John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, writes in the Progressive about the epic failure of a for-profit virtual school in Oklahoma.
The Epic virtual charter school was well positioned to benefit from the demand for remote learning during the pandemic. But it just happened that its great moment was spoiled by the state’s discovery of financial irregularities.
On October 12, Oklahoma’s Board of Education demanded that Epic Charter Schools, a statewide online charter, refund $11 million to the state. The decision came after the first part of a state audit showed that Epic charged the school district for $8.4 million in improperly classified administrative costs between 2015 and 2019, as well as millions of dollars for violations that the state previously failed to address.
The second part of the audit will investigate the $79 million in public money that was directed to a “learning fund,” an $800 to $1,000 stipend for students enrolled in Epic’s “One-on-One” individual learning program. While the funds were intended to cover educational expenses, a search warrant issued by the Oklahoma State Board of Investigation found that they may have been used to entice “ghost students,” or students that were technically enrolled—and therefore counted in Epic’s per-pupil funding requests to the state—but received minimal instruction from teachers.
Despite the controversy surrounding Epic, the school has received a total of $458 million in state funds since 2015, according to the audit report. More than $125 million of this money went to Epic Youth Services, a for-profit management company owned by the school’s co-founders, David Chaney and Ben Harris.
Following the audit’s release, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School board began investigating forty-two potential violations that could lead to the termination of the contract allowing Epic’s One-on-One program to operate.
The state money flowed freely to Epic at the same time that the state underfunded its public schools.
The state chose to fund a for-profit charter instead of trusting the advice of its educators about proper use of online learning:
Although Oklahoma’s education leaders couldn’t have foreseen that schools would be confronted with the coronavirus, they could have done a better job at creating the infrastructure for quality online learning. Rather than take the for-profit shortcut, they would have done better to follow the rubriclaid out in 2019 by the Cooperative Council for Oklahoma School Administration (CCOSA), which called for:
Highly qualified teachers certified in the courses taught;
Virtual courses that supplement in-person learning once the school—working in cooperation with parents—identifies the options that are educationally appropriate and best fit each student’s needs;
Equity to ensure students have a “place” where they have opportunities for extracurricular activities, access to transportation, nutrition and counseling services, along with immediate remediation as soon as the teacher identifies that a student is struggling;
Transparency on financial and data reporting.
Following CCOSA’s advice would have provided more financial transparency, but the biggest advantage would have been in terms of the “people side” of education.
CCOSA’s framework would have monitored students who were not attending or slipping further behind. It would have laid a foundation of trust and communication. Its system of using technology and teamwork to improve learning would have been invaluable when in-person instruction was shut down without warning.
Several smaller districts had already made thoughtful efforts to provide holistic virtual instruction and blended learning, as they wrestled with corporate school reform mandates and budget cuts.
If the state hadn’t gambled on Epic as the pioneer for online instruction, those efforts could have led to digital technology being used in a fairer and more equitable way.
Why listen to respected educators when for-profit sharks are in the water?
This to me is the fundamental issue with ed reform. If they had supported public schools WHILE promoting their preferred schools (charters and private schools) it would be one thing, but they didn’t.
They offer absolutely nothing to public school students and families. The entire “movement” is consumed with promoting charters and vouchers. Their “public school agenda” if they could even be said to have one, is negative. It consists of testing. There is nothing else.
Why would any of the 90% of students and families who attend public schools hire these people? They either neglect public school students or actively harm them.
The “movement” decided public school students and families would be the collateral damage incurred while they realize their dream of privatized systems. It is the OPPOSITE of “student centered”. It simply throws 90% of students under the bus.
They don’t even pretend to offer anything to public school families. Public school students, if they are mentioned at all, are inserted into the latest campaign push for charters and vouchers in a throw away paragraph at the end that is basically “public schools still exist”.
They simply don’t serve our students. They’re so completely taken for granted they’re rarely mentioned other than to describe how they’re all “failing”.
Maybe the wells in Oklahoma are tainted by fracking or maybe the leaders of the state have been hit by the libertarian stupid stick? There is no excuse for such inept, inequitable public education policy. Public education is accountable. Epic’s plan is an epic cesspool of profiteering with no regard for the education of the students they purportedly serve.
Oklahoma has ghost students and zombie voters. A recent poll had Trump ahead by 22 points. The people in this state don’t seem to understand that they are being used and exploited to line the pockets of the already wealthy. Too many people in this state have been lobotomized by right wing propaganda. Those that haven’t drunk the water must be totally frustrated by the waste, fraud and collateral damage.
It’s amazing to me that the people who need government help the most—people in the South and in rural areas—are Trump voters. He holds them in contempt.
well phrased: lobotomized by right wing propaganda
Here’s a typical ed reform initiative:
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/creating-autonomous-schools-traditional-districts
It’s a push to turn every school into a charter school.
If you’re in a state that hires ed reformers in government, be aware that this is the entire focus. There is no practical or useful efforts made on behalf of students in public schools at all. The entire focus is pushing charters and vouchers.
It was most glaring during the pandemic. Every public school in the country closed and how did the ed reform “movement”respond? The same way they respond to everything- they launched campaigns bashing public schools and promoting charters and vouchers.
