Why is Epic popular?

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

Ask the average citizen what they know about Epic Charter Schools, an online public K-12 school, and you’ll typically hear two responses. First, the school’s critics are vocal, fierce, and determined to shut down Epic, and second, the school is increasingly popular among parents.

Some will consider those two facts incompatible. Why would parents flock to a school that is constantly under fire from bureaucrats and teacher unions who regularly remind us they know better than the rest of us? The answer is simple. Because parents believe that Epic provides a better educational product than many local brick-and-mortar schools, particularly in the state’s urban centers. If Epic’s back-end business functions have been questioned by a flawed state audit that encouraged Epic to make inaccurate calculations, that’s of little concern to parents focused on the welfare of their child.

One parent of an Epic student, addressing members of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, put it bluntly: “A lot of the parents that are inside Epic think that brick-and-mortar schools are mad because they’ve had too many kids pulled from them and they’re losing too much money and they’re trying to get Epic shut down.”

Due in part to COVID-19 and the continued closure of many physical school sites, along with the bad-to-terrible online alternatives provided by local districts, families have flocked to Epic this year. The district now serves more than 61,000 students—all of whom proactively chose the school—making Epic Oklahoma’s largest school by enrollment.

The demand for Epic’s services shows parents desire parental school choice. Those who feel Epic has gained an outsized role are often people who oppose parental school choice. But if we truly care about parents and families having access to the school they believe best meets their student’s needs, we need to increase the length of the school-choice menu.

Lawmakers should provide families the ability to use their tax funding at any school of their choice. If a local district won’t provide in-person instruction, allow families to transfer to other districts or private schools without restriction or penalty. When a local district is failing to educate children, let families use tax dollars for private-school enrollment. When a district refuses to stop bullying, let a child choose from a wide range of online, charter, public, and private school options.

Consumer choice and competition generate improvement in all other fields. They can do the same thing in education. But right now many families have only two choices: the local traditional school or a statewide online charter school.

The great challenge in education today is not whether Epic used the proper accounting codes for administrative expenses (the main allegation contained in the flawed state audit), but the fact that tens of thousands of families have demonstrated a strong desire for a greater array of parental school choice options for their children.

Education opportunity to increase statewide under Stitt plan

"In an announcement that gained praise from national education leaders, Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Friday he will use millions of dollars in federal COVID funds to increase educational opportunity across Oklahoma, boosting financial resources for students, families, and schools across the state," Ray Carter reports.

Among other things, Stitt’s plan will boost online course offerings in rural schools, close the digital divide for low-income families by assisting with technology purchases, and provide scholarship assistance so low-income students who already attend private schools can continue doing so. ...

Stitt’s plan will use $30 million from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund, authorized by the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, to pay for three new programs. GEER funds represent a portion of total federal COVID-19 funding provided to the state of Oklahoma and are controlled by the governor. Oklahoma received $360 million total in federal funding for Oklahoma’s public education systems to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, of which $39.9 million was directed to the GEER Fund.

Thirty million dollars will be divided between three new education initiatives: Learn Anywhere Oklahoma, Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet, and Stay in School Funds.

Here's a primer on how to use the digital wallet:

How many Oklahoma students are continuing to learn?

[Guest post by Mike Brake]

With schools across the nation closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, a key question is: How many students are continuing to learn?

A previous article focused on actual content being delivered through the many different distance/continuous learning programs put in place by local school districts. Some are simply asking students to review previously presented material, while others are more aggressively assigning lessons that would effectively complete the fourth quarter for kids from kindergarten through high school, although most schools are not grading the students’ work.

But the key question – are most if not all students actually linked to their schools and doing the assigned work? – yields different answers depending on where it is asked. It appears that in some schools 10 percent or more of high school students are off the learning grid, at least initially, and that figure could increase as the school year winds to a close.

So far though, Oklahoma does not appear to be as bad as some other states.

A survey conducted during the first weeks of distance learning nationwide showed that up to 40 percent of secondary school students who were supposed to be enrolled and active in the programs were no-shows. When Common Sense Media polled 849 teens, 41 percent of them said they had not attended even one online class. When responding students were limited to those in public schools, the no-shows rose to 47 percent.

In Los Angeles, a newspaper investigation revealed that some 15,000 high school students were not taking part in that district’s online program, while as many as 40,000 had failed to maintain daily contact with teachers. A New York Times investigation showed that online attendance was worst in districts with high shares of low-income families and in rural areas.

Cleveland’s school district reported an initial 60 percent participation rate, but that had risen to 87 percent after the first week of online classes.

Yet another random survey, of 5,659 teachers via the social media app Fishbowl, showed that 55 percent of those teachers reported that half or more of their students were not connecting to remote classes. More than one-third of them said attendance was 25 percent or less. Only 17 percent reported 75 percent or more student participation.

So how are we doing in Oklahoma? Again, it depends on where you ask the question. As might be expected, districts with high concentrations of low-income families are less likely to have internet connections and a parent at home to direct the work, with resulting poor participation in distance learning programs.

