Agora has never met federally defined achievement goals.
The school markets itself as an option for at-risk students who are failing at their neighborhood school. Last year, about two-thirds of its students were low-income.
By selecting a “host” school district in a poor, rural area receiving more state aid per pupil to provide on-line classes, K12 Inc. draws students from wealthier areas with lower per-pupil subsidies.
School Days 2011-12
Many lived in unstable homes, said Aimee Saunders, who taught history at K12’s Pennsylvania schools for four years until 2009.
Some of those children didn’t have an adult who could serve as the learning coach. Instead, they were left home alone and did little or no schoolwork, she said.
“You take students who normally would struggle because of their home environment and then you put them in their home to learn,” Saunders said. “It doesn’t work that well.”
Rapid student turnover can compound the problem. Of the 8,700 students who enrolled in 2010-11, more than a quarter withdrew during the year, according to school records.
“New students were always coming in,” Saunders said, which “made it difficult to be able to focus on the students I already had.”
Company officials said internal data show that Agora students — and K12 students in general — are learning at a faster rate than the national norm, even if they can’t pass a grade-level test. And the longer students stay with K12, the better they perform, the company said.
But Pennsylvania has its own measure of how fast students are learning, and it showed “significant evidence” that Agora did not meet growth standards last year.
In June 2010, the state threatened to revoke Agora’s charter unless the school made changes, including aligning the curriculum with state standards and expanding remediation programs for struggling students. It also insisted on more transparency so it would be clear how much K12 was receiving for different services.
Agora officials said they addressed those concerns by opening a face-to-face tutoring center in Philadelphia, for example, and hiring staff to conduct home visits.
Saunders, the former Agora teacher, says virtual schools provide an important new option for families and should be forgiven for missteps.
After all, many traditional public schools have failed to help the neediest children.
“A lot of schools are making mistakes by not trying anything different than they’ve tried before,” she said.
Cost to taxpayers
Even some supporters of virtual schools question whether online operators are charging taxpayers fairly.
“They have no business trying to charge as much as the brick-and-mortar schools, at least over time,” said Finn, of the Fordham Institute, which has commissioned a study of the cost of online schools. “Once you’ve got the stuff that you’re going to use for fourth-grade math, for instance, you don’t really need to do much with it. And it should be cheaper.”
Online education companies say they are no different from textbook publishers and other businesses that profit from sales to schools.
But payments for a year’s worth of online schooling can vary wildly. For instance, K12 received $3,728 per full-time student in 2009-10 for its virtual school based in Broward County, Fla., but $5,000 per student in Greenfield, Mass. K12 is getting $6,200 for each student in its D.C. school, which enrolls about 100 students.
In Pennsylvania, because of a complicated funding mechanism, K12’s Agora Cyber Charter receives $6,000 to $16,000 per student for an identical course load, depending on where that student lives.
“We don’t have a real handle on what the real cost is for a virtual school,” said Mitchell D. Chester, commissioner of elementary and secondary education in Massachusetts.
Jeff Kwitowski, K12’s vice president for public relations, said it’s “impossible” to pinpoint the true cost of educating a child in any environment, whether virtual or face-to-face. Prices vary because some schools purchase different K12 services, he said.
Targeting rural counties
The Virginia Virtual Academy, another K12 venture, began enrolling full-time students across the commonwealth in fall 2009, more than a year before state law addressed this new kind of education.
The Virginia school offers a lesson in how K12 relied on political savvy and statehouse connections to build its business.
The Virginia venture was a partnership between the traditional schools of Carroll County — a rural county bordering North Carolina — and K12. Children who enrolled in the Virtual Virginia Academy were counted as Carroll County students no matter where they lived.
That was no accident.
State aid varies by school district and follows a formula based on poverty, among other factors. Affluent Fairfax County receives $2,716 per pupil from Richmond, whereas relatively poor Carroll County receives $5,421, according to the state Education Department.
This year, 66 Fairfax students are enrolled in the virtual school. Richmond is paying the virtual school twice as much for those students as it would if they attended neighborhood schools in their own county.
“Clearly, it’s not a logical or equitable system,” said state Sen. George L. Barker (D-Fairfax). “It’s a horrible deal for taxpayers.”
Barker has twice tried to change funding so that subsidies are based on where students live. Twice he was rebuffed by Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), a champion of school choice who successfully promoted legislation to authorize full-time virtual schools in 2010.
K12 was the only private company present during talks to craft that legislation. McDonnell has received $55,000 in campaign contributions from K12 or its executives since 2009, including a $15,000 payment to his political action committee this month.
McDonnell was on a trade-related trip to India late last week and unavailable to comment. But his spokesman, Jeff Caldwell, said K12’s political support had not influenced decisions regarding virtual schools.
“They’re a corporation that is making donations to several folks,” Caldwell said. “The fact that they gave some to the governor certainly did not sway his opinion.”
The governor recognizes that the state needs a better way to fund virtual schools but does not want to make abrupt changes that would harm the new schools, his staff said.
McDonnell “came into office really wanting to provide options and innovation to Virginia schoolchildren,” state Education Secretary Laura Fornash said. “Virtual schools [were] a major part of that.”
This year, K12 opened a second virtual school in Virginia, signing a contract with Buena Vista City, near Lynchburg, where the per-pupil state subsidy is $5,850. The two schools combined have an enrollment of 540 students.
While K12 executives see unlimited horizons for online education, traditional schools are struggling with severe budget cuts.
In Carroll County, the Virginia Virtual Academy provides a revenue stream for the public school system, which collects a $500 registration fee for each out-of-district student. On top of that, the county collects a management fee — 6.5 percent of the taxpayer dollars that flow to K12.
In what may be an unintended irony, Carroll County is using that windfall — $178,450 last year — to buy old-fashioned but much-needed textbooks for its brick-and-mortar schools.
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
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