K-12

This is what we used to call pencil-whipping:

According to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting the Florida Department of Education is investigating K12 over evidence the Virginia-based company violated Florida State law by using uncertified teachers and then attempting to cover it up by asking certified teachers to sign the class rosters. In their report the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting quoted a certified teacher who said a K12 manager ordered her to sign records for about 100 students she never taught. The company has denied the allegations.

If Republicans in the General Assembly had an ounce of integrity they would be calling for a no-holds-barred investigation of this organization, before a single penny of taxpayer money flows into it.

And should probably be held back a year:

A report released last week shows that students enrolled at K12 Inc., an online school company linked to a nonprofit group in Cabarrus County, are falling behind in reading and math scores compared with students in traditional brick-and-mortar schools.

I don't expect the anti-government crowd to pay too much attention to this, since better-performing schools is not their main goal anyway. Their main goal is to take away any sort of collective (government) control over the education process, which represents about $10 billion in revenues. Quality is somewhere down the list of priorities, probably next to whether or not we should have buses.

A moment of sanity in an otherwise insane state of affairs:

A Wake County judge ruled Friday that a controversial charter school that planned to offer only online classes cannot open in August. The decision could delay the launch of any similar programs for at least a couple of years.

Hopefully this will send a message to the education "reformers" in the Legislature; that they can't have their cake and eat it, too. They can't slash funding for traditional public education and still get their dubious alternatives as well. It's also a needed slap in the face to lawmakers who would dip their pen in too many conflicting inkwells:

And the drain on public education funding worsens:

NCVA would offer online instruction to children across the state. As a public charter school, it would receive state and local funding for each student. The money would come at the expense of the students’ home school districts. The academy expects more than $18 million in public funding its first year, with growth in following years.

Aside from the fact this has the potential of adversely impacting the budgets of numerous school districts statewide, it looks like K-12 is just one more tentacle of ALEC: