Online charter students can be invisible. The charter boards get contracts to create a ‘school’. They subcontract to charter management companies to provide courses and track enrollment. You can’t see the students. You don’t know for sure who the teachers are. The money is real, however. It’s our tax funds.

There seems to be some link between Ohio and Florida. We just reported on the Newpoint charter criminal lawsuit in Florida. Newpoint is simply a renamed charter management company that had similar problems in Ohio while the same people called themselves White Hat.

Now, Ohio has a new scandal in their online charter schools. Their state auditor has called for the ECOT charter chain to return $12 million in state funding that ECOT collected by inflating student attendance. They are all in court, and the worry is that ECOT will simply declare bankruptcy in order to avoid repaying the money they owe the people of Ohio.

Management companies are not required to report their financial dealings. The Washington Post reported these issues in Florida, Michigan and other states with lax regulation.

The League has called for stronger regulations for financial transparency, particularly for for-profit companies that own their own real estate and other school service companies. They report what they charge the schools, but they don’t report what those services actually cost.

Make yourself a mental list of what need to change….Let’s see: 1. greater transparency of cost and profit; 2. for-profit management; 3. unregulated charter expansion regardless of need; 4. (Make your own list.)!