There are bright spots. In Enid, district spokesperson Amber Fitzgerald said all students already had district-provided Chromebooks and assured wi-fi hotspots.

“We had a very successful first week,” Fitzgerald said.

Mary Ladd, speaking for Ponca City Schools, said she could not estimate participation rates but felt they were high.

“We had a lot of students down here for their packets,” she said, noting that the line to pick up hard copies of class assignments stretched “more than two blocks. It was unbelievable.”

Dawn Jones at Moore Schools said teachers used the week before remote learning began to assure that all junior high and high school students had access to computers and an internet connection.

Tulsa Public Schools, with 39,105 students the largest in the state, has directed many of its online students to the Canvas learning platform. District spokesperson Lauren Partain said 14,321 students were using Canvas as of April 13, about 40 percent of those enrolled, but she noted that “some schools use Spark or Summit learning management systems, and are not included in Canvas users.”

Other students are “only engaging with teachers via phone, due to internet accessibility,” Partain said. She said the district has now distributed more than 40,000 hard copy learning packets in the first two weeks of distance learning.

Oklahoma City Public Schools assigned teachers to make initial phone or email contacts with all of their students, according to district spokesperson Beth Harrison. That yielded an 89 percent contact rate, she said.

As the continuous learning program began, elementary teachers were instructed to touch base with students twice a week, while secondary teachers, with a higher student count, were asked to make one weekly contact.

Harrison said the district’s continuous learning website logged 132,783 visitors between April 6 and 16. The district has distributed 50,814 paper lesson packets and had 296 calls to a hotline created for students needing assistance.

At Putnam City Schools, spokesperson Sheradee Hurst said the initial day of the continuous learning program logged 35,512 website views for the district of just under 20,000 students.

“Putnam City is actively surveying to ascertain numbers of student/teacher connections,” Hurst said. “Our survey is still in progress. Partial results show district numbers averaging 95 percent.” 

In Edmond, at least one father is concerned that Edmond Public Schools is “throwing in the towel on one-fourth of the school year” and cheating students out of an education. 

It is too early to accurately track how many students – primarily at the secondary level – may be disconnecting from their home district’s learning and lesson resources, either online or in paper format, but according to the Oklahoma State Department of Education, during a normal school year, one out of four high school seniors who entered four years before as freshmen fail to graduate. That means that even in good times, significant percentages of students in the upper grades drop out of school. One suspects that as the continuous learning programs continue through May, more of those students who were prone to drop out will discontinue contact with schools and teachers, bringing the Oklahoma non-participation rate more in line with those being reported in some other states.

It is also to be expected that districts with inner-city student populations will see a higher disconnect rate, just as they experience higher dropout rates during normal school years.

Digital learning and homeschooling during—and after—the crisis

"Digital learning and homeschooling have hit K-12 education like—well, like a pandemic," Greg Forster writes.

As in so many other sectors, from politics to business to the movies, people are asking to what extent things can ever return to normal from the drastic changes imposed by our public health emergency. Now that millions of families are experiencing digital learning and homeschooling, at least in a way, will these alternatives come out stronger on the other side of the crisis?

Independent schools and the coronavirus

[The following is an open letter to independent school leaders from Benjamin Scafidi and Eric Wearne.] 

It is an understatement to say that the coronavirus (COVID-19) has disrupted American families, culture, the economy, governments, healthcare systems, and your schools as well. Like many other institutions in American life, schools have been forced to make radical changes in day-to-day routines, including ceasing their face-to-face interactions with students. Students now receive instruction, assignments, and tests in their homes using virtual means—with no transition period for teachers, parents, and students.

This letter makes a case that, as soon as possible, independent schools should create plans to:

• Keep your students and staff safe from the virus during the 2020-21 academic year;
• Maintain fiscal solvency, including keeping enrollments at desired levels; and
• Demonstrate to your families that you will provide educational value to their children under the likely scenario that they will spend a significant amount of time learning from home during the 2020-21 academic year. 

The Likely Health Environment for the 2020-21 Academic Year

The good news first: Dr. Anthony Fauci’s expert opinion as of April 7 is that we will likely be in “good shape” to open schools on time for the 2020-21 academic year.

While we are all hoping for the best, we need to be realistic. For example, in his April 7 remarks, Dr. Fauci also said that school opening on time was not an “absolute prediction” and that “it's going to be different, remember now, because this is not going to disappear.”

This summer of 2020 will be your most intense planning summer ever, as you make crucial decisions on how to deliver the best education possible to your students under the following likely scenario—schools open on time this summer and fall as the coronavirus abates, only to close when the virus spreads again, then open their doors to students and educators again, and then close again. 

