This post is an obituary, but it will not celebrate the life of the deceased. Ohio’s Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) finally died yesterday morning when it exhausted its final appeal—this time in a 4-2 decision by the Ohio Supreme Court. The Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell describes the decision: “The ECOT online charter school has […]
After a lengthy legal case in which Ohio’s biggest charter school, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has challenged the Ohio Department of Education’s attempt to crack down on what appears to be ECOT’s outrageous over-reporting of student attendance, ECOT had its final day in court. The Ohio Supreme Court heard ECOT’s appeal yesterday morning. […]
The surprise really ought to be that the 17-year, billion dollar ripoff of tax dollars by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has remained among high profile election issues in this 2018 election season. After all, when USA Today profiled 28 American cities which have not yet recovered from the 2008 Recession, 9 of them […]
The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has been shut down, but fortunately in this election season there may be more accountability than anybody who has been watching this long, long story unfold might have expected. In a new investigation, Columbus Dispatch reporter Jim Siegel revisits the ECOT saga and then looks at the role of […]
Exactly five months ago today, on February 13, 2018, the Ohio Supreme Court heard the final legal appeal by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) trying to keep itself in business. You may remember that ECOT, perhaps the nation’s largest online charter school—at least according to what we now know were its inflated attendance numbers—had […]
Despite the death last January of the notorious Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, Ohio’s charter schools continue to suck money out of their host school districts, and, at the same time, many fail to educate the students for whom they are responsible. The giant Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) was finally shut down after the state […]
Presumably now that yesterday’s primary election has occurred, Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost will release his long-awaited audit of the now-defunct, mega-online-charter school, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT). In yesterday’s primary election, Yost ran unopposed for the Republican nomination for Attorney General, and Mike DeWine, the current Attorney General, became the Republican nominee for […]
This week here in Ohio we had one more confirmation that the notorious Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), which was shut down by the state at the end of January, has been intentionally defrauding the state of hundreds of millions of dollars by inflating its attendance figures. The Associated Press‘s Julie Carr Smyth reported: “Education […]
During this National School Choice Week, a celebration of school privatization that is being financially and ideologically promoted by people like Jeb Bush and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, it is a good time to consider the lessons we have been learning about the impact of parental choice and what is virtually always at the […]
The Plain Dealer‘s Patrick O’Donnell reports that tonight the sponsor of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow has voted to close the giant cyber school. O’Donnell reports: “All three members of the governing board of the sponsor, the Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West, said they regretted their vote but had no choice because the […]
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