Ed-Tech Policy News in Brief

Ohio Cyber Charter Found To Inflate Attendance

By Benjamin Herold — October 04, 2016 1 min read
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Just 41 percent of the 15,000 students at Ohio’s largest online charter school do enough work to be considered full-time students, a state education department audit finds.

As a result, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow could be ordered to repay $60 million in public funds.

At issue are records demonstrating how often cyber students log in to their school’s online learning platforms, as well as how much time they spend using their school’s learning software. State guidelines indicate that students in full-time online schools should spend about five hours per day on schoolwork. A preliminary audit, however, found that most students logged in for only an hour or so per day.

A spokesman for the school described the audit as a “sham.”

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A version of this article appeared in the October 05, 2016 edition of Education Week as Ohio Cyber Charter Found To Inflate Attendance

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