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Tulsa: How Data and Gates Consultant Persuaded Public to Close Public Schools and Cut Their Budget

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2019 //
11

This is a curious article about the makeover of Tulsa Public Schools, where the superintendent is Broadie and former Rhode Island Superintendent Deborah Gist.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/columnists/ginnie-graham-tulsa-public-schools-has-gone-through-major-reforms/article_4bc36885-c247-5858-99f1-7387c48b4fab.html

Under the previous superintendent, a plan called “Project Schoolhouse” resulted in school closings and consolidations. The leaders persuaded the public to accept these “reforms.” In the background was a management consultant brought in by the Gates Foundation; he had no education experience but understood how to use data analytics to persuade the public to go along with his ideas.

When the fate of Rogers High School was on the table, the superintendent was stunned that people cared whether the school remained open.

About nine years ago, a public meeting in the Rogers High School library was so packed that former Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Keith Ballard had to shoulder his way to the front.

Alumni drove from out of state to attend. Neighborhood residents, students, parents and community leaders joined.

The outpouring didn’t line up with other measures that showed a waning interest in the school. It made a difference in the reforms being planned.

“You couldn’t fit one more person in there. I was stunned to see so many people,” Ballard said. “A person stopped me and said, ‘We want our high school to be great again.’ We did, too. This was an opportunity to hear what people had to say and for us to talk about changes in the high schools.”

That was just one evening in a year of developing the last TPS district-wide reform, known as Project Schoolhouse.

A similar process is beginning. TPS will be cutting $20 million from its budget in the next school year. School leaders say this is a chance for the public to shape how TPS serves students moving forward.

This is a massive undertaking in a short amount of time. The board is expected to approved a modified budget by Dec. 16.

So the next job is to persuade the public that a budget cut of $20 million will make the public schools great again.

Oklahoma is notorious for tax cuts for corporations and the fossil fuel industry and underfunded public schools.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Data, Democracy, Disruption, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Oklahoma

John Thompson: The Corporate Makeover of Tulsa University

By dianeravitch
September 7, 2019 //
94

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, writes here about the philanthrocaptalist makeover of Tulsa University. A tale of our times.

Surely we can agree with The Tulsa World’s Randy Krehbiel, who says that the faculty and administration “disagree bitterly … about whether that transformation will be good or bad for the university.”

Krehbiel provides plenty of space for the case made by T.U. President Gerry Clancy and the city’s philanthropists. Its supporters cite economic challenges, as well an opportunity for new revenue from courses that include cyber and health sciences. They claim that the plan is “not etched in stone,” and that it can evolve as the faculty weighs in.

Even so, Kreibiel reports, “a large number of students and alumni are furious about not only the plan itself but the manner in which it was developed … The Arts and Sciences faculty voted 89-4 not to implement True Commitment.” He also cites the participation of EAB, an education consulting firm. EAB’s role is unknown, but such secrecy is likely to be one reason why Krehbiel closed with a faculty member’s words, “I don’t think anyone is really optimistic.”

To get really pessimistic, read Jacob Howland’ articles in the Nation and City Journal magazines. He acknowledges the role of local philanthropies, especially the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF), in “early-childhood education, delivering health care to indigent families, and making Tulsa more vibrant and economically robust.”

Howland writes:

GKFF spent $350 million on Tulsa’s new Gathering Place, the largest private gift to a public park in US history. The foundation has invested more than $100 million in the Tulsa Arts District since 2009. It is the major funder of early-childhood education in the state, and has spent more than $20 million in Tulsa alone on Educare early-childhood education centers.

But Howland suggests that the GKFF has overreached:

It has also pursued a strategy of populating city boards and commissions. In 2017, GKFF staff members headed the Tulsa school board and the Tulsa Airports Improvement Trust, and had seats on the Economic Development Commission, the Tulsa Performing Arts Center Trust, and the Tulsa City Council. For the past two years, a Bank of Oklahoma executive has chaired the board of directors of the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce.

