Virtual education company K12 receives Florida letter grade after delay

Company officials are questioning the state's accountability framework for virtual providers.

This summer, the country’s largest private online education provider was anxiously awaiting its Florida school grade, which had the potential to cost the company dozens of contracts with district virtual education programs and upend its expanding network of virtual charter schools.

Those problems have been averted.

After an initial delay, K12 Inc. has received a provider grade of C for 2014. Its improvement of one letter grade puts it back on solid ground under the state’s accountability system.

As a virtual education provider, K12’s letter grade is based on the combined performance of students in its virtual charter schools and the students in more than 40 virtual education programs overseen by school districts that hired it to complement their own offerings. Consecutive grades of D or F can cost virtual school operators their status as “approved providers” in Florida.

The company earlier this year raised concerns that it was having problems obtaining student information from school districts, which it worried could make its school grade unreliable. As a result, K12 received an initial grade of “incomplete” during the latest round of school grades released this summer.

Department of Education spokeswoman Cheryl Etters said the state needed time to verify student records and other data needed to calculate its letter grade, and it received a grade once those issues were resolved.

The company’s representatives have also raised questions about how it can improve student performance when it doesn’t always receive timely or accurate information about the students enrolled in the district virtual instruction programs it helps operate.

In a May letter responding to school grading concerns, Education Commissioner Pam Stewart assured K12 executives that the department would work to improve the way school districts report student information for virtual education providers.


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BY Travis Pillow

Travis Pillow is Director of Thought Leadership at Step Up For Students and editor of NextSteps. He lives in Sanford, Fla. with his wife and two children. A former Tallahassee statehouse reporter, he most recently worked at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University, where he studied community-led learning innovation and school systems' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. He can be reached at tpillow (at) sufs.org.

One Comment

K12’s PA Agora cyber scored just 48.3 on PA school performance scale of 100; 70 is considered passing; but K12 paid $21M to 8 execs:

https://insiders.morningstar.com/trading/executive-compensation.action?t=LRN

According to the minutes (pg. 7) from the December 18, 2012 K12, Inc.’s Agora Cyber Charter School Board of Trustees meeting, your tax dollars paid for 19,298 local TV commercials.
No mention of ubiquitous radio and internet ads in that total.

As of February, 2013 Agora Cyber was serving 2,857 Philly students, the most of any PA cyber
https://thenotebook.org/april-2013/135810/cybers-emerge-2nd-chance-option-students

Agora has never made AYP. Agora 2012 grad rate was 45%; Philly SD grad rate was 57%
https://thenotebook.org/april-2013/135820/cyber-charter-graduation-rates

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