Of course, we are not virologists and there are other possible scenarios, but all of them seem to indicate that school doors will be closed for substantial time periods during the next school year. As Dr. Fauci said about the coronavirus on April 5, "there is a very good chance that it’ll assume a seasonal nature. We need to be prepared that since it will be unlikely to be completely eradicated from the planet that as we get into next season, we may see the beginning of a resurgence."

On April 6, Dr. Gabriel Leung made this same point:

After achieving a sustained decline … and bringing the number of daily new cases down to an acceptable baseline thanks to stringent physical distancing, a society can consider relaxing some measures (say, reopen schools). But it must be ready to reimpose drastic restrictions as soon as those critical figures start rising again—as they will, especially, paradoxically, in places that have fared not too badly so far. Then the restrictions must be lifted and reapplied, and lifted and reapplied, as long as it takes for the population at large to build up enough immunity to the virus.

Trying to see our way through the pandemic with this “suppress and lift” approach is much like driving a car on a long and tortuous road. One needs to hit the brakes and release them, again and again, to keep moving forward without crashing, all with an eye toward safely reaching one’s final destination.

In an April 7 letter to the White House, a National Academy of Sciences panel indicated there was a lot of uncertainty but that it does not appear that warm weather will cause the COVID-19 to dissipate. Of course, our information about this coronavirus will change as scientists learn more about how it spreads and learn more about the efficacy of various treatments.

Given that scientists are still learning more, there are several scenarios that are possible during the upcoming interim period of “semi-normalcy” that will likely last well into 2021. Regardless of which public health scenario is realized, they are likely to involve different dates of return to normalcy in different states.

History is also instructive: The Spanish Flu of 1918-19 came in three waves: The first wave in March 1918, the second—and worst—wave came in August 1918, and a third in March 1919.

Very recent history comes to us from some of the countries that did an excellent job containing this coronavirus: Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan each had outbreaks before the U.S., and “flattened the curve” at very low levels of rates of new infections—but the virus is already returning to them.

It appears that prudent risk management suggests, at a minimum, that schools need to be prepared for students toggling between receiving instruction at school and students receiving instruction at home—where this toggling may occur during the entire next school year.

Given the likelihood of students switching between learning at school and learning at home, independent schools must rethink how you deliver educational services to your students for the 2020-21 academic year—and you have mere months to do it. Further, given the large effect of the coronavirus on the macroeconomy, independent schools are going to be especially impacted.

The Coronavirus Macroeconomy and Independent Schools

While we do not know if the current economic recession—that surely just began—will be as bad as the Great Recession, it is worth remembering the impact the Great Recession had on the independent school sector.

The Great Recession began in December 2007. As shown below, nationwide independent school enrollment declined by about 640,000 students from 2007 to 2011—a decline of 10.9 percent. Enrollments recovered to 5.72 million by 2017.

Nevertheless, 2017 enrollment was still down by 3.2 percent when compared to 2007—a decline of almost 200,000 students.


Estimated Enrollment in American Independent Schools

Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

Any adverse impacts on enrollment due to the coronavirus recession that surely began in March 2020 are going to be in addition to adverse enrollment impacts due to demographic changes in America. As shown below, the number of births in the United States fell by 12 percent from 2007 to 2018—from 4.32 million in 2007 to 3.79 million in 2018.

Number of Births in the United States (in millions), 2007 to 2018 

Source: Statista.com


Without any action on your part, fewer births over the past 12 years and the poor coronavirus macroeconomy will likely lead to significant enrollment decreases in the independent school sector, for fall 2020 and beyond. Of course, some schools and some regions of the country will be impacted more than others.

Given the coronavirus economy we are in, and given the likelihood that students will toggle between learning at school and learning at home for at least large stretches of the upcoming school year, we recommend that you immediately begin conversations with your school community on the following six questions:

1. How can we—credibly—convince our school community that we will provide more safety against the coronavirus relative to public schools?
2. What will be our crisis management plan when one of our teachers, staff, or students tests positive for the coronavirus?
3. Enrollment drops are likely, so what do we do for families who will have just a one-year liquidity problem?
4. Do we need to implement a temporary reduction in compensation for the next academic year?
5. How can we make our work environment better for our teachers and staff when they and their children will be toggling between school-home-school-home?
6. How can we best educate our students next year, when they will be toggling between school-home-school-home? 

We are providing some questions and some guidance. But you and your individual school communities will have to decide on the answers for yourselves—given your specific situations and given health updates that will be forthcoming over the summer months.

Health Considerations for the 2020-21 Academic Year

How can we—credibly—convince our school community that we will provide more safety against the coronavirus relative to public schools?

We do not know to what extent instant testing or N95 masks will be available, or how effective homemade masks are. As doctors' offices are doing now, are schools prepared to take each person’s temperature and ask them health questions before deciding whether to let them into the school building each day?

Depending on a school’s population, and the possibility of a partial but incomplete lifting of distancing rules, school leaders may consider using a hybrid-style schedule for part of the year. Schools may create Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday cohorts, in which only half or so of the school population is on campus any particular day, making distancing easier. On the other days of the week, students would do work at home assigned by their teachers. If this is not practical for your families, can you use the gymnasium, auditorium, and other non-classroom space for class meetings, in order to keep students at safe distances from one another?

If we are required to quarantine next school year, perhaps encourage closed circles of 2-3 families to do so together (interacting only with each other, not necessarily in the same home). If 2-3 families were in the same quarantine circle, they could safely take turns supervising each other’s children when they are learning at home and not at school during the academic year.

You need a health safety plan, and you need to communicate it clearly to families and staff over the summer. Safety is clearly the paramount concern at this time. Independent schools are well versed in explaining your value proposition in terms of academics, faith and values, structure, and physical safety. For this upcoming academic year, you will have to clearly communicate your value proposition in terms of keeping students and staff safe from the virus when they are at school.

Until a vaccine is developed and widely used and/or herd immunity is present, it is likely the case that keeping students and staff healthy is your first concern.

What will be our crisis management plan when one of our teachers, staff, or students tests positive for the coronavirus?

First, alert the relevant public health authorities. Second, obey the law. Third, be transparent—immediately—with your families and staff. We are not experts in this area by any measure, but you need a crisis management plan.

Immediate Financial Considerations for Independent Schools

Enrollment drops are likely, so what do we do for families who will have just a one-year liquidity problem?

You may need to reach out to each of your families—one on one—to ascertain their financial situation for 2020-21. You would hate to lose an entire family because of a one-year liquidity problem. You can counsel them as to possibilities for funding their children’s education, such as tapping into home equity and/or taking money out of retirement accounts (the latter can be done penalty-free in some cases under the recently passed CARES Act). Mention any scholarship aid or targeted tuition reductions, if you are willing and able to provide them. 

When your governor and state legislature are providing emergency funds to local governments, including public school districts, consider asking them to appropriate money for emergency scholarship programs for 2020-21 (or expand existing programs). If students leave your schools and enroll in the public sector, that imposes a significant cost on state taxpayers, as they must appropriate new per student “formula” money to accommodate the increase in public school enrollments. State governments could appropriate emergency funding for 2020-21 for modest private school scholarships, $3,000-$7,000 per student. These scholarship amounts are below or significantly below per student state “formula” funding amounts for public schools in most states. Again, if students leave your institutions for public schools, that places a fiscal burden on the state.

Do we need to implement a temporary reduction in compensation for the next academic year?

If (a) enrollment is down and (b) net tuition revenue per student is down due to targeted tuition reductions to families in need, then this double-whammy to your revenues may necessitate spending reductions. Perhaps your school has significant reserves or a significant endowment so you can weather the (hopefully only a one-year) storm. If not, you have at least two options. 

You could make a clarion call to your families, alumni, and benefactors asking them that if they are maintaining, or somehow increasing, their income during the coronavirus economy to consider making additional donations—above their normal level of giving—to help families in need attend your schools next year. Some middle-income families who maintain their incomes may be receiving federal stimulus funding. Ask families in those situations to consider donating those funds to help provide temporary scholarships to families in need. Families who maintain their incomes will spend less on eating out, vacations, and fuel—because of the virus. 

Another option is to implement cuts in compensation including a suspension of any employer match on retirement accounts or temporary pay reductions.

Educational Considerations for the 2020-21 Academic Year

How can we make our work environment better for our teachers and staff when they and their children will be toggling between school-home-school-home?

Maintaining a coherent—but flexible—schedule for students, parents, and teachers is important. Imposing singular demands on the specific technology platforms teachers use will be difficult, as individual teachers have a variety of comfort levels with this level of technology and online instruction, especially on short notice. Some schools are currently requiring the use of a particular platform while others vary based on subject area or preference. Teachers should be required to have some kind of live check-ins with students online. At least weekly is best; daily check-ins may become onerous for families. Maintaining some kind of meeting schedule is important; some teachers may want to meet online more than others, but the times allotted for these class sessions should be clear and predictable for students and parents to avoid conflicts. 

Some hybrid home schools, which only meet 2-3 days per week under normal circumstances, have mostly kept their normal work routines going in the online environment. Tuesdays and Thursdays, for example, might be considered “class days,” while the rest of the days are considered “home days” in which students complete work (assigned by their teachers) at their own pace. This also gives teachers dedicated, predictable time to do their grading and preparing, and to conduct their family lives—especially when they may have their own children with them at home. This “hybrid” model may be best for conventional independent schools as well. 

How can we best educate our students next year when they will be toggling between school-home-school-home?

Smaller institutions, such as independent schools, tend to be much more nimble than large institutions when crises such as sudden shutdowns occur. We have seen multiple breakdowns in our largest-scale institutions, and a lot of support for the most local ones. This is a potential advantage for many kinds of independent schools. Hybrid home schools are perhaps a useful group to learn from in terms of academics as well. They have experience in shifting instruction from school to home on an ongoing basis. Conventional schools should look to hybrid home schools in their community to see how they handle this toggling of the learning process between school and home.

