Now Closed Ohio Online Charter School Inflated Time Students Spent Learning

​By Julie Carr Smyth, Associated Press

A state audit of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), formerly Ohio's largest online charter school, revealed that ECOT had broken the law by withholding payment information and inflating the time students spent learning. In their payment claims, ECOT did not specify the time students were learning and did not deduct the time that students spent offline. Auditor, David Yost, stated that withholding information to mislead state education regulators represented criminal fraud. The audit findings were forwarded to the FBI, the U.S. Attorney General, and the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General.