by Karen Kasler
The Speaker of the Ohio House hasn’t been able to escape questions about ECOT—the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow—even on his visit to Cleveland for the Republican National Convention.
The state’s largest online charter school is refusing to turn over records on attendance of some 15,000 students to the Ohio Department of Education.
House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, who gave the keynote at ECOT’s graduation last month, seemed caught off guard at first when asked about the audit, “I guess I’m not familiar with.” But when asked specifically if ECOT should provide student logins to the state to prove attendance, Rosenberger said he wants to look at what he called the whole situation.
“By the way, this is not just about ECOT. There are a lot of other schools that are involved with this attendance issue that we’ve been talking about that they need to kind of take a little bit of a step back and look at,” says Rosenberger.
ECOT takes in more than $100 million in state funds each year. Its lawsuit against the state claims the Ohio Department of Education’s demand for student logins goes against the contract the agency signed with the e-school in 2003.