Responding To Wisconsin
This may be becoming a dead issue, as I’ve been told that the Governor has signed the compromise bill into law and that things are proceeding ahead, a while ago I promised to revisit an entry and I’m finally making good on that promise.
Back near the end of March, I posted an entry entitled Response From Wisconsin, in this entry a lady from Wisconsin had e-mailed me to provide me with some additional details about the charter cyber schools issue in her state and to respond to some of the items that I had been posting on this blog. Specifically, she wanted to disagree or clarify based on three points:
1. The reason the virtual schools (and families) did not support the original Lehman bill was because it cut funding for virtual schools in half, which would have forced all of them to close. Virtual schools already receive about half the funding of traditional schools ($6000 per student compared to $11,000). To have that funding cut to $3000 would have meant death for these schools. To Sen. Lehman’s credit, he quickly released that and dropped that provision. The schools have no problem with full financial disclosure or with high standards for virtual schools, and those provisions were left in the bill that passed both houses last week.
2. The reason the media did not make a big deal about Rep. Davis receiving donations totally $500 from people associated with k12 is because that is small potatoes compared to the amount of money WEAC (Wisconsin’s teachers’ union) has donated to other lawmakers involved in this issue. They gave over $140,000 to Sen. Lehman alone in his last campaign. Again to Sen. Lehman’s credit, he did not allow this to prevent him from working with Rep. Davis to come up with a compromise everyone could live with.
3. The reason k12’s Wisconsin revenues totaled $5,000,000 last year was because k12’s contract with the North Ozaukee School District requires k12 to pay for all of WIVA’s costs. This includes teachers’ salaries, benefits and travel expenses (the teachers regularly travel around the state to meet with students in person), curriculum and supplies (including shipping costs), Internet stipends for students and teachers, computers for students and teachers, and legal costs (which have been quite high due to the lawsuit). WIVA has 850 students, so this comes to a per-student cost of just under $6000.
To take these in order. On the first item. K12, Inc. is a for profit company (and since December 2007 a publicly traded company see http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:LRN ). They would not be in business if there wasn’t a buck to be made. And now that they are owned by shareholders, they must act even more business-like to ensure profits for there shareholders. While I realize that many on the conservative side of the political spectrum have no problem with education being run by a and like a business, but I’d rather see those taxpayer dollars spent on the kids and not go into the pockets of the company’s shareholders (granted I realize as a Canadian, my political sensibilities are shifted a little left of what most of my American readership is). My understanding of the figure used in the original Lehman bill was based upon what the education was actually costing the cyber school to deliver and did not factor in the necessary profits. How he or his staff figured this out, I’m not sure but I would be interested to know exactly how much of that $6000 per student actually goes to something other than the direct cost of educating that student.
On the second item, I think there is a big difference between the money donated by the teacher’s union and the money donated by K12, Inc.. The teacher’s union has a vested interest in the governance of Wisconsin on many levels, the first and foremost being that the State is their indirect employer. The teacher’s union is not a one issue organisation and if you consider the number of educational issues that come up before the legislature each year that the teacher’s union has a vested interest in, and divide that by the amounts that they are donating you would have a better comparison. Having said that, on the other side of the coin you have a private company that has an interest in making profits from taxpayer dollars who has donated to an individual who is championing their issue as if this individual was reading the company’s own talking points. His own bill was like a wish list written by the company, only in legislative language. As someone who worked in politics before going into education, that’s a little fishy to me.
On the third issue, let’s look at some of these expenses that are included in the $6000 per each of the 850 students that you have included. You include teacher salary and benefits. That’s kind of funny since in a previous post (see Examining the Wisconsin Solutions) I had already outlined how in a brick-and-mortar model of schooling a teacher can only manage on average 30 students per class (and I would argue even less for an elementary school teacher), but when you divide the number of teachers at XXX Virtual Academies run by K12, Inc. you find that they manage between 60-75 (depending on if you include administrators in your calculation). If you exclude the non-teaching teachers you find that cyber school teacher manage two and a half times the number of kids that a traditional classroom teacher does. So, in my mind they should be paid for the job that they actually do. The last item that you’ve included in your accounting of the $6000 per each of the 850 students is almost laughable… legal costs. Beyond the fact that a company should not be making a profit on the education of our youth, are you really trying to argue that the company’s legal costs as it fights having to live up to the law as it pertains to education as written should be a legitimate expense for its per pupil funding? Come on. As I said above, I would be very interested in knowing exactly how much of the $6000 goes to the direct or indirect education of the student (beyond legal costs and profits)!
Again, I apologise it has taken so long to get back to this item but life just gets in the way sometimes…
