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Some Charter School Students Defending ECOT

Screenshot: Gabriel Young in an ECOT commercial.

The Ohio Department of Education wants to know how much learning is actually going on among the more than 17,000 students at the state’s largest online charter school, ECOT. Statehouse reporter Andy Chow says some of ECOT’s students are defending their school. 

You’ve probably heard 18 year old Gabriel Young’s story play out in one of ECOT’s latest commercials. 

Young: “I was adopted for seven years and then put back.”

Young lives on his own, and says ECOT’s flexible system fits his schedule. And he adds that the work students do can’t always be tracked through log-in information.

Young: “You have to study, you have to read an assignment that the teacher gave you, you have art projects that you have to do and you have to turn them in. We do just as much work as normal kids do.”

The state education department wants to use student log-in information in its audit of ECOT’s instruction time.

ECOT wants the state to go back to using just the teacher certification process.