If conventional school leaders ask hybrid home school leaders and teachers, they will learn that when significantly more learning occurs at home:

• Students will have to read more books or have more books read to them, as appropriate. The latter during virtual synchronous sessions with their teachers and classmates or with their parents.
• Students will have to do more research projects, as appropriate given student ages and expertise, and will spend more time on virtual creative activities like preparing and delivering presentations, creating artwork and music, creating videos, etc.
• Students will do more writing on their own, and rewriting of their marked-up work on their own, as appropriate.
• Students will be asked to discuss concepts with their family members as part of their lessons.
• To get a fuller educational experience, students cannot be glued to a screen all day doing lessons, and so those lessons will incorporate more time with outdoors, hands-on, or interpersonal activities. 

More suggestions from hybrid home school practices are discussed here and in Little Platoons: Defining Hybrid Home Schools in America, forthcoming this spring from Lexington Press. It is possible that work done at home, guided by a school support system, can produce strong academic results. When public school systems have experimented with this concept in the past, they sometimes place a lot of value on students having logged-in seat time for accountability purposes. This typically isn’t necessary. New research shows graduates of hybrid homeschools to be well-prepared for college, based on both their confidence and their college GPAs, compared to similar peers. Parents can support well-structured, content-rich lessons, especially if more of the content is simply reading and discussing ideas, and if they have the support of a school.

Of course, independent schools have their students do each of the above activities as a matter of course. But in this era of the coronavirus, they may have to do more of these activities than usual, because students may be spending significantly more time at home. Students doing more learning activities that are amenable to being completed at home—more reading, more writing, more rewriting, more research, more public speaking, more creative activity, and taking low-stakes standardized tests on-line (like CogAt or Iowa)—are certainly not bad things. We are advocating that independent schools make the most of the situation caused by quarantines that are likely to come next school year.

As soon as possible, you should convene your educators into small appropriate groups by grade and subject to rethink your educational offerings in order to best serve students who will spend substantial time during the 2020-21 academic year learning from home. The next school year will be here soon.

You will need to have a solid education plan that convinces your families that you will be providing value to their students—if they will be spending a significant fraction of the 2020-21 academic year learning at home. Of course, you should not publicize this plan until the appropriate time, as health experts learn more about this coronavirus.

Concluding Remarks

We wish we had better news for you, but the coronavirus is with us—until we get wide distribution of a vaccine and/or herd immunity perhaps 16 months or so from now. For prudent risk management, it is best if independent schools create health, fiscal, and educational plans for the 2020-21 academic year now—to offset likely negative effects of the coronavirus on your schools.

Thank you for your great service to your students, your communities, and our nation.


Benjamin Scafidi (Ph.D. in economics, University of Virginia) is a professor of economics and director of the Education Economics Center in the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University. Eric Wearne (Ph.D. in educational studies, Emory University) is a visiting associate professor of education statistics in the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University. He has done some of the first academic research on hybrid home schools. Both have extensive experience working with independent school leaders in various capacities. The views expressed are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Kennesaw State University, the Coles College of Business, or the Education Economics Center.   

Most say EPIC's safety, academic quality better than their prior school

"An independent survey conducted by TPMA of Indianapolis for the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board found parents come to EPIC because of negative experiences in their prior schools and the unique opportunities online education provides," EPIC superintendent Bart Banfield writes today. The study found that nearly 40% of respondents came to EPIC because of bullying. Moreover,

Approximately 94% of TPMA’s survey respondents believe EPIC provides a safe educational environment, and nearly 60% say EPIC’s academic quality is “significantly better” than their prior school. Fewer than 1% said EPIC’s academic quality is “significantly worse.” About 80% of parents said they intend to keep their children in EPIC through graduation.

Academic results show why families voting with their feet

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

Government officials often refer to government spending as an “investment” to suggest a business approach is being applied to public policy. But if spending equals investment, then Oklahomans must ask, “What are the results?”

When it comes to our school system, results are now worse than they were before the “investment” of the past two years.

On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the nation’s report card, Oklahoma student scores declined in fourth and eighth-grade reading, were stagnant in fourth-grade math, and improved slightly in eight grade math (by a margin considered statistically insignificant). Oklahoma students remain below the national average in all NAEP subjects.

On the ACT exam, Oklahoma students’ scores declined in every subject this year. In fact, 46 percent of students failed to meet ACT college-readiness benchmarks in any of the subjects tested.

When Oklahoma state test results were released months ago, they showed academic achievement was lower in 2019 than in 2017. In every subject and grade tested, a majority performed below grade level.

Those declining results have occurred even though lawmakers increased K-12 school appropriations by 20 percent over the last two sessions.

Some will object it’s unrealistic to expect a dramatic turnaround in just over a year. I don’t disagree. But is it unrealistic to think academic results should at least stop declining after such huge spending increases?

