California 'virtual' academies: Bill targets for-profit operator K12 Inc. - San Jose Mercury News:
California 'virtual' academies: Bill targets for-profit operator K12 Inc.
SACRAMENTO -- Online charter schools would be prohibited from hiring for-profit firms to provide instructional services under a new bill that the author says is a direct response to this newspaper's investigation of the company behind a profitable but low-performing network of "virtual" academies.
That company is K12 Inc., a publicly traded Virginia firm that allows students who spend as little as one minute during a school day logged onto its software to be counted as "present," as it reaps tens of millions of dollars annually in state funding while graduating fewer than half of its high school students. Students who live almost anywhere south of Humboldt County may sign up for one of the company's schools.
File photo:Former California Virtual Academies student Elizabeth Novak-Galloway, 12, plays a video game on her laptop in her San Francisco home on Feb. 18, 2016. (Dai Sugano/Staff archives)
Assembly Bill 1084, authored by Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, would prevent charter schools that do more than 80 percent of their teaching online from being operated by for-profit companies or hiring them to facilitate instruction. If passed and signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, the legislation would effectively put companies like K12 out of business in the Golden State.
"Our taxpayer dollars should be spent in the classroom to help our students, not used to enrich a company's shareholders or drive up its profits," Bonilla said in an interview.
But K12 spokesman Mike Kraft railed against the proposal, calling it "another cynical effort to take away the rights of parents to choose the way their kids are educated."
"This bill is nothing more than a PR effort designed to appease big money special interests that hide in the shadows, harming California families," Kraft wrote in an email, alluding to the support teachers unions have given to similar legislation in the past.
"Today, more than 14,000 California children attend virtual public charter schools, many in the Assemblymember's own district," Kraft added. "How many of their families has she spoken with before deciding to try to take away their choice?"
Before the newspaper's two-part investigative series was published in April, Bonilla said, she didn't know how wide the achievement gap was between students enrolled in K12's California Virtual Academies and those who attend other public schools. But the more she
California 'virtual' academies: Bill targets for-profit operator K12 Inc. - San Jose Mercury News:
