ALEC and the Invisible Schools with Invisible Success

From a report titled Invisible Schools, Invisible Success

Virtual schools are popular because they are profitable. Estimates show that “revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.”

More than 200,000 K-12 students are enrolled in full-time virtual schools across the country; when expanded to all students enrolled in at least one course, the number explodes to 2,000,000. The more children enrolled in virtual schools, the greater the profit for the companies.
[…]
In December 2004, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) approved the “Virtual Public Schools Act.” That model bill sparked a rush by private companies to embrace virtual schools and virtual learning across the country. Today, there are more than 230 nationwide accredited private virtual schools in the country.
[…]
ALEC is closely tied to the virtual school movement, having pushed its “Virtual PublicSchools Act” on behalf of corporate members of its board since 2005. The law was adopted by ALEC through the work of its Education Task Force,comprised of corporate lobbyists and conservative legislators. According to the Center for Media and Democracy’s website, ALEC Exposed, two of the three co-chairs on ALEC’s Education Task Force work directly for virtual school companies

• Mickey Revenaugh, Co-founder and Senior VicePresident of State Relations for Connections Academy,a virtual school company; and
• Lisa Gillis, Director of Government Affairs and SchoolDevelopment for Insight Schools, part of K12 Inc.

K12 is one of the largest virtual school operators in Ohio. The Ohio Virtual Academy, represent about 26% of K12′s annual revenues. We've previously demonstrated that virtual schools in Ohio are manufacturing profits at the expense of education, primarily by packing their virtual classrooms. These packed virtual classrooms have a significant effect on students

–OVA enrolled a total of 18,743 students cumulatively throughout the 2010/2011 school year with 9,593 withdrawing by the end of the year, for an astoundingly high churn rate of 51.1%

"[…]these cyber schools might as well have a turnstile as their logo for the volume of withdrawals they experience.", noted one researcher.

To highlight the emphasis K12 puts on profits above education, comes this leaked email from their CFO in Pennsylvania

An April 23, 2010 e-mail from Kevin Corcoran to a host of his colleagues is likely the sort that, in one form or another, millions of Americans deal with regularly during the work day.

Bluntly noting “We have not made the progress we need to in this area,” Corcoran adds, “More than $1[million] in funding” is in the balance.”

“Anyone who has not fulfilled their obligation in this area should not be surprised….when it’s time to discuss performance evaluations, bonuses and raises.”
[…]
In the e-mail, Corcoran, who is Agora’s financial chief, was miffed because 81 “IEPs,” short for individualized education programs–basically customized teaching plans for Agora’s growing populace of special education students–hadn’t received the necessary signatures; without them, various school districts would not release reimbursement of $15,000 per pupil (or higher) to Agora, and thus K12, to educate a student populace that have had profound troubles meeting educational expectations.

More concerned about bonuses and raises, than the fact that students have outstanding IEP's that are not being addressed. This is part of the educational mess ALEC has and continues to try to create.

SB5 repeal, the difficult second act

Like most compelling stories, the repeal of SB5 will be told in 3 acts.

The first act introduced us to the characters, and the main story element putting those characters at risk, and in confrontation with each other. The antagonists in our story are the Ohio GOP in the form of the legislators and Governor who passed SB5. Pitted against them are our protagonists, the working people of Ohio who will need to fight to preserve their rights to earn a decent living in safe working conditions.

Our protagonists responded to this assault, with over 10,000 volunteers going into their communities and collecting 1,298,301 signatures to place SB5 on the ballot for repeal, setting up the rising tension of act II.

Ordinarily, the second act could be expected to begin with a fight over whether this effort had collected enough signatures to qualify, but having collected over a million more than needed, no one expects this to present a problem.

The next issue to be resolved then will be the formulation of the ballot language. The Ohio Ballot Board will have to decide if the question is posed to voters as "shall the law take effect?” or "shall the law be repealed?" Conventional wisdom suggests it’s easier to get voters to vote “No”, rather than “Yes”, and precedent indicates that’s how the Board will decide the matter. Either option is likely to have little effect on the result.