If “investment” alone is failing to stem the bleeding, let alone generate improvement, then more is needed. Policy changes must also be adopted. And parents in one of the state’s worst school systems have highlighted one solution.

Tulsa Public Schools faces a $20 million shortfall. The district’s leadership blames its financial problems on state funding cuts. But, as noted, the state has not been tightfisted over the last two years. Instead, Tulsa’s true problem is that students are leaving the district in droves and state funding is following them out the exits.

Where are those students going? According to the Tulsa World, 3,700 students left TPS for Epic Charter Schools, an online provider, from summer 2013 to June 2019, while another 3,300 students left for brick-and-mortar charter schools.

Parents are taking stock of the results of state “investment” in districts like Tulsa, and are responding by voting with their feet and moving children to schools that produce better outcomes. The greatest challenge for those families is not a lack of state “investment” in schools; it’s a limited array of school choices when their geographically assigned school fails to deliver results.

Combining school choice with greater education funding is policymakers’ best path to improving Oklahoma’s education system and student outcomes. Otherwise, next year may end the same as this year—with policymakers baffled that schools not only failed to improve after tax-and-spending increases, but actually got worse.

Oklahoma teen turns to online school after being bullied

KOCO has the story.

Critic of virtual schools has degree from online university

An Oklahoma lawmaker who has been critical of virtual charter schools holds a doctorate from a for-profit online university that was subsequently closed amid claims it was a diploma mill. 

(For what it's worth, the late North Korean dictator Kim il-Sung holds an honorary degree from the same university.)

News flash: Competition works

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

Here’s a statement few people will dispute: Competition works. Yet when it comes to education, some policymakers and most public school employees act as though the way to improve the quality of service to families and their children is to limit their taxpayer-funded choices to just one local option.

Proof to the contrary can be seen in the rash of schools now offering 100-percent online education.

For several years now, a handful of online charter schools have offered students an online education. The biggest and most well-known of those providers has been Epic Charter Schools.

Parents have been choosing online learning even though the per-pupil spending at online charter schools is significantly less than the per-pupil spending at a traditional brick-and-mortar public school.

The number of people pursuing K-12 learning online in Oklahoma is astounding. Epic alone reports roughly 24,000 students statewide this year. Those families have chosen online learning for many different reasons, but some of the most commonly cited are the greater range of course offerings, the special needs of children, and bullying problems at local schools.

Chances are you know a family with children who have benefited from online schooling. Because state funding follows students, the exodus to online charter schools has had financial consequences for traditional districts. Now those schools have been forced to step up their game.

At Sapulpa, the local school is offering a virtual academy that provides students “full or partial online delivery of instruction with an element of student control over the time, place, path, and/or pace of learning.”

Sound familiar?

Noble Public Schools’ virtual academy provides a 100-percent online education but still lets online students participate in extracurricular activities such as sports, band, and chorus.

Norman Public Schools now offers students “the flexibility to complete all of their coursework outside the traditional school building” through online learning.

Union Public Schools has launched Union Virtual for students in grades 6-12. Sand Springs offers online learning. Broken Arrow offers a full-time online program. So does Lawton. So does Ponca City. And so do others. The list goes on and on.

This is a huge change occurring across Oklahoma to the benefit of students and their families. And the rapid pace of this change is being driven by competition from just a handful of online charter schools.

Policymakers should not simply celebrate this success, but build on it by expanding school-choice opportunities. If the modest level of competition produced by a small group of online providers can create this kind of change, imagine what would happen if Oklahoma had a truly robust education market competing for all students. Then the boom in online learning would be only a hint of better things to come.

Who you gonna call?

[Guest post by Jonathan Small]

When the movie “Ghostbusters” premiered in the 1980s, it was just a comedy. But if it’s remade (again) in 2019, the setting may be in Oklahoma’s public school system. That’s because there’s reason to think many districts are receiving funding for “ghost” students who do not attend those schools.

This issue gained attention when it was recently alleged an online charter school has received funding for “ghost” students, but that problem extends statewide.

Here’s why: Oklahoma law distributes state aid based on several factors, and one factor is a district’s average daily membership (ADM). State law allows districts to use the highest weighted ADM of the two preceding school years. As a result, if a district has 400 students one year, 380 the next, and 360 the following year, that district may be funded as though it still has 400 students when it has just 360.

It’s even possible for a student to be counted in multiple districts at the same time if a child moves from a district with declining enrollment to one with surging enrollment.

Just because this is currently legal doesn’t make it a good idea. Given the financial challenges constantly highlighted at schools, why would we expend money paying districts to educate children who are not at those schools?

By the way, “ghost” funding doesn’t occur just at one type of school. While some rural districts may benefit, so can Oklahoma’s largest districts—Oklahoma City and Tulsa—which have also experienced declining enrollment. In the urban centers, families have had good reason to move out, so why would state lawmakers leave in place a system that financially rewards districts like Oklahoma City for poor performance that drives students away?

