Renaissance Academy (Nevada)

“Former charter school administrator arrested.” KTNV Las Vegas (NV), 4/9/2013

Las Vegas, NV (KTNV) -- A man at the center of a Contact 13 investigation is facing charges that he defrauded the state and stole $1.3 million tax dollars all under the guise of education.

Chief investigator Darcy Spears first broke the story last July.

For charter schools, more kids means more money.

And it seems Roy Harden knew that.

Instead of diplomas and educated kids, his legacy includes allegations of theft, forgery and a shut-down school.

Renaissance Academy was an online charter school that barely got off the ground before it was shut down by the state...

As Contact 13 first reported last summer, the State Public Charter School Authority found forged and doctored documents from attendance logs to student transcripts.

The man running Renaissance was Roy Harden, who started the school as administrator at the age of 26.

"He was never a teacher. He was never an administrator. I don't even know if he finished college," former Renaissance teacher Katherine von Collenberg told us last July.

Harden now stands accused of theft and multiple counts of forgery by the Nevada Attorney General.

The criminal complaint they filed about a week ago says Harden lied to the Nevada Department of Education, falsely inflating Renaissance's student enrollment.

That resulted in an over-payment of $1.3 million tax dollars...

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EdChoices

“Oregon charter school founders accused in $20 million racketeering lawsuit.” The Oregonian, 1/4/2013

Tim King and Norm Donohoe, who ran a chain of taxpayer-funded charter schools across small-town Oregon from their headquarters in Clackamas, scammed the state out of $17 million and must repay that plus $2.7 million more, the state said in a court filing this week...

King and Donohoe, who were the director and president, respectively, of a nonprofit they named EdChoices, submitted false, incomplete and misleading records about how many students were enrolled in the schools and how they were spending the state's money, state prosecutors say in the complaint...

The pair opened and operated at least 10 charter schools that went by various and changing names, including Baker Web Academy, Estacada Early College and Sheridan AllPrep Academy. Most were launched under the name AllPrep. They existed under agreements with the school boards in Estacada, Sisters, Baker City, Sheridan, Burns and Marcola, but enrolled students from across the state in their online programs.

The state provided startup grants of up to $450,000 per charter school. The state Department of Educationalso paid about $6,000 a year for each student enrolled, relying on the charter school operators to document the number. The state now says those records were "erroneous, false and misleading."

Before starting AllPrep schools, King was a former teacher paid to create and run three North Clackamas School District charter schools: New Urban High, Clackamas Middle College and Clackamas Web Academy. Those schools are still operating, though King left in 2008.

The district discovered a trail of financial problems, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in questioned expenditures, only after his departure. The three schools agreed in 2009 to repay the district almost $400,000, a debt load that crimped their operations. But the state did not file a legal claim against King...

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See these entries for additional information

- Oregon charter schools (inadequate oversight)

- AllPrep Web Academy network

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Georgia Cyber Academy

“Georgia Threatens To Close K12-run Online Charter School.” StateImpact, NPR, (GA) 11/26/2012 

The Georgia Department of Education is threatening to close an online charter school run by K12, the nation’s largest online education company, over issues with special education students.

The agency issued a report last week that the K12-run Georgia Cyber Academy has repeatedly failed to comply with the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and has violated student civil rights by failing to provide services required by the law.

The school has 1,100 special education students, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The 12,000-student school is the largest public school in the state.

The agency will begin the process of closing the school in April unless the concerns are addressed.

The Florida Department of Education is investigating whether K12 online programs used teachers who were not properly certified and then asked other teachers to help cover it up. In addition, company documents show student-to-teacher ratios of 275-to-1 in some K12 classes, while some Florida school districts have raised concerns about a network of K12-run online charter schools which have applied across the state...

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“Georgia DOE blasts Georgia Cyber Academy, threatens to pull charter in report.” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA), 11/20/2012

The Georgia Department of Education has told the Georgia Cyber Academy that it will begin proceedings in April to shut down the online charter school if it fails to address numerous issues in its handling of special education students.

Those concerns, spelled out in a report delivered to GCA on Tuesday, include failure to obtain individualized education plans special education students are taught from, problems in resolving parental complaints and failure to offer the individualized instruction special education students are eligible to receive under federal law.