Howland concludes, “the True Commitment restructuring were all part of Kaiser’s plan to gain control of the university.” And he argues that “TU’s administration has employed smashmouth tactics in dealing with faculty opposition to True Commitment.”

I’ve long admired the great job Tulsa edu-philanthropists have done in early education, “two generation” family supports, and criminal justice reform, and I’ve often asked GFKK leaders why they have also supported their opposite – the data-driven, competition-driven corporate school reforms that have failed so badly in the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS). I’ve repeatedly urged an open and balanced, evidence-driven public discussion of the TPS, which is led by the notorious teacher- and union-basher, Deborah Gist.

I was then saddened when the GKFF even joined with the Bloomberg and Walton foundations in funding “portfolio management” directors to “absorb the duties of the director of partnership and charter schools,” and “in the future, implement ‘new school models resulting from incubation efforts of the district.’” I was later stunned to learn that Stacy Schusterman donated almost $200,000 to California union-busting, teacher-bashing campaigns.

PreK-12 EDUCATION

http://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1372632&session=2017&view=contributions

I would now urge Tulsa philanthropists to follow the links cited by journalists and educators and see if the EAB consultants have evidence to support the policies they promote, and then ask whether the values EAB proclaims are worthy of universities in our democracy.

Nowhere on the EAB website, is there any evidence that it’s approach is beneficial to students or society. EAB’s sales pitch certainly doesn’t sound like it has an appropriate role to play in higher education. On the contrary, its claim to fame is being the “brand police.” But how would its “integrated brand strategy” be able to coexist with the founding principles of universities, and their commitment to the clash of ideas? How could a commitment to academic freedom coexist with EAB brand “that all departments, schools, and colleges were onboard with.”

Its blog proclaims:

At EAB we have an ongoing fascination with organizational charts. (Really, we do.) Org charts can tell a story about a university’s strategy, its priorities, and how it gets things done. And when positions start moving on an org chart, we take notice. The latest example: The rise of the strategic marketing and communications (marcom) leader.

The most advanced marcom departments are strategic marketing partners and get involved in everything from institutional branding to admissions to fundraising. And to make sure that there’s a single source of marketing and advertising truth, they function like an in-house ad agency—their clients are departments, colleges, and offices around campus.

https://eab.com/insights/blogs/strategy/its-time-for-marketing-communications-to-have-a-say-in-campus-strategy-heres-how/

But universities aren’t a corporation where everyone is supposed to be on the same page in the search for a single “marketing and advertising truth.” To take one example, tenure protects the clash of ideas. But, EAB’s approach to “‘what you measure matters’” is a “mentality” that “sparks some ambivalence in academia to put it lightly.” So, how do you reconcile the scholarly and the business advertising mentalities? EAB’s response to tenure is:

One solution is to adopt academic metrics that also capture research effort. These metrics can include:
• The number of proposals or papers submitted
• The dollar amount of proposals
• Proportion of funding from different sources
• Benchmarks for the success rates of proposals and papers

https://eab.com/insights/blogs/strategy/3-ways-to-align-tenure-criteria-with-your-institutional-strategy/

Finally, I have enjoyed many conversations with Tulsa philanthropy leaders at events where they assembled talented professors from the O.U. and O.S.U. medical schools. Even though we disagreed on corporate school reform, I’m sure we would share our respect for those medical professionals who are battling the opioid epidemic. We would likely agree that privatization was a major contributor to the deaths of thousands of people in Oklahoma and across the nation.

I hope that philanthropists, who I am confident will contribute to the battle against opioid addiction, will ask a basic question. How many Oklahomans would still be alive and well if it was university medical professors who educated doctors about painkillers, as opposed to the drug companies’ sales reps who would misrepresent medical science in the name of “so-called unbranded promotion?” In times like these, should we not rally behind the principles which drive our universities’ search for knowledge, as opposed to something called “brand equity,” “integrated brand strategy” or whatever profit-seeking consultants spin?

