You may recall that the Oklahoma State Board of Education recently voted 4-3 to allow charter schools to share in local tax revenues, over the opposition of State Commissioner Joy Hofmeister, who said that the decision might violate state law. You may also recall that the virtual charter school in Oklahoma called EPIC has been embroiled in scandal after scandal (just google “Oklahoma EPIC scandal” and you will get lots of references to allegations of theft, embezzlement, ghost students, etc.). For example, in fall 2020, the state auditor reported that EPIC owes the state $8.9 million for inaccurate reporting, improper transfer of funds, and a multitude of other egregious (you might say “epic”) calculations. That $8.9 million was the tip of a very large iceberg. The state auditor said that about 1 of every 4 dollars that the state paid to EPIC (a total of $458 million) was deposited as profit by the school’s owners. The story is breathtaking.
The Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee (PLAC) posted this on its Facebook page:
Oklahoma PLAC Facebook post:
TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY??? Where art thou?
We’re wondering why State Board of Education member Jennifer Monies did not recuse herself during last week’s vote to settle a lawsuit that directly benefited another entity of which she serves as board member. She is both plaintiff and defendant in this case yet she still cast a vote.
“On numerous occasions in the board’s public meetings, Monies has mentioned her service on the board of her son’s school, John Rex Charter Elementary in Oklahoma City, which would stand to benefit from the settlement and which is listed as a member of the Oklahoma Public Charter School Association on the organizations’ website.”
And another tragic Farce
EPIC Charter Schools named Charter School of the Year by Choice Matters
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would bet that Monies is a Republican who has lost the has lost, if she ever had it, the moral and ethical backbone to do what is right by any positive standard. Another example of the loss across the United States of people in elected positions who are willing to have the courage and decisiveness to do right for everyone, not just their special interests and those that given them the most money.
It is actually really profound. The reason charter schools couldn’t be paid out of local tax levies was charter schools don’t permit elected representatives. They’ve done an end run around the requirement that local tax dollars require local elected representatives.
They were doing an end run around it anyway- in Ohio they just take the funding from every student who remains in a public school. They cut the public school student’s state share to pay the charter because the state legislature didn’t want to admit that two school systems costs more then one school system.So they just took it from public school students.
Charters still can’t actually LEVY taxes, so the public schools will have to request additional tax monies to cover the cost of the charters and the charters won’t have their fingerprints on the tax increase. Win/win for ed reformers! Charters look good and public schools look bad!
Ed reformers are nothing if not sophisticated political operatives. It’s all moving money around to make their privatized systems look better and the public systems look worse.
Ed reformers used to argue that charters were cheaper than public schools, using their phony accounting that doesn’t include the costs to the public system for transportation and other costs that are shoved onto the public school side of the ledger, but that won’t work anymore.
Now they are argue charters provide better results with the same funding. “The Movement” is endlessly elastic. They’ll massage the message until it fits the promotion and marketing of the privatized systems they prefer.
Vouchers don’t outscore public schools? No problem! They’ll just argue “choice” schools are better because they’re….. choice schools!
Ed reform cannot fail. It can only be failed.
“Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.”
[…]
“Greed, in turn, is a robust determinant of unethical behavior. Plato and Aristotle deemed greed to be at the root of personal immorality, arguing that greed drives desires for material gain at the expense of ethical standards (11, 12). Research finds that individuals motivated by greed tend to abandon moral principles in their pursuit of self-interest (13). In one study, a financial incentive caused people to be more willing to deceive and cheat others for personal gain (14). In another study, the mere presence of money led individuals to be more likely to cheat in an anagram task to receive a larger financial reward (1). Greed leads to reduced concern for how one’s behavior affects others and motivates greater unethical action.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086
Ed Johnson “‘Greed leads to reduced concern for how one’s behavior affects others and motivates greater unethical action.’”
Besides greed, these studies also point to the deeper tension we live in between ourselves and others . . . . When are we forced to make choices between our own betterment and that of others, and at what point in our own development and in our cultural ethos do the two coincide?
Also, something else is going on . . . greed is about our short-sighted desires. However, a coincidence of principle MAY occur, but often doesn’t . . .again, producing greed; but where a coincidence of principle, when it does occur, manifests in: what is best for ME is also best for the OTHER, for instance, when we make choices out of love for our children.
And then there’s behavior driven by fear instead of desire . . . as when we choose some good (instead of greed, etc.) because we are afraid of getting caught and going to jail, or because we might disappoint a loved one who (we know) looks up to us, for instance, in returning a found wallet when, if no one knew, some of us might keep it. (As in Plato’s ring of Gyges narrative in The Republic).
My thoughts on this also take me to one’s political climate . . . where, in the case of a democracy . . . where freedom is such a central point to living in one . . . much is dependent on most of us just doing the right thing, or following our own learned principles of good . . . not out of first-felt desire or fear, but out of reflecting-on and fostering a sense of self-other respect and the good conscience that flows from it.
I think that’s why we in the United States have more people in prisons than in many others . . . we live in in a relatively free culture . . . that isn’t governed by a hard-and-fast fear from a dictator or some soul-killing ideology, but rather has laws that remain relatively remote for most of us, precisely because of our upbringing, such as it still is . . . in some camps, anyway. CBK
Well nss, just look at hillbillary.
Ravitch on April 1 re: Oklahoma Sick joke on the public.
See this for pure evil genius on “how to cash in on public funds for schools.” Construct a Turduckden says NEPE.
https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/newsletter-turducken-040121
That NEPC report was an April Fool’s joke. Try googling the names. All non-existent.
“TRANSPARENCY, ACCOUNTABILITY??”
Soooooo, where were you when comey rewrote the statute on losing classified information to necessitate the condition of finding intent?
The condition of intent was verifiably never written into that statute for the fact that losing control of classified data would be the easiest way to sell it.
“Hey hillbillary, where’s the classified data that was sent to you?”
“Umm, my dog ate it and then somehow it got leaked all over the web?”
“pfft, well who can argue with that, sounds innocent to me… ”
Im getting the hunch that the people that invented the noose always had hillbillary in mind…