Though two dissenting Ohio Supreme Court justices in the case of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) make a strong argument that ECOT was bumrushed by the Ohio Department of Education, the letter-of-the-law ruling from the high court gave the organization all the fairness it deserves.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said that the Ohio Department of Education was on safe legal ground in demanding repayment of $80 million from ECOT for two years of inflated enrollment claims.
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What the Supreme Court didn’t say was that the Department of Education and the Ohio legislature and governor’s office let down the taxpayers of Ohio and the students and staff of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow by failing to establish sound and clearly understood rules for the funding of online, home-study education in Ohio.
The DOE’s abrupt enforcement of a law that was not previously enforced forced ECOT out of business and 12,000 students out of school.
The murky history of ECOT is that it started in 2000 with a generous enrollment reimbursement policy: it would be paid the regular state per-pupil reimbursement for every student it enrolled. Along the way, ECOT’s founder and behind-the-scenes string-puller Bill Lager lavished campaigned contributions on the Republican lawmakers who enabled this very generous arrangement.
Brick-and-mortar schools had to document that children were in class to qualify for the full-time payment based on 920 hours; the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow was under no such requirement.
Without official warning of its new expectations, in 2016 the ODE decided to demand proof of “participation” by ECOT students, after years of accepting simple enrollment.
In its ruling this week, the Supreme Court pointed to the plain language of Ohio law, which says: “Each internet- or computer-based community school shall keep an accurate record of each individual student’s participation in learning opportunities each day. The record shall be kept in such a manner that the information contained within it easily can be submitted to the department of education, upon request by the department or the auditor of state.”
Two justices pointed out that Ohio laws conflict, there were no regulations for quantifying the “participation” of online students comparable to the way enrollment is used to quantify the participation of students in bricks-and-mortar schools. Besides, it is inherent in at-home study that students learn on their own, not in controlled settings.
Why the ODE never previously enforced this law is a question that our lawmakers and Gov. John Kasich should answer.
ECOT deserves a share of the blame. It let down its own staff and students. Amazingly, a school calling itself the “electronic classroom of tomorrow” didn’t have data to quantify the time that its students put into their online, at-home education.
ECOT got what it deserved — rough justice.
First Published August 9, 2018, 9:30 p.m.
