Hope Co-Op Online Learning Academy, a new fast growing institution with Headquarters in Denver offering online education for kindergarten through twelve grade children has been subjected to an audit of K12 Online Education Performance by the Office of State Auditor in Colorado along with other online schools in the state because of the reported poor education system that yielded unimpressive student performance, slack accounting and lax oversight of taxpayer dollars.
The audit identified major problems associated with Hope Online Learning Academy that show risks of having insufficient standards for and oversights of online schools. Among the findings of the Audit team to Hope Online Academy is that this school lacks licensed and highly qualified teachers, lack of students documentation, incomplete criminal checks for learning center mentors, the use of public fundings to support private and religious education and the unusual number of complaints filed against Hope Online at the Department of Education citing delays in getting computer for students, lack of student supervision, and poor quality of education.
The audit group gave 16 recommendations urging Education Department to place a moratorium on new public online schools until problems revealed in the audit are fixed. This is quite alarming because at stake in this problem is the intellectual development of the children who are into online studying. And we all know that early education is a critical foundation. However, I believe that this performance audit will serve as a lesson and inspiration to both the Education Department and online schools to tighten and improve their education system.