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Billionaires, Education Reform, Higher Education, Oklahoma, Tulsa

John Thompson: An EPIC Case of Fraud in Oklahoma

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2019 //
10

Fraud after fraud is associated with virtual charter schools, especially when they are created by entrepreneurs with the purpose of making money. They do make money, but they don’t educate students. Why do legislators and governors allow this scam to proliferate? Every educator should shout their outrage at the ripoffs, happening in state after state. Virtual charter schools are the epitome of “education reform” as hoax.

John Thompson of Oklahoma describes the Oklahoma scam here.

An Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation affidavit alleges that Epic Charter Schools’ co-founders, David Chaney and Ben Harris, split at least $10 million in profits from 2013 to 2018. The Epic scandal offers some unique insights into both the for-profit charter’s culture and the nature of the school privatization movement, as well as the downsides of online instruction in an age of corporate school reform.

Chaney and Harris allegedly recruited “ghost students” from homeschools and sectarian, private schools “for the purpose of unlawfully diverting State Appropriated Funds to their own personal use.” Epic established a $800 to $1000 per student learning fund for students who were not on the State Department of Education (SDE) “conflict list,” meaning that they were not enrolled in a public school; the state would have known of the illegal dual enrollment had names appeared in both lists. Those students were known as “members of the $800 club,” and their supposed instructors were known as “straw teachers.”

Affidavit: Epic Charter Schools used ‘ghost students’ to embezzle state funds

The following are details that reveal crucial facts relevant to online charters across the nation.

First, the OSBI search warrant cited a case which apparently reveals intent to defraud. A convicted felon, identified as LDW, saw Epic as an opportunity for an “economic windfall.” LDW and her uncertified staff did not require students to work the hours required by the state to earn credit for a full school day. And then there was an interesting twist to the LDW story.

LDW’s research told her that dual enrollment was illegal. So, she converted her school into a“learning center” under the “Epic Model.” LDW made a “‘vague reference” and “implied” that she “‘may have” learned about the Epic model from the Epic website.” Apparently, she justified the acceptance of the $800 per student learning fund money not as “tuition,” but as “before and after care” and “tutoring fees.” Parents didn’t necessarily know or consent to the new model, but LDW sent a document entitled “General Assurance” to David Chaney asserting that she “was not doing anything ‘illegal.’”

The OSBI thus seems to be presenting the case that Epic was illegally draining money from the state, and that Chaney and Harris helped choreograph the illegalities.

Second, Epic’s state funding expanded dramatically, up to $112 million annually, as public schools endured huge budget cuts. Epic also used, or misused, the state’s charter conversion law to take over rural school districts through what one superintendent calls “predatory marketing,” using misleading advertising in “aggressive attempts to attract students and teachers from surrounding school districts even in the middle of the academic year.” And it planned to expand further. Epic had sought to take over the troubled Swink district, but that and the plan to expand in Texas and Arkansas have been put on hold.

Public School’s Switch to Charter Allows Epic to Operate Rural District

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/southeastern-

Probe threatens Oklahoma virtual school expansion into Texas

So, Oklahoma was on the path towards even larger online charter scandals, such as in California, Ohio, Florida, and Indiana. And the investigation of the $180 million Florida school and the $40 Indiana fraud might be especially pertinent. It’s not just the way that their virtual school operators “shrug off blame.” More importantly, Florida and Indiana privatizers have the ears of many Oklahoma “reformers.”
Two Indiana virtual schools face swift closure as they shrug off blame for enrollment scandal

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/texas/article/Probe-threatens-Oklahoma-virtual-school-expansion-14277159.php
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2019/07/25/two-indiana-virtual-schools-face-swift-closure-as-they-shrug-off-blame-for-enrollment-scandal/

