California’s Attorney General Is Investigating The Online Charter School Industry
Students at virtual charter schools lag significantly behind their peers in brick-and-mortar classrooms, sparking big worries among education advocates.
The for-profit online charter school industry is the target of an investigation by California Attorney General Kamala Harris, according to a filing by K12 Inc., the country’s largest online charter management company.
K12 received a subpoena in late September from the Bureau of Children’s Justice at the California Attorney General’s office, the company said in its quarterly earnings report. The subpoena, K12 said, was part of an industry-wide investigation. There are 14,500 students enrolled in virtual schools run by K12 Inc., up from just 650 in 2002.
The California Attorney General’s office said it could not comment on ongoing investigations.
Virtual charter schools are public schools that exist entirely online: Taxpayer dollars pay for students in kindergarten through 12th grade to take classes from home, communicating with their teachers over the internet. About two-thirds of the country’s virtual charters are run by for-profit companies like K12, which hire teachers and management and provide the school’s curriculum and software.
A scathing report last week from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that online charter schools have an “overwhelming negative impact” on students’ learning compared to traditional brick-and-mortar schools.
Over the course of a school year, the CREDO study said, virtual school students lost out on the equivalent of 180 days of learning in math and 72 days reading. The California's Attorney General Is Investigating The Online Charter School Industry - BuzzFeed News:
