Former teachers at for-profit Epic charter chain claim they were compelled to inflate enrollment. Charter spokesperson denies it.
Administrators at Epic Charter Schools have been allowing, encouraging or pressuring teachers to manipulate students’ enrollment for years in order to improve employees’ bonus pay, according to at least seven former teachers.
Four of the teachers allege the practices in legal notices stating they intend to sue Epic after being terminated last year. Three others made similar claims in interviews with Oklahoma Watch.
Teacher bonuses were dangled like “a carrot” and used to push for withdrawals of low-performing students, the teachers said.
If those students rejoined the virtual school’s rolls, they were still considered a part-year student and weren’t included in accountability measures like the school report cards released in February. Students who enroll late are also part-year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How on earth can you be on vacation in Italy and still send us updates? You are truly astounding.
When I’m on vacation, I’m looking at people, food and everything that I can sightsee.
“Administrators at Epic Charter Schools have been allowing, encouraging or pressuring teachers to manipulate students’ enrollment for years in order to improve employees’ bonus pay, “
Unbelievable that some people are so crooked.
FORMER teachers is important. They don’t have any protections. If they were current teachers speaking out would get them fired.
Ed reformers did not consider this obvious problem when crafting their “governance” schemes. They have public funding with no employment protections for whistleblowers.
It’s bad government and it’s the government they invented. It’ll be even worse when they get vouchers in every state or go to a complete voucher funding system, which is the goal of a lot of them. Then it’s completely unregulated and opaque.
They could change this if they wanted to. They could give charter employees civil service employment protections and still not allow unions they loathe and oppose, but they won’t, because their ideology forbids it. So we never hear from charter teachers. They know if they speak out they’ll get fired. That’s how “empowered” they are- only the cheerleaders are heard from.
There’s really two ways one can give public employees whistleblower protections, and charter teachers are public employees in that they are 100% paid by the public.
Ed reformers could have given them special employment protections in laws or regulations or they could go the union route and regulate employers that way.
Ed reformers did neither. They don’t want to allow teachers to have a “voice” unless that speech involves cheerleading charters. They don’t want to know.
It won’t work. There’s already tens of articles out of Florida where parents are whistleblowing on the voucher schools- never teachers- just parents (see: teachers get fired for whistleblowing). The parents were led to believe, by ed reformers, that these private schools were somehow accountable to government entities, and they’re not.
Florida is creating the conditions for a tragedy in one of these schools. Whether or not there is a tragedy is purely a matter of luck. Every ed reformer in that legislature should breathe a sigh of relief every day they avoid one, because no one is regulating these schools.
Ed reformers like to post the stats collected by teachers unions on teacher disciplinary actions in districts. These stats are posted with a lot of outrage – “look at this data! It’s outrageous!”
But the one and only reason they have the data is unions collect it and are mandated to report it. They have NO data on charter teachers. They compare “some” to “none” and conclude that “none reported” means charter teacher malfeasance doesn’t EXIST.
This is “science” in edreformworld. It’s nonsense.
excellent point for the data manipulation agenda: they compare some to none and conclude that NONE REPORTED means it (whatever “it” there are currently measuring on a negative scale) doesn’t exist
It’s even worse in the voucher schools. IF they’re relying on a state licensing board they have SOME information. If they allow unlicensed teachers all they have is the lack of a criminal record. Do parents know this? They don’t seem to know it in Florida. They’re reporting to state authorities and the state is telling them there’s no recourse. That indicates they thought someone was regulating this when they enrolled, which is a fair assumption on their part. After all, ed reformers tell them public funding = public. That’s not true.
Most if not all successful frauds, perverts, con-men, and crooks always deny everything — just like Donald Trump does all the time.
Even caught on film, they will deny it and claim they were set up.
I just read that the House is suing to get Trump’s tax returns. I hope they can finally nail that foul scumbag.
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The House’s tax-writing committee filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service for access to President Donald Trump’s tax returns, The Wall Street Journal reported. The lawsuit, filed by the the House Ways and Means Committee in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks to enforce a statute that gives Congress access to anyone’s tax returns. The lawsuit comes two months after the Democrat-led panel subpoenaed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS chief Charles Rettig to submit Trump’s personal and business returns for the last six years. The officials defied those May subpoenas, however, arguing the request to disclose Trump’s financial documents had no legitimate legislative purpose.