And, third, that brings us to the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs, Governor Stitt, and legislators who see choice as the panacea which could make Oklahoma a “Top Ten” state. Earlier this summer, the OCPA was bragging about the agenda they would push next year. It then touted Stitt’s support for vouchers and Florida’s education reform plan. In addition to claiming that reforming the state’s funding formula could produce transformative gains, it praised Indiana’s reforms. The OCPA’s claims that fixing Oklahoma’s imperfect but basically good funding formula could fix our schools on the cheap are completely divorced from reality.
https://www.ocpathink.org/post/a-next-generation-school-agenda-for-oklahoma

https://www.ocpathink.org/post/gov-stitt-are-we-done-absolutely-not

Oklahomans paying to educate ‘ghost students’ in numerous districts

Fourth, After Epic’s scandal became public, however, it’s taken alt truth to a new level. It first doubled-down on the politics of personalized vilification of educators and opponents.
Epic quickly replied to Jennifer Palmer’s journalism in Education Watch with insults but without facts. It claimed that the Oklahoma Watch article “implies that ALL Epic’s administrators are evil, skanky people hell bent on destruction of Oklahoma’s public education system.” Epic also argued that Palmer’s work linking such gamesmanship with incentives tied to accountability metrics is “more fiction than a Steven King novel.” They also called it “nefarious.”
After the OSBI’s search warrant was revealed, however, Epic’s responses have become completely bizarre. Whether you believe it needs some updating or not, Oklahoma’s funding formula is based on solid evidence and logic. But the OCPA and Sen. Gary Stanislawski, the Chair of the Senate Education Committee, say that the “weighted average” for funding different types of students in different grades is a system that funds “ghost students.” Equally absurd, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the OCPA, and Sen. Stanislawski claim that the “daily membership” formula funds “ghost students.” Worst of all, the Education Chair buys into the spin about Oklahoma’s formula, “It’s a legal way to rob other school districts.”
It must be stressed that the tactic of answering fact-based charges about “ghost students” with made-up attacks on solid, established funding systems for being schemes to fund made-up “ghost students” is not new and preceded the Oklahoma scandal. The OCPA drew on ALEC’s “Report Card on Education,” praising the way “Indiana Seizes the Hammer, Enacts Comprehensive Reform.” Not surprisingly, it promoted vouchers, charter expansion, undermining teachers’ rights, A-F Grade Cards, and “The Way of the Future: Digital Learning.” If the governor or legislative leaders would bother to follow the OCPA link to the 2012 ALEC report, they would learn that included no evidence that ghost students existed or that improvements resulted from their changes.

Fifth, in fact those “reforms” failed. During the four years after reforms were implemented, the four key tests on the reliable NAEP test scores showed gains of .25 points per year, meaning that student performance remained basically flat. Since they were supposed to be a civil rights campaign against the “low expectations” perpetrated by bad teachers, who were poorly trained and not held accountable by school systems, and defended by bad teachers unions, it is especially important to remember that Indiana’s economic achievement gap increased from 2013 to 2017.

NAEP State Profiles

NAEP State Profiles

Sixth, these alt facts lead to one of the worst aspects of ideology-driven, market-driven reform. Online charters like Epic inflict financial harm on schools. They help some students but hurt many more. Some of the worst damage, however, is inflicted on the principles of public education and our democracy.

Epic et.al have undermined public schools by slandering educators and education advocates. Their statistical and financial gamesmanship has been bad enough. It is their willingness to say anything and to falsely demonize opponents that has most corrupted our constitutional democracy. And that may be the saddest truth about the tragic results of the school privatization era.

Categories Corruption, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Beware of Right-Wing Groups Promoting Union-Busting Shell Called “Free to Teach”

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2019 //
30

 

Jonathan Burdick, a history teacher in Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter about a new group called “Free to Teach,” which encourages teachers to abandon their union and form an “independent” union.

