Long before the pandemic made Edgenuity a household name for students, the company's growth in Alabama was tied up in one of the state's biggest political corruption cases. The story, laid out in court documents and a 2021 BuzzFeed News investigation, involves a sitting House speaker on the company's payroll, a felony conviction, and a state board member who said Edgenuity should be dropped. The company was never charged with a crime.

Disclosure: EdgyPro makes software for students who use Edgenuity. Facts in this article come from the reporting listed under Sources.

A Speaker on Retainer

According to court documents cited by BuzzFeed News, Edgenuity began paying Hubbard $7,500 a month in 2011. He arranged introductions to NCAA officials and legislators in North Carolina, and encouraged South Carolina's House speaker to make sure his home district in Charleston signed with Edgenuity. In an email, the company's then-president told Hubbard that deal hadn't "happened without your help." Hubbard replied: "I want to earn my keep."

Hubbard said he never lobbied for Edgenuity in Alabama. But over the following years the company's revenue in the state exploded, including $550,000 in 2013 grant money from the Alabama State Department of Education, which followed a meeting where another Edgenuity lobbyist mentioned the company's connection to Hubbard, according to court documents.

Indictment and Conviction

State prosecutors indicted Hubbard on 23 felony ethics charges in 2014. In 2016 he was convicted on 12, including one count tied to Edgenuity. A former state senator who also had a contract with Edgenuity was granted immunity in exchange for testimony. Edgenuity itself was not charged.

Two days after the conviction, state school board member Mary Scott Hunter emailed her colleagues:

"I think we have to assume that Edgenuity has internal compliance and ethics lapses that make doing business with them overly risky. My recommendation is to void any contracts we currently have with them."

Mary Scott Hunter, Alabama State Board of Education, 2016 (BuzzFeed News)

That didn't happen. Edgenuity's spokesperson told BuzzFeed that the company violated no laws, that the Alabama Ethics Office approved the Hubbard contract, and that "the prosecution was unsavory and untrustworthy." In the first year of the pandemic, at least 54 Alabama districts signed Edgenuity contracts worth a combined $4.3 million or more, according to GovSpend.

Charleston: "50% of an Entire Yearlong Course in Only 2 Days"

The Charleston County School District, where Hubbard had made his call, finalized a three-year, $1.49 million Edgenuity deal in 2013. Edgenuity says the board had already approved it before Hubbard was involved. A teacher there, Valerie Paquette, later alleged in a lawsuit that administrators used the software to boost graduation rates without making sure students learned, citing a student who failed her class and then completed "over 50% of an entire yearlong course in only 2 days" on Edgenuity. The district denied many of her allegations, and the case settled in 2017.

Why It Still Matters

Students rarely get a say in which software their district buys. The Alabama story is a reminder of how those decisions get made, and why so many courses feel built to tick a box rather than to teach. If you're one of the students working through them now, EdgyPro can take over the clicking and the quizzes so your time goes somewhere better. See every feature or read whether EdgyPro is safe to use.

Sources

• Caroline O'Donovan, "This Virtual Classroom Company Made Millions During The Pandemic While Students Languished," BuzzFeed News, October 11, 2021, buzzfeednews.com.
• Caroline O'Donovan, "Amid Massive Pandemic Growth, A Major Educational Software Provider Broke The Ethics Code Of The Nation's Second-Largest School District," BuzzFeed News, May 13, 2022, buzzfeednews.com.