As public schools continue to struggle to reopen during the pandemic, many parents are refusing to send their students into school buildings. And, given the risk of in-person learning, it’s understandable that some families would turn to online charter schools, whose enrollments have soared in recent weeks.
But the controversy surrounding a popular online charter school in Oklahoma provides a cautionary tale of how this trend can put public education dollars in jeopardy, rather than alleviate students’ lost educational opportunities.
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.
In response to the state’s allegations of fiscal impropriety, Epic’s Superintendent Bart Banfield said that “fairness did not prevail” and argued that ending the company’s contract would “hurt more than 61,000 students and their families who have chosen Epic Charter Schools this year.”
Epic, which was founded in 2011, had a huge head start over traditional public schools in developing online instruction after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though Epic had failed to provide meaningful instruction for more than a small percentage of its students, it had the advantage of already being oriented around remote learning.
Oklahoma’s public schools, in contrast, are still struggling to adapt.
Back in May, as Oklahoma state leaders sent traditional public schools contradictory messages on online, hybrid, and in-person learning during the fall semester, families flocked to Epic as an alternative. Now, Epic has about twice as many students as the Oklahoma City Public School System.
This shift amounts to a massive drain on traditional public schools, which receive funding based on student numbers, as they face the increased costs of adhering to health and safety guidelines.
Epic, while currently experiencing a surge in enrollment, has been mired in controversy since 2013, when it first came under scrutiny for financial irregularities by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, the state’s education board, and the legislature. Throughout the investigation, Epic refused to cooperate, and used expensive lobbying and advertising campaigns to delay the process.
Much of the Epic scandal was predictable, as Oklahoma funded a for-profit charter without creating an accountability system with the power to oversee its financial practices or education outcomes.
But building high-quality virtual schools, and holding them accountable, is inherently difficult. Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister and numerous legislators have worked diligently to make up for the lost time. As Deputy Superintendent Monty Guthrie said in terms of creating such systems, “We’re riding a donkey into the space age.”
Online instruction in general—and Epic, in particular—has worked for some students, whose families often become enthusiastic advocates for their schools. But the percentage of students who flourish in Epic remains small.
In 2019, Epic One-on-One had 13,532 students. Most did not take the end-of-year tests, but after Epic received its per student funding, it reported the results of 3,881 composite English and math assessments. Only 880 students (or about one of fifteen enrollees) met or exceeded their growth targets.
Epic’s low academic performance is compounded by its practice of enrolling and retaining, in name only, students who become de-facto dropouts. The system allows at-risk students to be ignored, and ensures that they fall further behind.
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 rubric laid 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.