The story will progress to the repeal campaign protagonists needing to identify and persuade voters, and the antagonists trying all manner of dirty tricks to stop them. So before we look at what that means, let’s take a look at how many voters will likely be needed to vote against SB5 in order for the campaign to prevail. Below is a table of voter turnout going back 15 years. In bold are the off-cycle years, as 2011 is (i.e. none gubernatorial or presidential elections.).

Year	Total Votes	Turnout	Major Issue
2010	3,956,045	49.22%	Gubenatorial
2009	3,292,374	44.64%	Veterans, livestock, casino
2008	5,773,777	69.97%	Presidential
2007	2,436,070	31.34%	Local issues only
2006	4,185,597	53.25%	Gubenatorial, min wage, casino, smoking ban
2005	3,093,968	40.26%	State Bond issue, Reform Ohio Now
2004	5,722,443	71.77%	Presidential, Gay Maririage Amendment
2003	2,614,354	36.62%	State Bond Issue
2002	3,356,285	47.18%	Gubenatorial
2001	2,574,915	36.00%	Local issues only
2000	4,795,989	63.60%	Presidential
1999	2,467,736	34.53%	Local issues only
1998	3,534,782	49.81%	Gubenatorial
1997	3,163,091	45.55%	Bail, Workers Comp
1996	4,638,108	67.83%	Presidential, Riverboat Casino

As you can see these off cycle years have lower turnout with variations that are greatly affected by whether and to some extent, what, state ballot initiatives are present. Ranging from almost 3.3 million in 2009, down to 2.4 million in 2007. It would be wise to think that 2011 will see turnout in the high end, if not the highest. With the GOP and Tea Party failing to get their healthcare countermeasure initiative on the ballot, the turnout battle will be solely fought on the grounds of SB5 repeal.

It would be safe to assume a high turnout – perhaps north of 3.3 million votes, which means the repeal campaign would need 1.7 million votes. The 1.3 million signatures is a great start, and will form the initial base with which to identify potential repeal supporters.

But not all those 1.3 million will be supporters, so in excess of 400,000 more voters will need to be identified – most likely a million more. These voter contacts will require massive volunteer efforts to call (phone bank) and contact in–person (canvass).

These signatories, plus union members and their households, Democrats and Independents (who according to polls favor repeal in the majority) will all be contacted at some point, either by telephone or in person, and most likely both, to determine if they can be relied upon to vote for repeal.

This is why continuing to enter signature data is critical. It is also a huge structural advantage that repealers have over the SB5 supporters – they have no such list from which to draw upon.

As potential voters are contacted they will be graded, typically on a scale of 1-5, on whether they support repeal or not. Those falling in the middle of that range will require persuasion, and that is where the nastiest of the fall campaign will be waged, for the hearts and minds of the undecided voter.

Both sides will be polling to determine what the best lines of attack and defense are. What messages work and what don’t. These polls, unless leaked, will never be made public – but everyone will feel their effects.

Typically one begins to see visible signs of political campaigns after Labor Day. TV, print and mail advertising will begin to bombard voters. The nastiest pieces will be sent via the mail, but in today’s political climate the TV ads won’t be much better.

Repeal supports should expect to see some very ugly TV ads as early as September as the SB5 supporters try and move the polls in their favor. This will be akin to probing the enemies’ lines looking for weaknesses.

In order to provide some inoculation to these inevitable attacks, the SB5 repeal campaign will also try to persuade voters of its case too. First with visibility events, and urging supporters to talk to friends, family, and coworkers, followed by extensive paid media efforts on TV, in print, and mail too.

By the time we reach this point, Act II will be coming to a close and we’ll be entering act III, final act – GOTV, or Get Out The Vote. We’ll discuss that in a later article.

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