He can be found @JonathanBurdick on Twitter. In case you are not on Twitter and can’t find the thread, Jonathan writes that the group’s ads are sponsored by an Oklahoma-based organization called “Americans for Fair Treatment.” Here we go down the rabbit hole of right-wing groups. That group shares the same registered address in Oklahoma with “The Fairness Center,” which sued the teachers’ union in Philadelphia and lost. The Fairness Center shares offices in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with the Commonwealth Foundation. The Commonwealth Foundation is funded by DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. These organizations are part of a massive network of right-wing groups called the State Policy Network. These organizations have donated HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF DOLLARS to extreme right causes: many anti-union and pro-educational privatization. These organizations are funded by billionaires including the Koch Brothers and Richard and Helen DeVos—the parents-in-law of Betsy DeVos. They also fund the Mackinac Center in Michigan, a favorite cause of Betsy DeVos, which works to crush unions and workers’ rights. Jonathan Burdick points out that Peter Greene wrote about “Free to Teach” and its connections to the right-wing oligarchs.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Teachers, Unions

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s EPIC Charter Fraud

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2019 //
2

 

Virtual charter schools are a disaster for students, but a honey pot for their operators—that is, until they get caught and face the music and possible jail time.

John Thompson describes the epic fail of the EPIC virtual charter in Oklahoma. 

Ghost students, straw teachers, parent bonuses. What a scam.

An Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation revealed that the co-founders of the state’s largest virtual charter school system, Epic Charter Schools, David Chaney and Ben Harris, split at least $10 million in profits from 2013 to 2018. They allegedly recruited “ghost students” (who were technically enrolled but received minimal instruction from teachers) from homeschools and sectarian private schools “for the purpose of unlawfully diverting State Appropriated Funds to their own personal use resulting in high NFAY [not full academic year] rates and low graduation rates for the students.” 

Epic established an $800-to-$1000-per-student learning fund for students who did not enroll in a public school. These students were dubbed “members of the $800 club,” and assigned to “straw teachers,” who “would receive additional pay in the form of bonuses which included student retention goals,” while “those who dropped students would see a decrease in pay.”

A search warrant cited parents who received money but admitted they had no intention of receiving instruction from Epic. One family withdrew its ten children from public schools,  received $8000, and allowed the kids to ride horses instead of attending school. 

Does anyone have a link to Betsy DeVos’ Senate confirmation hearings when she rattled off the impressive but false statistics about virtual charter schools? It turns out they are the quintessential fraudsters of the Disruption Movement.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Oklahoma: Officials Can’t Track “Ghost Students” in Online Charter School Scandal

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2019 //
13

 

How does a state determine whether students on a virtual school’s rolls exist?

Oklahoma can’t.

Oklahoma investigators believe Epic Charter Schools embezzled money by inflating its enrollment with homeschool and private school students. Because of the state’s dedication to privacy, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister says the alleged abuse would not have been preventable under current state law.

The Enrollment Loophole

Virtual charter schools are taxpayer-funded public schools. Like traditional public schools, they are free to families and receive funding from the state based on student enrollment. Unlike traditional public schools, they are run by private companies or non-profits, and student instruction and coursework happen online instead of in-person.  

With over 20,000 students on the books last year, Epic is the largest virtual charter school in Oklahoma, and it appears to be exploiting a loophole in state law. 

All virtual charters are under the purview of a separate agency, the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, but verifying enrollment falls to the State Dept. of Education.

The education department has the data to easily keeps tabs on kids enrolled in public schools, including Epic, but it cannot track private or homeschooled students because they aren’t required to register with the state government. That makes it nearly impossible to weed out these so-called “ghost students” who are dually or falsely enrolled in homeschool or private school as well as a virtual charter school during routine audits…

Epic Charter Schools touts many benefits, but one reason for its popularity is financial incentives. 

“For the homeschool community, the appeal has been the money,” explained Teresa Burnett, a homeschool parent from Shawnee. 

Epic teachers get bonuses for recruiting students and families receive up to one thousand dollars per child. That money is part of what Epic calls its “Learning Fund,” which can be used to purchase extra products and courses. 

Burnett regularly joins with other homeschool families in a co-op to do lessons and go on outings. While she has stuck exclusively with home education, many of those in the co-op she participated in last year have joined Epic. 

“By the time we got to October, November, I’m going to estimate approximately 50 percent of the families had all enrolled in Epic,” Burnett recalled. “They were still participating in the co-op and still enrolled at Epic. These moms were being told that they basically can have the best of both worlds. We can home educate, and then we get to also take advantage of the perks that Epic will provide. ‘Perks’ being the financial perks.”