Pinning down the number of “ghost” students being double-counted or still reflected in district ADMs after moving out of state is no easy task, but there are some hints. According to the Oklahoma Department of Education, the high-year ADM for all schools combined in the 2019 state budget year was 711,560. That compares to a reported total enrollment of 698,586 as of the most recent count, which occurred on Oct. 1, 2018.

That’s a difference of almost 13,000 students. Now, not all those 13,000 are “ghost” students. But if even half of them are, that would easily translate into tens of millions of dollars that have been misallocated for educating nonexistent students.

States like Indiana and Arizona have stopped using backward-looking student counts that result in ghost-student funding and instead rely on current-year headcounts. There’s no reason Oklahoma can’t do the same.

Conservatives and liberals disagree on education policy and spending priorities, but surely we can all agree that paying to “educate imaginary students” should not even be on the list.

UPDATES:

• "We're allocating close to 200 million of your tax dollars to students who don't exist," says Gov. Kevin Stitt. "This is unacceptable." Adds state Rep. Kyle Hilbert: "Every year our schools receive less money per student because our formula sends out money for ghost students, students that do not actually exist. We must end this practice of watering down school finances by (instead) funding schools based on the number of students they actually have in their classrooms."
• Enrollment figures released in January 2021 show that some districts are being funded for hundreds or even thousands of nonexistent students. In all, "districts may receive at least $195 million combined for 55,236 'ghost' students who do not attend classes in the district but are nonetheless included in enrollment counts used to determine state funding for each district." In short, this farce is now too big to ignore.
• Oklahoma voters are in a ghostbusting mood, according to a survey of 500 registered Oklahoma voters conducted Sept. 20-24, 2020, by CHS & Associates (margin of error: +/- 4.3%). "This reform is really a no-brainer for most voters," says pollster PatMcFerron, "with three-quarters being supportive. Among Republicans, support expands even more. Even among registered Democrats, however, there is a 42-point advantage for proponents." Specifically, respondents were asked: “As you may know, Oklahoma’s school districts currently receive their funding based on the highest number of students they have served during any of the past three school years. This means that districts with shrinking enrollment are receiving funds for students they are not serving and that those with growing populations are getting less per student than they would otherwise. Would you favor or oppose legislation that funded schools based on the number of students they are serving during that particular school year?"
• Strongly Favor .......... 51%
• Somewhat Favor .......... 24%
• Somewhat Oppose .......... 7%
• Strongly Oppose .......... 12%
• Undecided .......... 6%
• State Rep. Kyle Hilbert (R-Bristow) is sounding the alarm that the number of double-counted students is about to increase dramatically.
• Oklahoma school districts are getting paid for “ghost students,” says the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, “and they will fight, fight to the death, to maintain those.”

Epic mom: 'The anxiety is gone, the stress is gone, the meltdowns are gone'

Bethany Cowan's 12-year-old son, Jacob, attends Epic Charter School. She told the News on 6:

“There was a lot of anxiety, every day we had tears getting ready for school. ... Jacob needed something different. ... I really, really am happy with who he is becoming as a person at Epic. The anxiety is gone, the stress is gone, the meltdowns are gone."

Bullied Oklahoma student finds relief in online charter

"When he was in seventh grade, my son was the victim of extreme bullying," Christie Britton of Amber writes today in The Oklahoman.

Now that he is enrolled in an online school, I know he will not encounter such a hostile classroom again. My son was just trying to make friends, yet in a place where he was supposed to be safe, his peers made him feel worthless and alone. Fortunately, this all changed when I enrolled him in Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy. Thanks to online school, he is in a safe and welcoming environment. In just the two years he has been with OVCA he is excelling in his studies and has taken a greater interest in his classes, such as math and science, which he now finds exciting. I am so thankful for everything the online classroom has done for my son. Without it, he would not have returned to being the fun-loving young man he is today.

School safety concerns help fuel Oklahoma homeschool, virtual school growth

"Proponents of educational options in Oklahoma say that many parents who choose to withdraw their children from traditional public schools cite safety concerns as high on the list of reasons," Mike Brake reports.

Virtual classroom just the ticket for Norman student

Excellent story by Joy Hampton in The Norman Transcript.

Online library offers free lessons, affordable textbooks and courses on a wide range of subjects

In a news release today, TEL Library, a nonprofit organization whose vision is to eliminate cost as a barrier to a quality education, announced the availability of its public, online curriculum library.

TEL Library has built a scalable, sustainable library of free lessons and affordable textbooks and courses that cover subjects ranging from history, science, and math, to literature and writing. Library courses are academically rigorous, yet understandable, and relevant to a broad spectrum of learners from advanced high school, through college, to adult learners. The Library’s lessons are available for free through its reference library and in low-cost textbooks and courses.

