SACRAMENTO — In a rare move, California’s top education official has enlisted the state’s highest-ranking accountant to conduct a sweeping audit of California Virtual Academies, a profitable but low-performing network of online charter schools that enrolls about 15,000 students across the state.
The audit is the first that Superintendent for Public Instruction Tom Torlakson has asked the state controller’s Office to conduct since he took office in 2011. The request comes two months after this newspaper published an investigative series on K12 Inc., the publicly traded Virginia firm that operates the schools and reaps tens of millions of dollars annually in state funding.
In a statement Thursday, Torlakson said he has a duty to ensure that public money isn’t being squandered and sought the probe into the California Virtual Academies because of “serious questions raised about a number of their practices.” He said the audit would examine the relationship between the schools and the company and the “validity” of attendance, enrollment, dropout and graduation rates reported by the academies to the state.
This isn’t the first time the company has come under fire in recent weeks.
Torlakson’s request follows lawmakers’ calls last month for the state auditor to examine for-profit charter schools operations and Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla’s introduction earlier this month of legislation that would prohibit online charters from hiring for-profit companies like K12 for management or instructional services. The company is also being probed by Attorney General Kamala Harris, who launched an investigation of online charter schools last fall.
If Controller Betty Yee finds evidence of gross financial mismanagement, illegal or improper use of public money, a disregard for sound educational practices or repeated failure to improve student test scores the state Board of Education, may — based on a recommendation from Torlakson — vote to revoke the schools’ charters.
“The goal of the audit is to make sure these schools are spending public education funds properly and serving their students well,” Torlakson said.
The newspaper’s examination revealed that fewer than half of the students enrolled in K12’s high schools earn diplomas and almost none of them are qualified to attend the state’s public universities. It also found that students who spent as little as one minute during a school day logged onto the company’s software may have been counted as “present” in attendance records used to determine state funding.
K12 spokesman Mike Kraft did not immediately respond for comment on the audit, but he previously argued in an email that a student logged onto the company’s software for a minute would not result in additional state funding for K12 without a determination by the student’s teacher that he or she had completed required work.
The review Torlakson requested will cost about $300,000 and is expected to be completed by March of next year. This past fiscal year, the controller conducted close to 500 audits, a little more than half of which were requested by state agencies such as the Department of Health Care Services and Caltrans, spokeswoman Taryn Kinney said.
It’s rare for the controller and the California state auditor to conduct similar examinations at the same time, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers last month called for a separate probe of for-profit charter schools that is expected to move forward later this year.
The Joint Legislative Audit Committee will meet in August to consider the lawmakers’ requests.
Next week, legislation inspired by the newspaper’s investigation that would prohibit online charter schools from hiring for-profit firms to provide instructional services will be vetted for the first time by the Senate Education Committee.
Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla, D-Concord, who authored Assembly Bill 1084, said the measure is needed for the same reason the audits are needed — to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent in the classroom to help students, not used to enrich a company’s shareholders or drive up profits.
But a group called California Parents for Public Virtual Education plans to fight the legislation. In a letter she sent earlier this month to Bonilla, Nicole Conragan, the group’s president, wrote that she hoped Bonilla would drop the proposal and “stop the assault on parent choice in California.”
“If online charter schools are forced to close based upon Assembly Bill 1084’s criteria, where will these students go to school and how will individual school districts address their unique learning needs?” wrote Conragan, who said her children attend an online school.
Contact Jessica Calefati at 916-441-2101. Follow her at Twitter.com/Calefati.
