HOT ON THE TRAIL: On September 17, Whitney Tilson eviscerated K12's business practices and student outcomes in a 123-slide presentation. Last week, Politico reporter Stephanie Simon added to the chorus of questions over the company's political connections and methods for measuring student learning, which includes "forgiv[ing] strings of zeroes on homework and quizzes" and using an internal metric to measure progress, which even company's Executive Chairman, Nathaniel Davis, admitted is "not as accurate as they could be." In a follow-up piece, Simons looked at K12's side ventures, which includes overseas online schools in Asia, online curriculum for toddlers, and remedial programs for students in juvenile detention and addiction recovery centers.