With 12,000 students, GCA is the largest public school in the state. The report says GCA’s special education problems stretch back to 2009, when the scores of its special needs students were among the lowest in the state...

During an October review of GCA, department officials found “continuing and significant failures to comply with federal and state laws and regulations,” according to the report...

GCA’s charter was granted by the state, and the state board has the authority to revoke it. Some board members have expressed frustration with what they described as GCA’s ongoing problems and said they will pull the school’s charter if those problems are not resolved.

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Primavera Technical Learning Center

“4 charter-school organizations where insiders benefited.” The Arizona Republic, 11/17/2012

... Damien Creamer and Vanessa Baviera Rudilla run one of the largest online schools in Arizona, and the non-profit school contracts with a for-profit company, American Virtual Academy, for its curriculum and software. Creamer and Rudilla are officers of the non-profit and earn salaries. American Virtual Academy also is owned by Creamer and Rudilla. From fiscal 2007 to 2011, the non-profit paid $42.3 million to American Virtual Academy. The non-profit is exempt from state purchasing laws...

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Online schools (extreme spending on marketing)

“Online schools spend millions to attract students.” USA Today, 11/28/2012 

Virtual, for-profit K-12 schools have spent millions in taxpayer dollars on advertising, an analysis shows...

An analysis by USA TODAY finds that online charter schools have spent millions in taxpayer dollars on advertising over the past five years, a trend that shows few signs of abating...

The USA TODAY analysis finds that 10 of the largest for-profit operators have spent an estimated $94.4 million on ads since 2007. The largest, Virginia-based K12 Inc., has spent about $21.5 million in just the first eight months of 2012...

A look at where K12 is placing the ads suggests that the company is also working to appeal to kids: Among the hundreds of outlets tapped this year, K12 has spent an estimated $631,600 to advertise on Nickelodeon, $601,600 on The Cartoon Network and $671,400 on MeetMe.com, a social networking site popular with teens. It also dropped $3,000 on VampireFreaks.com, which calls itself "the Web's largest community for dark alternative culture."

Kwitowski declined to say what percentage of K12's per-pupil expenses goes to advertising, but Kevin Welner, a University of Colorado professor who tracks virtual schools, estimated that K12 is on pace this year to spend about $340 per student on advertising, or about 5.2% of its per-pupil public expenditures...

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Idaho Virtual Academy

“Idaho for-profit online students lag in math and reading skills.” Deseret News (UT), 7/21/2012

BOISE — A new report takes aim at the nation's largest for-profit online education provider and finds students taking K12 Inc. classes in Idaho and four other states are falling more behind in math and reading than their traditional school counterparts...

The latest report looked at schools managed by Virginia-based K12 in Idaho, Arizona, Arkansas, Ohio and Pennsylvania and found that on average, they had a consistently lower proportion of their students meeting or exceeding state standards in reading, according to 2010-2011 test scores.

The report also said math scores were lower compared to the state average. The on-time graduation rate for K12 students was about 49 percent for that year, compared to about 79 percent for the states, according to the study. In Idaho, where K12 provides curriculum for the state's largest online charter school, state officials say students beat slightly the statewide average for graduation rates in the most recent year.

K12 has managed online schools in 29 states with mixed academic success...

The debate over virtual learning has become heated in states like Idaho, where students have to take at least two credits online to graduate high school, under education reforms that were approved in 2011 and will go before voters in November.

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Virtual Community School of Ohio

“Reynoldsburg board places virtual school on probation.” ThisWeek Community News (OH), 7/18/2012

The Reynoldsburg Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday, July 17, to impose a probation period of one school year for the Virtual Community School of Ohio.

Board members had discussed suspending the online school, which serves 1,300 students from kindergarten through 12th grade, because of concerns over finances and hiring practices, but instead agreed to place the school on probation for the 2012-13 school year.

The Reynoldsburg district sponsors the online charter school.

Superintendent Steve Dackin said he was prepared to "trust but verify."

A state audit in January revealed the online school was facing an $800,000 deficit for the 2012-13 school year and had failed to satisfy its debts and liabilities or pay bills on time.

The audit also said the school had hired the wife, brother and son of Virtual Community School Superintendent James McCord, a possible violation of Ohio's ethics laws.

"We had great concerns about the financial audit of VCS," Dackin said. "We created a list of assurances for the school to respond to and they have agreed to those assurances.

