I came to follow charter schools when the voters of Washington found them on the ballot for the 3rd time a few years back.  They were defeated by later permitted by changing the distance a student must live from their school to anywhere in the state.  That opened the door for K12's Virtual Academies.  K12 set up the Washington Virtual Academy through the Steilacoom SD: http://www.steilacoom.k12.wa.us/do/SVA.asp

If you sign up for the K12 mailing list you will receive information about attending a K-12 demo in your area.  I recommend it; they are quite the education.  K12 does not promote their virtual academies in public as homeschooling, but the demo makes it clear they are marketing their program to homeschoolers as homeschooling.  It's not.  It's public school.  The children are enrolled in the SD for the full federal/state/local funding.  I do not know how much K-12 gets for each student and how much the SD keeps but this article indicates another district gets 6% of the $6000 in funding for their program run by Insight  School Inc.  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2003253266_online 11m.html

(do you know what the average homeschooler could do with $6000 per child per year? That's a ridiculous amount of money for a few textbooks, worksheets and a loaner computer.)

Even more troubling are the applications for K12.  All are sent to a mysterious post office box in Baltimore.  All require extensive personal information: For example, PA requires the child's dental records.  OH requires information for the school lunch program (for HOME schooled students?).  All require family financial information.  Many are online: http://www.caliva.org/pdf/enrollment_Sacramento_05.pdf
http://www.pavcs.org/pdf/enrollment_05.pdf
http://www.idahova.org/pdf/enrollment_05.pdf
http://www.flva.org/pdf/enrollment_04.pdf

What is Milken doing with that data?  

I think Bennett is the public face.  Who would send their children to a school run by Michael Milken?  What taxpayer would sit still for it?  A publicly funded private company with no public oversight?  

Jeb Bush founded a Charter School in Florida - Liberty City Charter School: http://www.myflorida.com/myflorida/government/learn/jebbush.html

Neil Bush owns a TX company that creates the software for Charter Schools:
http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/metro/3742329.html

I personally believe it's the privatization of the public education system.  

by Brainbelle on Sun Sep 24, 2006 at 02:47:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]