State law enforcement describes these kids as “ghost students”— homeschool and private school students that are also enrolled at Epic but receive little to no instruction from the school. Epic’s founders allegedly used them to embezzle millions of taxpayer dollars.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Privatization

Mercedes Schneider Dives into the Tax Returns of Oklahoma’s EPIC Charter Fraud

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2019 //
17

 

We learned recently that Oklahoma officials have charged the EPIC online charter with fraud, alleging that its leaders siphoned off $10 million for themselves while inflating enrollments of ghost students.

Schneider does her specialty investigation of EPIC’s tax returns and discovered that the corporation was created in 2009 for a variety of purposes, but not education. It eventually amended its filing to add education. In other words, the founders were entrepreneurs in search of a mark.

In 2010, it had revenue of $60,000.

After it went into the charter business, EPIC hit pay dirt. In 2016, it’s revenues exceeded $29 million.

Is this a great country or what?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

John Thompson: The Cruel Policy of Punishing Little Children to Raise Their Test Scores

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2019 //
30

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, posts frequently about education in his state.

 

Last week, National Public Radio’s Alexandra Starr first reported on Florida’s mandatory retention of 3rd graders who don’t pass a reading proficiency test. Even though it is stigmatizing for children to be retained, and “multiple studies have found that flunking a grade makes it much more likely students will fail to graduate from high school,” the high stakes testing law has spread to about 40 percent of states.

States Are Ratcheting Up Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

NPR’s Starr draws on experts like Pedro Noguera, Nell Duke, and Diane Horm, while explaining how short-term benefits of 3rd grade retention “dissipate over time.” She also cites Marty West, a Big Data researcher who sidesteps the anxiety imposed on children and pressure on teachers to increase pass rates through ill-conceived instructional practices, and says that Florida’s well-funded mandatory retention law doesn’t hurt students’ graduation rates. Neither does West address states like Oklahoma, with chronic underfunding of education.And that leads to the first slippery slope created by Florida’s willingness to scale up punishments for young children and their teachers in order to improve student performance. At least it invests more than $130 million per year on its reading sufficiency act. When Oklahoma legislators, who were often persuaded by Jeb Bush’s public relations campaign, passed its reading act, they intended to invest $150 per struggling reader, but they only came up with $6 million, which was enough for only about $75 per student. It took six years to find money for about $153 per student.

For First Time, ‘Read or Fail’ Law Is Fully Funded. Will It Reduce Retentions?

In NPR’s second report focusing on Tulsa Ok., Starr shows the benefits of well-funded, holistic pre-kindergarten instruction. Oklahoma and edu-philanthropists fund such classes for 4-year-olds; nearly 3/4ths of Oklahoma students enroll in pre-k. And, next door to a comprehensive pre-k partnership, the majority-Hispanic Rosa Parks Elementary School illustrates the promise of partnerships for improving public schools. It is a part of the Tulsa Union community school system which so impressed David Kirp that his New York times article that featured Rosa Parks was entitled “Who Needs Charters When You Have Schools Like These?”  Oklahoma Among States Setting Higher Reading Expectations For 3rd-Graders

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/who-needs-charters-when-you-have-public-schools-like-these.htmlA Rosa Parks elementary teacher explained the dilemma schools face regarding kids who aren’t on track to pass the high stakes 3rd grade test, “Very early on, we have to put them on a plan if we think that they’re going to be held back in third grade for a test.” Unfortunately Starr didn’t have time to dig into those plans the way that Oklahoma Watch’s Jennifer Palmer has done. It leads to the second slippery slope created by high stakes testing for 3rd graders.

Palmer cites a librarian who explained, “‘RSA allows two years of retention, and two years in third grade would be worse,’ she said. ‘They would be completely destroyed.’” And that raises the question about the risks educators can/must take in order to not completely destroy their students.