"I am prepared to trust, but verify, that they will follow the plan during the probation period," he said.

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Frontier Virtual Charter High School

“Frontier cyber-school students: All we want is to learn.” Philadelphia Daily News (PA), 3/23/2012

CAREY STONE is living Ferris Bueller's life - just the complete opposite of it, actually.

Every morning, the high-school senior calls her school's administrators, trying to find out where they are, wondering when they'll have classes for her to attend or let her hand in a report on "The Great Gatsby."

And every day, her calls go unanswered. "I feel like they're just brushing me off," she said. Carey, 18, and her sisters, Rachel, 15, and Harmony, 14, are enrolled at the Philadelphia-based Frontier Virtual Charter High School.

The school laid off its teachers and principal on March 8 and hasn't held any classes since...

...The state Department of Education is finishing an investigation into Frontier over numerous questions about financial and academic problems that were detailed last week by the Daily News...

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“Cyber-school kids truant, failing, and teachers have been dumped.” Philadelphia Daily News (PA), 3/14/2012

It all sounded so good on paper: a "global high school of the 21st century," a cyber school that would teach about 300 students two languages and keep them constantly engaged in learning.

That was how John Craig pitched the Frontier Virtual Charter High School to state education officials two years ago...

Frontier opened in the fall. It fell apart before the spring...

The cyber school seems to have serious money woes and other problems:

* Frontier - which is receiving $435,520 from the Philadelphia School District this year to educate 54 city students - didn't pay its teachers or principal in August, September and most of October, according to several sources who have direct knowledge of the school's troubles.

Since then, teachers had been paid only half of their $40,000 salaries.

* Craig said on Thursday that he was working on a plan to get the staff back pay and address other financial problems before the end of the school year. The following day, he laid off all the school's teachers and the principal. He later posted part-time teaching jobs on Craigslist.

* Craig, also an associate pastor at the Philadelphia Revival Temple Church, said that Frontier doesn't "have really any students that are truant" and that many "are doing fine" academically.

But records viewed by the Daily News show that numerous students are habitually truant or failing their classes - or both.

* Bills have gone unpaid, including some in excess of $80,000 for K12, the company that created Frontier's curriculum, sources said.

* Staffers raised repeated concerns about whether Craig and the school's board of trustees - which includes former Municipal Court Judge Jimmie Moore - had violated the state's Sunshine Law by making decisions in private, sources said...

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K12, Inc.

“Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Announces Investigation of K12, Inc.” Press Release: Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, 12/16/2011 

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential securities fraud at K12, Inc. (“K12” or the “Company”) (NYSE: LRN - News).

The investigation focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by failing to disclose that: (1) according to various academic benchmarks, K12 students were chronically underperforming their peers at traditional schools; (2) K12 has aggressively recruited students to their schools, regardless of how well-suited they might be for the Company’s curriculum; (3) as a result of K12’s haphazard recruiting process, the Company experiences student retention problems resulting in high rates of withdrawal; (4) K12 schools often have far larger student-to-teacher ratios than the Company advertises; and (5) K12 teachers have been pressured to allow students to pass regardless of academic performance, in order to receive federal funds.

On December 12, 2011, after several months of research, the New York Times published an article entitled “Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.” The article raised serious concerns about K12’s business practices, alleging that Company schools inflate their student rosters, are underperforming academically, have detrimental student-to-teacher ratios and gain wrongful access to public funds. On this devastating news, K12 shares collapsed almost 24%, closing at $22 per share on December 13.

Request more information now by clicking here: www.faruqilaw.com/LRN

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“Profits and Questions at Online Charter Schools.” New York Times, 12/12/2011  

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.

Agora is one of the largest in a portfolio of similar public schools across the country run by K12. Eight other for-profit companies also run online public elementary and high schools, enrolling a large chunk of the more than 200,000 full-time cyberpupils in the United States...

Kids mean money. Agora is expecting income of $72 million this school year, accounting for more than 10 percent of the total anticipated revenues of K12, the biggest player in the online-school business. The second-largest, Connections Education, with revenues estimated at $190 million, was bought this year by the education and publishing giant Pearson for $400 million...

The New York Times has spent several months examining this idea, focusing on K12 Inc. A look at the company’s operations, based on interviews and a review of school finances and performance records, raises serious questions about whether K12 schools — and full-time online schools in general — benefit children or taxpayers, particularly as state education budgets are being slashed.

