K12 Inc.; Leading the Corporatization of American Education (with thanks to Paul Vallas)

Jun 08

jonpeltoPaul Vallas 17 Comments

And now K12 Inc., has ads running in Connecticut even though they aren’t licensed here.

Lets face it, E-Learning is big business, pulling in $5.4 billion a year.

And a primary leader in the “e-learning” industry is the for-profit company K12 Inc., a company formed in 1999.  William Bennett, the right-wing ideologue and Reagan’s former secretary of education, was the company’s first Board Chairman.

According to their investor reports, K12 offers “proprietary curriculum and educational services created for individualized learning for students primarily in kindergarten through 12th grade…”

The company was originally focused on the home school market. When asked by a Christian radio station, Bennett said that their  science curriculum presents evolution, creationism, and intelligent design as equally tenable explanations for the existence of life,” adding “We’re centered in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we do not ignore faith and religion, we do not ignore the arguments against evolution, because there are some…”

However, with the passage of George Bush I’s No Child Left Behind law, the company quickly expanded to take advantage of the new business opportunities created by the new law.

Today, K12 Inc. is one of nine major for-profit companies running on-line public schools around the country.  With over 147,000 students enrolled in their various divisions, K12 Inc. is the largest of them all and is producing annual revenues of over $650 million

This past February, a New York Times investigative report determined that K12’s performance doesn’t come close to their rhetoric.

While they brag of their successes, the New York Times found that “nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading.

A third of the students do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to high school seniors, “withdraw within months after they enroll.”

K12 Inc. is even facing a shareholder lawsuit for misrepresenting its performance to its shareholders.

However, K12 Inc. isn’t alone when it comes to a record of failure.  A major study out of Stanford University found that “in every subgroup, with significant effects, cyber charter performance is lower.”

Paul Vallas and K12 Inc.

While K12 has become international in reach, the company got its big break in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2005, when Paul Vallas was the CEO of the Philadelphia Schools.

The details about how K12 went from a small company in the home school market and a few thousand on-line students to the nation’s largest E-Learning for-profit company was outlined by Sheila Simmons, a reporter for the Notebook, an on-line education newspaper. (see link below)

Today, Charles Zogby serves as Pennsylvania’s budget director.  However, before that he served for nine years as K12’s senior vice president of education.

But before Zogby was named a senior officer at K12 Inc., he served as Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Education from 2001 – 2003 where he led the state takeover of the Philadelphia school system, a takeover that led to the selection and hiring of Paul Vallas to serve as the CEO for the state oversight-board assigned to running Philadelphia’s schools.

A year later, Zogby was working for K12 Inc., and Philadelphia was selecting a vendor to provide all of its K-3 students with a new science curriculum.

Vallas’ administration ended up giving the $3 million contract to K12 Inc. Not only did K12 Inc. beat out “two nationally renowned science materials providers” but with that contract, “Philadelphia became the first school district in the nation to adopt K12′s materials district wide.”

Interestingly, after the contract was given to K12, the 30 Philadelphia science teachers who were assigned to develop the new curriculum and identify the best vendor reported that there was little if any discussion about K12’s materials.  Instead, the group focused on the two major providers of science curriculum.

As concern about the controversial decision grew, Paul Vallas admitted to a reporter that he had, as the reporter wrote, “provided some direction on the science curriculum.”  In fact, Vallas’ quote was “I told them that we needed to standardize the curriculum. I talked about models they should look at. I didn’t say, ‘Here’s K12, I want you to bring them in.”  Asked about whether he had recommended any other companies Vallas said “There’s not a lot of work done in primary science curriculum, let’s face it.”

Meanwhile, Vallas’ associate superintendent for curriculum and instruction, who was responsible for selecting the vendor, said that it was only after the committee review process ended that K12’s materials become available for review.

Soon after K12 was selected, the Notebook’s reporter contacted a number of “major science education experts” around the country.  Not one of the experts said they were familiar with K12 Inc. or its curriculum.

At the time, Vallas critics pointed out that K12’s chairman, William Bennett, and Paul Vallas had built a strong relationship when Vallas was in Chicago.

According to the Washington Post, Bennett even recommended that Vallas be appointed U.S. Secretary of Education by President Bush I, after Bush’s initial secretary of education, Rod Paige, announced his retirement.

