Oklahoma has a major charter scandal on its hands, which has not dampened the enthusiasm of the Republican Governor, legislators, and state superintendent for charters and vouchers.
EPIC Charter Schools opened in Oklahoma in 2011. It was the state’s first online school and was hailed for its innovative delivery of education. As early as 2013, authorities suspected financial irregularities. Not until 2019 did the public learned that EPIC was under state investigation for embezzling money and inflating its enrollment. The founders tried to block the investigation by insisting that they were a private business and could not be audited. The company collected tuition from the state and retained 10% of its revenues. The state auditor estimated that EPIC’s founders inappropriately diverted $22 million.
But now the founders face new charges of financial crimes.
Founders of Epic Charter Schools are facing new charges of money laundering and presenting false claims to the state, bringing the total number of charges to 15.
Epic co-founders David Chaney and Ben Harris and Chief Financial Officer Josh Brock, were arrested and charged with a list of felonies in June 2022. Charges included racketeering, embezzlement of state funds, and obtaining money by false pretense.
The amount of diverted money so far totals $30 million. Republicans complain about public schools, but no district superintendent or principal has ever been accused of massive crimes like those of EPIC. Let it be noted that virtual charter schools have been the source of the biggest financial crimes.
In Indiana, state officials sued two defunct virtual charters for defrauding the state of $154 million.
In California, the A3 online charter chain was charged with defrauding the state of $400 million.
Sean McManus of Australia, along with Jason Schrock of Long Beach, led a statewide charter school scheme from 2016 to 2019 in which they used a network of mostly online charter schools to defraud the state of approximately $400 million and used $50 million of that amount for personal use. They did so by falsely enrolling students and manipulating enrollment and attendance reporting across their schools to get more money per student than schools are supposed to, prosecutors said.
In Ohio, the state paid the owner of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) about $1 billion, despite its abysmal graduation rates and scores. When the state auditor demanded repayment of $60 million for phantom students, ECOT declared bankruptcy.
In Pennsylvania, the founder of the Pennsylvania CyberCharter School was sentenced to 20 months in prison for pocketing $8 million.
No matter how many frauds are committed by Cybercharters, they do not lose their luster. Why? Usually, they give generous political contributions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
👍🏾
How many of these charter/voucher crooks spend time in jail/prison?
I’m thinking of the teachers scooped up in the alleged Atlanta cheating scandal where innocent teachers were accused of crimes, they couldn’t’ have committed, when other teachers/admins that were arrested were offered deals if they turned in someone else not on the list of alleged perpetrators.
The recent movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, tells the story of the Osage Murders. Together with the Tulsa riot, this history points to the inherent uncivilized nature of America in the 1920s.
What we see in modern political discourse attempts to return us to that day in a conscious way.
Epic crime.