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Some parents were satisfied with the education their children received through Edgenuity, and some districts appreciated the safe alternative to in-person learning amid the uncertainty of the pandemic.īut at scores of schools around the country, the solution Edgenuity provided at a time when districts were desperate for an online option came at a high cost to students’ education, according to a BuzzFeed News investigation based on a review of hundreds of pages of court and school district documents and interviews with more than 50 people. Thanks to prepandemic acquisitions and rising demand during the crisis, Edgenuity nearly doubled what it pulled in from the public sector the year before, according to public data made available via GovSpend, a company that aggregates government spending data.

During the first year of the pandemic, the Arizona-based software company added more than 500 public school districts to its client list and inked contracts totaling at least $145 million. But it was a boon for the many private companies that helped schools move their operations online.Īmong the winners was the company that Sharon and other students said left them hanging: Edgenuity. The coronavirus pandemic turned the American education system upside down last year, shuttering classrooms, leaving students isolated and adrift, and sending school officials scrambling for virtual solutions.

“She can’t talk to a teacher, she can’t talk to anyone. “They set these kids up to fail,” Richardson said. By the time Richardson had recovered, she said, her daughter's education had become “a catastrophe.” Sharon ended up falling so far behind that the district required her to return to school in person. “But nobody came,” she said.Ĭalls and emails to district teachers didn’t always bring a prompt reply. Another Tuscaloosa parent, Terri Burnette, recalled her son waiting for hours after clicking the “Tutoring Help” button when he got stuck on a math question about measuring angles. That shouldn’t have been a problem: The software, which cost the district $370,000 during the 2020–2021 school year, provided no live instruction from a teacher but promised “on-demand tutoring” available six days a week.īut Richardson and other parents soon found that Edgenuity tutors were often unresponsive, sometimes for hours at a time. When Richardson got COVID-19 later that fall, leaving her too sick to oversee her daughter’s schooling, Sharon had to navigate the virtual courses on her own. At the start of the first pandemic school year, Angie Richardson sat beside her 13-year-old daughter, Sharon, in their Northport, Alabama, home as she watched lessons and completed assignments on a computer program called Edgenuity, which the Tuscaloosa County School System had purchased to provide a remote learning curriculum for students.

#Tinyurl com edgenuity sign up software