least $9 million in state tax money
this year to run the online programs, in which students work at home on
computers instead of attending classes in school buildings.
Three
locals -- two state lawmakers and a school superintendent -- who played key
roles in helping start Washington 's
online schools are now working for the companies running them.
There is
nothing illegal or unethical in getting officials to facilitate introductions
or recruiting them after the fact, according to experts. But the story of how
privately run, online schools came to Washington
provides a glimpse inside their growing interplay with public education.
The Future of Education
WITF Written by Nancy
Rybacki
Our guests
include Dr.
William Harner, superintendent of the Cumberland Valley
School District ,
and Charles
Zogby, senior vice president of k12
Inc., the nation’s largest provider of online curricula, programs and
services. Zogby is a former secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of
Education who oversaw the state takeover of the Philadelphia School
District during the Ridge/Schweiker
administrations. In an email he explained K12’s mission, “At its
core, K12 Inc. is an education curriculum company that has built an Internet-,
research-, and standards-based curriculum for grades K-12. Our curriculum
is a blend of both traditional materials (textbooks, novels, science equipment,
art supplies - all traditional materials and learning approaches) as well as
online lessons delivered through an Online
School that is supported
by a robust learning management system." Two online charter
schools in Pennsylvania - The Pennsylvania
Virtual Charter School and Agora
Cyber Charter
School - use k12's
curricula.
Ex-workers claim operator
of cyber-charters played games with enrollment figures
WHYY
Newsworks By Benjamin Herold
Dozens of
former employees claim that K12 Inc, a for-profit education company, used
dubious and sometimes fraudulent tactics to mask astronomical rates of student
turnover in its national network of cyber charter schools.
K12 manages
Agora, the second largest cyber charter in Pennsylvania . The company is also involved
in pending applications to open two new cybers in the state. The Pennsylvania
Department of Education is expected to decide on the proposals later this
month.
The former
employees allege that K12-managed schools aggressively recruited children who
were ill-suited for the company's model of online education. They say the
schools then manipulated enrollment, attendance and performance data to
maximize tax-subsidized per-pupil funding.
These
claims by anonymous "confidential witnesses" are spelled out in court
documents filed last June as part of a class-action lawsuit by the company's
investors.
“In Pennsylvania , where K12
Inc. collects about 10 percent of its revenues, the company has spent $681,000
on lobbying since 2007. The company also has friends in high places.Charles
Zogby, the state’s budget secretary, had been senior vice president of
education and policy for K12. In a statement, Mr. Zogby said he still owned a
small number of K12 shares, but did not make decisions specifically affecting
online schools.”
Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools
New York
Times By STEPHANIE SAUL Published: December 12, 2011
By almost
every educational measure, the Agora
Cyber Charter
School is failing. 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.
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