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Wall Street Loves Stride Despite Critics and Controversies | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

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click to enlarge Hazelwood is using Stride to fill a teacher shortage and students have said the classes are less engaging than ones taught by in-person teachers.
This week’s RFT cover story details how Hazelwood School District has contracted with Stride Learning Resources to provide remote instruction for its students.

Sure, Stride Learning Resources has had more than its share of critics, owing to well-documented problems in Florida, Georgia and California.There was even a federal class action lawsuit, filed in Virginia in November 2020. It alleged K12 Inc. — the company’s name at the time — had misled investors by making false and misleading statements about the company’s business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges Stride failed to disclose it lacked the technological capabilities and expertise to support the increased demand for virtual and blended education during the pandemic, while lacking adequate defenses against cyberattacks. The latter issue led the Miami-Dade County Public Schools to sever ties with K12 in September 2020.In November 2021, a federal judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit on the grounds they failed to prove their fraud claims. A three-judge appellate panel upheld the lawsuit’s dismissal.Even so, Wall Street remains gung-ho on the future of Stride (NYSE: LRN). In an analysis for the Seeking Alpha website, investment advisor Stephen Tobin writes, “Stride had an outstanding 2021, and 2022 appears to be exceeding forecasts. It is fast-growing and profitable. The success of Stride is founded on the excellence of its educational products, as witnessed by the high satisfaction ratings its customers report.”Tobin concludes that Stride online high schools “perform well with high retention rates and a growing pupil base. I think the recent pandemic and the excellent academic results Stride pupils achieved will add impetus to its growth in the coming years.”During its first two decades, the company focused on providing an online curriculum to homeschooled students. Its prospects soared in 2020 when schools shut down because of COVID-19, and they are climbing even higher because of the nationwide teacher shortage that shows no signs of easing.In an earnings call with investment professionals held October 25, Stride CEO James Rhyu boasted that his company was still outperforming brick-and-mortar schools when it came to virtual learning.“I think you [are] also going to start seeing a little bit more emphasis on outsourcing some of those programs, because I think they realize that they’re just not — they’re not going to be good at it,” Rhyu said, according to a transcript of the call. Rhyu suggested that the resurgence of COVID heralded positive news for Stride.“And I think, uncertainty in the marketplace tends to work in our favor,” Rhyu told his audience. “And I think that ongoing continued uncertainty in the marketplace, there is some new variants of the virus. We’re seeing spikes because of that. So, I just think that the uncertainty that’s happening in the marketplace works in our favor. And I’m just not sure that, we’ve been saying now for two years that’s going to go away and we really haven’t seen that go away.”Stride is a product of Silicon Valley, with an extraordinarily well-connected set of backers.Ronald J. Packard, a former Goldman Sachs banker, launched the company in 2000 with $10 million from Larry Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle Corp., and Michael Milken, the junk-bond king who pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 1990 before becoming an education philanthropist.The company’s cofounder, former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, resigned from the board in 2005 after saying on a radio show that aborting Black babies would result in a lower crime rate. (In the same segment, he called that idea “morally reprehensible” and later described it as a “thought experiment.”)As the company has grown, performance data and newspaper articles have raised questions about whether virtual schools facilitated by a for-profit company are an effective use of public money.In December 2011, New York Times reporter Stephanie Saul published a bruising investigation of the company that centered on one of K12’s flagship schools, the Agora Cyber Charter School, just north of Philadelphia.Her story began, “By almost every educational measure, the Agora Cyber Charter School is failing.“Nearly 60 percent of its students are behind grade level in math. Nearly 50 percent trail in reading. A third do not graduate on time. And hundreds of children, from kindergartners to seniors, withdraw within months after they enroll.“By Wall Street standards, though, Agora is a remarkable success that has helped enrich K12 Inc., the publicly traded company that manages the school. And the entire enterprise is paid for by taxpayers.”Saul concluded, “[A] portrait emerges of a company that tries to squeeze profits from public school dollars by raising enrollment, increasing teacher workload and lowering standards.”In a statement released a few days after the Times investigation, K12 called it “unfair and one-sided, and advances an anti-parent choice policy agenda. Instead of presenting a factually accurate look at K12’s online and blended learning products and education programs, the writer mostly editorializes, selectively picking and choosing some facts and omitting many others to satisfy a pre-determined narrative.”K12 further asserted the Times omitted important information. “It liberally quotes well-known critics but gives no room for leading voices supportive of technology-based education reforms,” the statement read.In 2017 the National Educational Policy Center found that only 37.4 percent of full-time virtual schools, including Stride, earned acceptable performance ratings from the state agencies that provided such ratings. (Missouri was not included in that study.) That compares with a 72 percent acceptable performance rating among “blended” schools, meaning places that combined virtual education and face-to-face activity. And the on-time graduation rate for students in virtual schools was 43 percent, compared with a national average of 82 percent for public schools.In recent months, Stride’s share price has fallen. But overall, in the past five years, the company’s stock has shown a 103 percent return for investors, and analysts now list it as a “strong buy.” Mike Fitzgerald can be reached at [email protected]
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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword. 

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate. 

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault. 

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade. 

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection. 

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery. 

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.” 

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings. 

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said. 

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release. 

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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