To the accusation that Vallas directed the contract to Bennett’s company, Vallas said, “I don’t think I’ve ever had a discussion on K12 with Bennett. Ron Packard is K12′s person. He’s their CEO, the one we interact with…”

As the saying goes, the rest of the story is history.

Except for that one interesting side note…that although K12 Inc. is not licensed to do business in the State of Connecticut, the company has television ads that are running on at least one network in the state.  If you go to www.K12inc.com and follow the instructions to check out their program in Connecticut, the following warning will pop up. “There are currently no public schools using the full K12 program in this state. But new schools are always being added! Sign up to receive notification when a full-time public program using the K12 curriculum becomes available in your area.”

Although they hardly need the additional revenue, maybe they think that with Paul Vallas taking over the Bridgeport Schools, lighting will strike twice and more contracts will be coming their way.

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  • Brutus2011

    This is not a rare occurence in urban school districts.

    It would prove fruitful to investigate New Haven Public Schools and its relationships with private education firms such as Edison Learning, Gateway Learning Academy,Renaissance School Services, and Domus, Inc., and Achievement First.

    Mayor DeStefano and School Superintendent Mayo are on record as to favoring a public-private management of the district in the search for what works in boosting student achievement.

    My issue with this is that those who make policy decisions in New Haven and other CT urban school districts have failed to produce the results everyone says is needed and have instead managed to blame the teachers.

    Why are those who are well paid to run things not held acountable for failure?

  • Luv2Teach

    Among the many things disturbing and grotty about this, the one that hits me hardest is the apparent INSULT to the teaching profession!!! I also cringe at the thought of this kind of future for our children. How sad the ostensible path of education in CT…:( 

  • guest

    I like how Paul Vallas, as “CEO” of Philadelphia schools, did not dictate which curriculum to use, instead he “provided some direction” which amounted to:  Buy this curriculum or I’ll break your kneecaps.
    His refreshingly blunt managerial style is just like Steven Adamowski’s!  You would never know that the humble Special Master of Windham dictates all decisions and tyrannizes over every important aspect of the district.
    I am breathlessly waiting to hear that K12 will be providing curriculum to Windham’s elementaries.  They haven’t taught creationism here in a while–except maybe among the home schoolers.  Just think what this will do for the science scores on the CMT!
    It’s amazing how ed reformers flit between the parties.  I mean, Vallas could have written Obama’s horrific ed platform.  And look at Chicago now.

  • guest

    The Special Master of Windham–I need to be specific, because there are new special masters popping up every day!–is rigorously and robustly looking for ways to extend the school year cheaply and to educate those who do poorly in conventional, impoverished, underfunded classes.  K12 sounds perfect!  And we thought that summer school would mean a brick-and-mortar edifice, when in fact, in the 21st century, it means a mobile device that can go anywhere and deliver the high quality, effective core curriculum necessary in today’s complex world.
    Paid for by Paul Vallas, um, K12.

    • Magister

      This should work great for Mandarin and Latin.

      • sharewhut

         Scholarships for all to The University of Phoenix eDegree program?

      • sharewhut

         Was joking til I looked and found this looking into U of P… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Group#Leadership
        Ties to Sylvan & Carnegie Learning ( Carnegie Learning is a publisher of math curricula for middle school, high school, and post-secondary students.  textbook and software (called Cognitive Tutor) for each subject. The company also produces products for the homeschool and tutoring markets”
        Where will the new math modules be coming from?

      • guest

        thanks for this!  You knew it was coming!
        In Windham, they would love to put the “difficult” students into little cubbies–or cells–all alone to get  their education and social interaction over the internet.  It calls to mind the dreadful experiments in incarceration done in the 19th century, in which, rather than employ corporal punishment, they placed offenders in solitary confinement.  Most went mad and killed themselves. But they didn’t have virtual reality back in the 19th century.

  • savage

    Coincidentally, I’m currently reading “Republican Gomorrah,” which explores the psychology (psychosis?) of right-wing Christian conservatives like William Bennett, Dr. James Dobson, et al. Very, very scary stuff. Wonder if the K12 curriculum spreads the messages of homophobia and racism as well as the message of creationism?