They’re either irrelevant to 90% of students and families or actively harmful to them. And we’re supposed to continue to hire and pay them in government? Why? Couldn’t we just hire people who actually intend to return some value to the existing schools 90% of students actually attend?
Thanks a million for posting the link to Chester Finn’s Flypaper that then links to Tressa Pankovits and David Osborne’s The Third Way: A Guide to Innovation Schools that explains their mechanism for continually killing off public schools and whole public school systems…
“Autonomous public schools are known by a variety of names: charter schools, innovation schools, renaissance schools, partnership schools, contract schools, and pilot schools. What they share in common is a grant of formal autonomy, to varying degrees, over some or all of the management of their day-to-day operations. This includes hiring and firing staff, defining the learning model and curriculum, controlling the budget, setting the school calendar and schedule, and helping teachers develop their skills. Like any public school, they must still abide by all state and federal laws regarding equal rights, discrimination, health, and safety.”
There’s also the need to know and understand the mechanism for continually killing off public schools and whole public school systems includes more than just charter schools and vouchers. There are the “in between” machinations and it is the “in between” machinations that Tressa Pankovits and David Osborne make clear in their guide when they speak of “Autonomous public schools” in a generic sense.
Pankovits and Osborne mention Atlanta as an example. Well, in Atlanta, an “in between” machination that is now operating is the whole district has been turned into a so-called Charter System. It is a choice the school board made via a five-year districtwide performance contract with the state. The contract is up for another five-year term renewal this year, and the school board plans to renew it. The Charter System encompasses only Atlanta public schools and explicitly excludes the district’s charter schools, which stands to reason. Why? So that only actual public schools can be run and managed as if—again, as if—they were autonomous charter schools without the public schools being charter schools and without violating what “public school” means—namely, a school that is non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Moreover, by turning “low performing” public schools over to various charter school operators to run and manage, yet requiring the public schools to remain non-excludable and non-rivalrous, then the public schools cannot be deemed “charter schools.” This machination means both district-owned public schools and charter school operator-run and managed public schools end up being something “in between” actual public schools and actual charter schools. It is a setup that lays an infrastructure for the eventual wholesale murder of whole public school systems.
So, we must also pay attention to the bigger picture beyond just the charter schools and vouchers frame, just as Sen. Shelton Whitehouse describes in the opening portion of his “masterful presentation on the power of dark money at the confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett,” as Diane put it.
The matter for me has become recognizing that gradually but continually murdering and killing off public schools and public education is a different matter from destroying public schools and public education. The former connotes permanence, while the latter connotes possible restoration. Big money interests are out for permanence.
Anyone that has read this blog knows that charter schools are not public schools. They are private contractors that use public money. and some are not very well regulated. There has been more than one court case that has taken the position that charter schools are not public schools.https://dianeravitch.net/2016/09/05/in-honor-of-labor-day-the-national-labor-relations-board-decides-that-charter-schools-are-not-public-schools/
Of course, anyone here knows charter schools are not public schools. That should go without says. Unfortunately, the many not here do not know that.
Me, to a KIPP parent: Charter schools are not public schools.
KIPP parent: Yes charter schools are public schools because the KIPP website says they are.
…without saying.
“Education Next
“It is time to fundamentally rethink seat-time funding to reflect the nature of instruction we expect for students during the pandemic and afterwards.”
Is that what it’s “time” to do? I thought it was maybe “time” for some of the thousands of people we’re paying in state and federal government to actually assist public schools in a pandemic.
My youngest child will have begun and ended his entire time in public schools- from K thru 12- in a state and federal policy utterly dominated by people who do absolutely nothing to assist, support or improve public schools, the schools 90% of US students attend.
Thru three consecutive Presidents and three consecutive governors. Nothing for them or their schools.
It’s ludicrous.
The internet issue in the pandemic I think clearly shows the preference of the ed reform “movement” for grand ideological schemes over useful, practical, measurable work.
The same people who have been pushing online learning into schools for a decade never did anything to ensure lower income kids could actually get online.
It never occurred to Bill Gates or the hundreds of ed reformers he pays that lower income students don’t have internet access? No one in the Bush, Obama or Trump Administration ever bothered to look at the infrastructure necessary to support their “transformation”?
The people who spent billions of dollars conducting experiments on various privatization schemes now blame public schools because there’s no national internet access. Schools were supposed to set this up? What were paying the 10,000 national theorists and professional public school critics for then?
The U.S. Department of Education today released a new Parent and Family Digital Learning Guide, a resource to help parents and guardians understand how digital tools can provide tailored learning opportunities, engage students with course materials, encourage creative expression, and enrich the educational experience.
“As technology continues to iterate and benefit every part of our lives, all students need more opportunities to leverage the potential of technology in education,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. “We hope families can use the information we release today as many of them are relying on technology more so than ever before and are navigating learning from home.”
Someone should alert the US Department of Education that 30% of lower income students don’t have reliable or affordable internet access.
The ed reform echo chamber in action. Rather than actually do any measurable, tangible work we get a compilation of educational links presented as “work” or “assistance”. I haven’t looked but if it’s anything like their “apprenticeship” website it’s all junk anyway.
Peter Greene has a good post on this so-called guide. It is an example of using public tax dollars to produce marketing materials for private interests.http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2020/10/ed-department-produces-advertisement.html