K12 Incorporated, a for-profit charter business has a track record of poor academic performance, misleading investors, and deliberately telling teachers to “delete bad grades.” Now, as many Illinois school districts are struggling with shrinking budgets, K12 Inc wants to milk our schools of $8,000 – $11,000 per pupil with a new, “virtual charter school.” In my first piece on this subject, I listed the public hearings for all 18 schools that K12 Virtual Learning Solutions is targeting in the Chicago Suburbs.
K12 Inc. has a Record of Poor Academic Performance and Deletes Grades to Boost Scores.
When I learned that K12 Inc was trying to get their hand in the pocket books of Aurora taxpayers, I started researching the company. One story by investigative reporter, Phil Williams, with Tennessee Channel 5 News exposes an e-mail from the Tennessee Virtual Academy’s vice principal to middle school teachers titled, “important.” The e-mail reads:
“After … looking at so many failing grades, we need to make some changes before the holidays,” the email begins.
Among the changes: Each teacher “needs to take out the October and September progress [reports]; delete it so that all that is showing is November progress.”
“Does it talk about we need to make changes in curriculum? Does it talk about we need to make changes in our teaching strategy? No,” Rep. Johnson observed. “Those changes we need to make are deleting grades from the computer system.”