The Oklahoma Watch’s study of federal data showed that 2,533 3rd graders were retained in 2015-16. Worse, she found that “repeating a grade is actually more common in kindergarten and first grade,” and “the high-stakes third-grade test appears to drive many of the early retentions.”  Oklahoma retained 3,977 kindergarteners, and a total of 10,345 students in the kindergarten through 2ndgrades.

These retentions were not evenly spread across the state. Next door to Tulsa Union, the Tulsa Public Schools, for instance, has about 2-1/3rds as many students as Union. The TPS retained 823 students through kindergarten and second grade, or more than 4-1/3rds as many. We can only hope that the edu-philanthropists who fund worthy early education programs, as well as their opposite – the corporate reform policies of Deborah Gist’s TPS – will realize how and why those two approaches are the antithesis of each other..

Palmer also touched on the third slippery slope when she explained the benchmark assessments that are used in predicting failure on the end-of-year tests. She writes, “Schools also rely on computerized benchmarking programs to glean more information on students’ skillsets and how they compare to other students their age.” But, to say the least, they are “not an exact science.” This leads to crucial, potentially life-changing and risky decisions being made by parents and teachers using data on a computer screen that they acknowledge they don’t understand.

Lastly, the dehumanizing slide down into systems where the punitive is seen as normal, even for our youngest students, might or might not have been predictable. Twenty years ago, the reward and punishment of kindergarteners would have seemed despicable. Market-driven reform may have begun as a way to force teachers to comply. Then it was dumped on teenagers. Now, when such stressful incentives and disincentives are imposed on 5-year-olds, it doesn’t seem surprising to read Big Data studies that claim that those who fail tests in the states with the most funding for competition-driven reform may not be damaged as much as previously thought …     

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, Cruelty, Early Childhood Education, Florida, Oklahoma, Testing

Oklahoma: Investigators Accuse Virtual Charter of Stealing Millions

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2019 //
2

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation says that the EPIC virtual charter school has stolen millions of dollars. 

Investigators say the co-founders of the school embezzled $10 million, based on “ghost students” who never enrolled.

Just days ago, a state legislator asked where the money was going but was rebuffed by the state Department of Education.

Oklahoma’s largest charter school is a “blended learning school” that has received so much money that a legislator asked where the money was going. The state Department of Education said it wouldn’t tell him unless he paid a fee of $850 to find out.  The school claims a 99% attendance rate, which in itself is bizarre.

Oklahoma state Sen. Ron Sharp is questioning funding the state’s largest charter school has received in the past two years.

This comes after Sharp said Epic Blended Charter School received a total of $63 million in its first two years of operation.

FOX 25 sat down with Sharp Thursday who said the school was provided allocation money through the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) for grade levels the school doesn’t provide.

“The first year they were in existence we gave them $23 million. For the second year now, we gave them $40 million. That is an excessive amount of money particularly for kids that’s aren’t being accommodated in the school. That is a problem,” Sharp said….

Sharp said he submitted an Open Records Request to the Oklahoma State Department of Education in March.

“In June, I received an email that they would not provide that information to me because of the extensive hours involved without an $850 fee. Which again, as a state senator, I found that to be a little bit unusual. Now I have been requesting quite a bit of documentation here from the OSDE,” Sharp said….

Sharp also questioned how many students actually show up to Epic Charter School on-site locations.

“Are there enough individuals? If 7,000 are showing up to two sites at any one period of time that, you have to make sure you have proper facilities for them. Individuals of which are able to monitor them and again, how many kids are coming in before school and after school?” Sharp said. “They even say at all these sites they have a 99% attendance rate. Which is absolutely amazing as a 38-year teacher — you cannot get 99% of your kids there at a school each day.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Tom Ultican: EPIC Online Schools Prove That P.T. Barnum Was Roght

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2019 //
3

 

Cybercharters, aka virtual charters, are the big moneymakers with the worst results, yet states are slow to regulate them or prohibit them from opening. They collect full tuition but don’t provide the services that brick-and-mortar schools do. In state after state, they are low-performing yet never held accountable. The only online charter that collapsed was ECOT in Ohio because the owner decided to pull the plug rather than pay the state for inflated enrollments and ghost students.

