You may have seen ads for K12 Inc. virtual schools on TV. You might have even seen some online ads here on The Range. It’s nearing the end of the school year, and the for-profit virtual schools corporation is drumming up business for next year.
How much K12 Inc. actually spends on advertising is an open question. In a 2012 article, USA Today estimated the corporation spent $21.5 million on ads during the first eight months of that year. Those are publicly funded ads, by the way, since the charter schools get their money from tax dollars. The $21.5 million figure is only an estimate, because K12 Inc. wouldn’t reveal the actual number to USA Today. I’m not sure if that counts the money K12 Inc. spends on its online call centers. I’m sure it doesn’t count the amount of time teachers spend selling the school to parents of students who are already enrolled, encouraging them to keep their children in another year. Teachers are encouraged to do a whole lot of selling.
The big ad push is understandable since the online schools have a 30 percent student churn rate every year, or more. That’s right, one out of every three students leave each year. They have to be replaced. And since this is a for-profit corporation, it has to do more than replace students. It has to grow or die.
K12 Inc. has been fighting lots of very, very bad publicity over the past few years. Its students are notoriously low performing. Its schools fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress on a regular basis. Our K12 Inc. school, Arizona Virtual Academy, was on academic probation a few years ago, though it managed to pull a “C” last year, so it’s dragged itself out of the doghouse. But with fewer than half of its students passing the math and writing portions of AIMS (about 75 percent of its students passed reading), it still doesn’t have much in the way of bragging rights.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) decided it will stop accepting coursework from 24 K12 Inc. schools at Division I or Division II colleges or universities starting in the 2014-15 school year.
Corporation shareholders have sued, accusing K12 Inc. of misleading its investors by putting out inaccurate, overly positive statements.
CEO Ron Packard makes about $5 million a year, a sum he earns by, well, by being CEO.
Next time you see one of those “What a great school!” ads from K12 Inc., ads you pay for out of your tax dollars, remember, Caveat emptor.
This article appears in May 1-7, 2014.
Isn’t it amazing how examination of the actual record compared to the TV ads gives the truth about these schools?
You’ve made a mistake in your reporting. Ron Packard isn’t the CEO. Nathaniel Davis is the CEO.
There is something fishy going on at AZVA currently. My child started this 2014 school year at AZVA, its only September now, and he has already had one teacher quit without notice, and already her replacement teacher (who took on double the students after that) has since quit as wel. As you already know, each teacher already has hundreds of students, so I can’t imagine the workload left for the remaining teachers in my child’s grade.
Since the second teacher’s resignation, I have emailed the Principle twice, another administrator twice, and one more teacher once, with no replies. These emails are regarding system errors involving my child’s curriculum, and missing checkpoints/tests (since he has no teacher to give certain curriculum) . He cannot get his grades if these issues aren’t fixed. The current lack of responses from administration in K12 AZVA is extremely disconcerting.
I cant imagine how they are going to hold this together, to be honest.
It’s August 2016 and the ads are incessant on NYC TV stations.
This is what making schools think like businesses lead to. Welcome to the ultimate charter school: no buildings, few expenses.
But if you’re like Teeny above who thinks these charters can’t last, John Oliver’s expose on charter schools nationwide. Unless you admire the operators whose fiduciary (legal) responsibility is to the shareholders, and only the shareholders.