Instead, a portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.

Current and former staff members of K12 Inc. schools say problems begin with intense recruitment efforts that fail to filter out students who are not suited for the program, which requires strong parental commitment and self-motivated students. Online schools typically are characterized by high rates of withdrawal...

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K12, Inc. / LRN stock price trends @ http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/LRN

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Online schools (poor academic performance)

“Students of Online Schools Are Lagging.” New York Times, 1/6/2012 

The number of students in virtual schools run by educational management organizations rose sharply last year, according to a new report being published Friday, and far fewer of them are proving proficient on standardized tests compared with their peers in other privately managed charter schools and in traditional public schools.

About 116,000 students were educated in 93 virtual schools — those where instruction is entirely or mainly provided over the Internet — run by private management companies in the 2010-11 school year, up 43 percent from the previous year, according to the report being published by the National Education Policy Center, a research center at the University of Colorado. About 27 percent of these schools achieved “adequate yearly progress,” the key federal standard set forth under the No Child Left Behind act to measure academic progress. By comparison, nearly 52 percent of all privately managed brick-and-mortar schools reached that goal, a figure comparable to all public schools nationally.

“There’s a pretty large gap between virtual and brick-and-mortar,” said Gary Miron, a professor of evaluation, measurement and research at Western Michigan University and a co-author of the study.

“E.M.O.’s” — educational management organizations, a term coined by Wall Street in the 1990s — now operate 35 percent of all charter schools, enrolling 42 percent of all charter school students, according to the report. “Charter schools are publicly funded and they are serving public school students,” Dr. Miron noted. “But they are increasingly privately owned and privately governed.”

Some of the management companies are nonprofit organizations — the largest is the KIPP Foundation, with 28,261 students — while others are for-profit companies (K12 Inc. leads this sector, with 65,396). The report focuses on those that have full-service agreements to run schools, as opposed to vendors that offer ancillary services like curriculum development...

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South Carolina Virtual Charter School

“Test Result: No School for Student with Asperger Syndrome.” Education Week, 10/14/2011

At the moment, South Carolina mother Gretchen Herrera isn't worried about whether her son has to take state tests in reading and math this year.

He has to be in school for her to worry about that.

Last week, Ms. Herrera told me about how she doesn't want her son Anthony, 12, to take the tests because his two diagnoses, Asperger syndrome and Type I diabetes, are a somewhat lethal combination. Anthony did well on the one test he did take, but his blood sugar spiked to a dangerous level during the exam. She kept him from most of the testing last spring as a result, unable to get official permission from the school to do so despite a note from a doctor.

Then last weekend, Ms. Herrera staged a petite protest outside the South Carolina state government buildings in Columbia.

When she got home, there was a letter waiting for her. The online charter school her son attends said Anthony is no longer welcome.

The school said because Ms. Herrera signed a contract when she enrolled Anthony, a contract that includes a clause about taking state tests, and violated that contract, her son was being withdrawn from the school, effective immediately.

Ms. Herrera told me she did sign that contract—"except the part about testing," she told me. The school, which didn't make adequate yearly progress as measured by No Child Left Behind, hasn't called me back to explain more about its decision. The immediate question: Why unenroll Anthony now, and not months ago when he didn't take the state tests?

As Ms. Herrera researches schools that she believes would be a good fit for Anthony, he has been sitting at home, his access to the online charter school cut off...

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More @ http://grumpythings.blogspot.com/search/label/Gretchen%20Herrera

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Pembridge Prep, Inc Charter School (attempt)

“Bradentonschool owner facing lawsuits applies for charter school.” WTSP News (FL), 8/11/2011

Built as a storage facility, the building at 7710 Cortez Road is being turned into what may be used as a school. The storage facility now has half a dozen classrooms and bathrooms for students up to 12th grade. The new school is the plan of Bradenton business man Hendrik Lamprecht. He's applied for a charter school with the Manatee County school district.

"He's not a man who is an educator never been a teacher if he's suppose to be finance man his proven track record shows he's not reliable," says Cheryl Gaynor, she's one of 13 teachers suing Lamprecht for 10's of thousands of dollars in back pay from their teaching days at the now foreclosed Bradenton Prep Academy. Gaynor says Lamprecht, who served as the school's CEO, owes her close to "$25,000."

Ten News has been following Lamprecht's financial troubles since last year. It began when Bradenton Prep Academy hired him to help the school fix its finances. Except former teachers like Gaynor say he made the problems worst. Bradenton Prep Academy foreclosed last summer. Lamprecht reportedly owed $1,000,000 in federal payroll taxes according to the IRS. He faced code enforcement and permitting issues, law suits from teachers, an investor, and parents for tuition refunds and playing football players over the age limit...

If approved by the Manatee County School Board, Lamprecht will open The Pembridge Prep, Inc Charter School in August 2012. This school would be for low performing students using a virtual school curriculum. Lamprecht would receive between $3,869 per student from state taxpayers. If approved, Lamprecht's projects having more than 900 students enrolled by the 5th year.

The charter application says Lamprecht's business Monolex USA Trading Limited will pay for all the building and development costs for the new school. The expenses break down like this according to the charter application: Rental, $13,500 per month, plus $665,000 for additional facilities, curriculum material and technology enhancement. The 665-thousand dollars from Monolex would also pay for $100,000 in renovations of a facility described as "church property" but an address is not indicated. He plans to use grand funding where available...

Ten News spoke with Hendrik Lamprecht over the telephone. He said the earliest he can speak with Ten News on camera would be the week of August 22nd. Even then he says he'll only talk about the charter school he wants to open up and not about any pending litigation. But the last time we set up a meeting with Lamprecht it did not go well.

In July of last year our photojournalist went to Bradenton Prep for a 10 a.m. scheduled interview Lamprecht was not happy to see us. The photographer says Lamprecht came up from behind and hit him over the head. Lamprecht apologized, but did not keep the interview. Ten News will try again later this month.

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More @ “Bradenton Prep investor wants charter school.” Bradenton Herald (FL), 8/11/2011

http://www.bradenton.com/2011/08/11/3412989/prep-investor-wants-to-start-charter.html

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Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow

STATE QUESTIONS ATTENDANCE RATES AT INTERNET CHARTER SCHOOLS; Sept. 23, 2006; Associated Press, via Akron Beacon Journal (OH) 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Attendance has been so good at some of Ohio's Internet charter schools that the state is wondering if the numbers are too good to be true.

The Ohio Department of Education plans to give attendance figures a second look after 20 of the schools - state-funded public schools where students do work online from home or other sites - reported perfect attendance for the last school year. Others had rates that were nearly perfect.

At least two schools, including Ohio's biggest, admit that they don't count students expelled for being absent for at least 21 days.

"This sounds like just another way that charter schools are gaming the system," said Lisa Zellner, spokeswoman for the Ohio Federation of Teachers. "What does this do for the student? The point is to be educating these kids, giving them what they need."…

The state's largest Internet charter school, the 6,664-student Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, has reported perfect attendance for the past three school years…

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ONLINE SCHOOLS UNDER SCRUTINY; May 3, 2002; Wired 

More than 30 publicly funded virtual charter schools have launched during the past five years, and parents have largely been pleased with the results.

But the alleged mismanagement of two academies run by for-profit companies is prompting states to request more regulatory authority.

Educators say the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) in Ohio and Einstein Academy in Pennsylvania, both of which are run by private companies, have ignored numerous academic guidelines while operating with questionable accounting practices…

[Ohio Federation of Teachers] president Tom Mooney said ECOT is "really being run by Bozo and Clarabell," claiming that management company Altair Learning Management had no background in education or technology. However, Mooney said they were "shrewd enough to smell a really good opportunity."…

The audit, which was released in April, showed that the company overcharged the state by $1.65 million for teaching hours it could not substantiate, and that $500,000 worth of computer equipment given to students who left the program were not recovered.

The auditor's office said ECOT's net loss of $3.8 million during the school year "causes substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern."

ECOT recently agreed to pay back $1.6 million to Ohio's department of education over the next three years. ECOT superintendent Jeffrey P. Forster, who saw 30 percent of his students leave the program during its first year, said that because of cost cutting, the academy is on solid financial footing…

The federation also cites a recent charter granted directly to Akron "industrialist" David Brennan's White Hat Management company instead of to a nonprofit as required by state law.

Mooney said that when legislators passed the charter school law, they never envisioned cyber schools and "did not set up appropriate guidelines for oversight."…

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