Tom Ultican writes here about a relatively new virtual charter chain that is raking in big bucks. It is called EPIC. It started in Oklahoma, branched out into California, and hopes to open in Arkansas.

He writes:

Ben Harris and David Chaney, two long time friends from Oklahoma City, founded Epic.

In 1999, One year after Harris was awarded a Master of Public Administration from Syracuse University, he and Chaney founded Advanced Academics Inc.Today Pearson Corporation the large British testing and publishing company owns Advanced Academics which sells credit recovery courses and software for virtual classes.

Both Harris and Chaney went to work for Jeb Bush in 2003 at the Florida Department of Children and Families. Harris was soon made the Deputy Secretary in charge of technology. He worked under Secretary Jerry Regier who had previously run health and human services in Oklahoma. It was here that Harris made a name for himself by privatizing the child welfare system…

In 2009 – just prior to founding Epic – Harris was Chief Financial Officer of Velocity Sports Performance in Irvine, California. The CEO of Velocity Sports Performance when Harris arrived there was Troy Medley, who is now Chairman of the Board for Epic in California.

Epic Found a Way into Orange County, California

Epic is an acronym for excellence, performance, innovation and citizenship. In California the non-profit business name is Next Generation Education. In Oklahoma the non-profit business name is Community Strategies Inc. Neither Epic founder, David Chaney nor Ben Harris, sits on the board of either Next Generation Education in California or Community Strategies Inc. in Oklahoma.

Rather, David Chaney serves as both superintendent of the nonprofit Epic Charter Schools and CEO of Epic Youth Services, a for-profit company that manages the school for a fee. Chaney owns the for-profit corporation, which originally had Harris’s home address listed on the incorporating papers.

Follow this sad story and you will soon realize that EPIC is a business. It sells schooling.

This Byzantine structure hides the fact that Epic is a for profit business cloaked in non-profit suit, thus skirting California’s prohibition against for profit charters. It also means that in their tax forms, the non-profit only reports costs and no salaries. For example, in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017 Community Strategies Inc. the Oklahoma non-profit reported revenues of $41,487,230 and expenditures of $40,105,203. However, the non-profit reported no salaries because the for-profit does payroll. There is no way for taxpayers to see how many public dollars are going into private hands.

Ultican describes how EPIC won a charter in Orange County, California, despite the strong staff recommendation against doing so. The board in Orange County was funded by Billionaire privatizers.

All but one board member who voted to give Epic a charter received large campaign support from billionaires through three independent expenditure committees; California Charter Schools Association Advocates, Orange County Charter Advocates for Great Schools (which is sponsored by CCSAA) and the Lincoln Club of Orange County. David Boyd, Chancellor of The Taft University System, did not receive documented largess from the billionaires but his campaign did have odd financial support. He loaned  his own campaign $72,000, got a $50,000 loan from Taft University and a $25,000 loan from Elizabeth Dorn’s campaign. More than $30,000 in loan debt was later forgiven.

In 2016, the Beverly Hills Billionaire, Howard Ahmanson Jr. (state major donor ID 479163) gave the OC Charter PAC $10,000 and the Local Liberty PAC (State ID 1291528) that Ahmanson finances provided them another $18,171.83.

Howard Ahmanson’s name sake father established the Ahmanson Family Foundation in 1952. Today, that foundation has slightly more than a billion dollars in assets. They give extensively to the arts and LA basin charter schools. In 2016, they gave $500,000 to the billionaire funded pro-school privatization youth group Teach For America. Howard runs the Fieldstad and Company arm of the Ahmanson foundation.

Roberta Ahmanson, Howard’s wife, is a serious Christian thinker and writer. She gave a speech titled “What Fundamentalism Gave Me” at the 2018 commencement for Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Like Betsy DeVos, she is part of The Gathering. Roberta and her husband see Epic as a tool that benefits the Christian home schooling movement.

Is this what education is about? Money. Profits. Connections.

Categories Education Reform, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools
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