    • sharewhut

      “Wonder if the K12 curriculum spreads the messages of homophobia and racism as well as the message of creationism?”
      Could you just see heads exploding at the White House and Governor’s Palace if so?
      I know, I know…freedom of speech, blahblahblah.
      A kid can’t wear a T-shirt opposing same sex marriage to school in Wokcott but Danielle will throw bajillions of bucks in a process sanctified by Barr’s Ed Head (sorry, does the word ‘sanctified’ cross Church/state boundary?) to a Most Favored Nation(-al disgrace).
      Are we beyond two faces (feces?) on these ‘PublicServants’?

      • guest

        I’m not sure I can see heads exploding.  I am not sure that the White House (as the Romney campaign likes to put it!!!) or Barack Obama or the Democratic party really stand for anything anymore.  Look at the effects of Obama’s educational policies.  They are racist and anti-poor.  They do promote very negative and retrograde social thinking.

      • savage

        I agree 100%

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  • CTVeteran

    Mr. White, please direct me to examples that would prove I am wrong, but when you post you always seem to use inflamatory remarks when it comes to teachers…so how proffesional are you?

    Second, to your comment  “meeting plenty of teachers who get offended …etc”  I am going to call you out on this one. I think you are a liar. I think you might have met a few teachers that fit the description of what someone might define as poor and you like to throw out the quantifying adjectives to make it sound like poor teaching is running rampid.

    As to being a corporate trainer, arent those people all college educated and highly motivated already? I ask, because the issue in CT isnt teaching the highly motivated, its teaching the students who could care less if they were coming to school or not. Please spare me the rhetoric of pointing to all the Ed-Corp funded propoganda of having students stand out front of the capital and rally for a cause they were paid to speak for.

    Now, if you would like to have some “professional” discourse, here is my offer to you.

    What you are referring to on a bigger picture is now being called Differentiated Instruction. A woman by the name of Tomlinson packaged it up and sold it to education back in the mid – 90s I believe. Here are some of the glaring issues with it and some of what you said.

    First, class size. When you go into a college lecture hall of 300 how many different learning styles do you see? None. Its lecture and take notes. When you shrink the class down to 10-15 I have seen and tried to emulate some amazing teaching practices some of which require self-pacing and group learning and team-building. As the number goes up so does the ability to effectively use some of these techniques.

    Second, Technology. And i dont mean smart boards and little gadgets that are specialized to one thing so they can jack the costs up. I mean properly working computers and really good, stable and fast internet acess to do research and use some of the awesome programs out there.

    Third and lastly, training. You might be able to watch something once and turn around and teach a group of people, and that is awesome, its too bad you chose not to stay in the classroom, if you were indeed ever there. Most people need to get some formal training to properly use and implement some of the newer or recycled education techniques. Many times districts throw you a book, 3 hours of training and say “do more with less” and “we need to share the burden”. I think we can both agree that isnt effective.

    To wrap up this professional discourse by saying if you turn to a Charter school please make sure you dont pick and choose the students like many of them do. Take a population reflective of they town they are coming from. If you are a teacher there, please post on how your low salary is allowing you to afford to live in CT, but if you turn to one as an administrator, please post as to how the corporate model is to turn children into numbers for the sake of contracts and bonuses.

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  • TellTheTruth

    Related to the reference to the NYT article…”
    Academic performance of virtual schools: K12 data shows that a large and growing number of students coming into virtual schools are below grade level. The high growth rate of virtual schools means that a large portion of students taking the state tests are in their first year. This makes static test scores poor measures of a school’s overall performance because students perform better on state tests the longer they are enrolled. To measure academic growth, K12 administers third party norm-referenced tests.  Data from these tests show students are making positive academic gains relative to national norms.” 
    Source: http://tinyurl.com/84dgt4k

    • Michael Barbour

       Yes, we should TellTheTruth.  If you look at just about every independent analysis of the performance of students in the full-time cyber charter schools compared to their traditional brick-and-mortar counterparts, they do quite poorly.  It is only the analysis conducted by K12, Inc. themselves (like the one that you linked us to) that actually have them doing well.

      Check out my own research on the topic or that of Gary Miron’s to get some independent analysis.