TEL Library textbooks and courses are ideal for colleges and high schools seeking affordable textbooks and low-cost white-label curriculum solutions. Homeschool students and other independent learners will also benefit from the Library’s affordable, self-paced courses. Experienced learning designers, information scientists, and domain experts are creating Library lessons, courses, and textbooks. New lessons are constantly in development and are regularly added to the library.

The launch of TEL Library represents the realization of the founders’ vision. “Our mission is to provide affordable, high-quality learning options to everyone,” says Vance Fried, TEL Library president. “Our products are good enough for the richest, yet cheap enough for the poorest.”

Affordable Learning  

Affordable learning options are a means to a very important end. “Education is always important,” states Dr. William English, Assistant Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. “It’s the one thing that really makes a difference to a nation’s capacity to innovate, its productivity, and our citizens’ ability to understand and engage with one another and to live productive lives. However, we’ve seen an enormous rise in the cost of education over the last three decades. Higher education institutions are under a lot of pressure to figure out a better model going forward. They are asking themselves—can we make education more affordable and accessible? TEL Library saw that we should be able to bring down some of these costs through technology innovation. If you can provide high-quality, scalable content, you can provide an education for a much lower marginal cost than some of the existing frameworks. The kind of innovations that TEL Library has come up with are going to be very useful as educational institutions reorganize, figure out how to use the internet effectively, and incorporate technology in ways that will reduce the cost of delivery and content.”

Scalable, Sustainable Model 

A key educational technology innovation pioneered by TEL Library is the use of Stackable Lessons™, reusable content blocks that can be combined with other lessons, regardless of subject and order, without losing coherence or learning efficacy. It is the use of Stackable Lessons™ that enables the TEL Library model of delivering affordable content that can easily scale in size and scope. “TEL Library’s unique model for lesson design and reuse allows us to address the needs of many different groups with a single content library,” says Rob Reynolds, TEL Library executive director and co-founder of TEL Library. “Better yet, we can address those needs in a scalable and sustainable manner.”

The TEL Library content development and delivery model is unique and innovative. “What I’ve really noticed is there’s a big difference in how TEL Library has approached this innovation as opposed to other organizations,” continues English. “Ed-tech has traditionally been led by business and tech people. They understand at a high level that there’s an opportunity, to deliver all sorts of content better online. They work on the platforms and business models long before they think about the user, and they end up having to strong-arm academics who will take the time to sit down and develop content. What TEL Library did is at the very beginning they reached out to experts in their fields—people who have been educators for a while, are passionate, and really know what they’re talking about, and got them excited about sharing their expertise. So instead of wrangling people, trying to get them to provide content on the platform, TEL Library was able to assemble a really high-quality academic team to put together content that then everything else sort of fits around.”

Accessible Learning 

As an online resource, TEL Library lessons and textbooks are accessible to anyone, anywhere. “People have changed the way they learn and socialize,” says Dr. Ed Harris, administrator of the Brock International Prize in Education, and Professor and Williams Chair of Educational Leadership at Oklahoma State University. “If you want to learn about a new topic or skill, you don't have to go to a brick and mortar building to learn about it. You can find just about anything you could possibly want to know and learn through the internet. It's really changing the whole idea of place, space and time, and how people exist within those constructs. Schools have to keep up. Technology is just a part of our life. An important trend is adapting the learning situation to that. So, the idea of ‘we will build it and they will come’ is just not working now. So, we need alternatives, and TEL Library is one alternative.”

Pricing and Availability 

The TEL Library opens with hundreds of lessons on a diverse set of topics, available for free in the searchable reference collection. In the coming months, the Library will begin offering textbooks for $9.99 and self-paced courses for under $100.

By the fall of 2019, the library will contain thousands of lessons on topics such as economics, literature, composition, history, science, math, marketing, philosophy, religion, computer technology, communication, art history, and more.

To explore the available lessons and courses, and to experience a free TEL Library lesson, visit www.tellibrary.org.

Why do Oklahoma families choose virtual charter schools?

The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board (OSVCSB) recently commissioned a study on "why families choose to enroll in virtual charter schools, as well as the benefits and challenges associated with virtual charter school attendance." Read the whole thing here. One nugget:

Parents and guardians are drawn to virtual charter schools due partly to negative experiences in prior educational settings and partly to the unique opportunities available via virtual education. Related to negative experiences, the top selections by survey respondents included “Bullying or threats from classmates at other schools” (41% of respondents).

Oklahoma charter school teacher earned $106K last year

EPIC Charter Schools' highest-paid teacher made $106,324 in 2016-17, the Tulsa World reports.

Bullying most common reason students choose virtual schools

"Forty-one percent of students who attend a virtual charter school in Oklahoma left their previous school because they were victims of bullying," Ben Felder reports in The Oklahoman.

Some Oklahoma districts are embracing Personalized Learning

Sarah Julian, the communications director for the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, has a very interesting and encouraging article over at NonDoc this week. Headlined "Personalized Learning: Budget cuts spur new teaching model," the piece discusses personalized learning (PL), a new teaching model being adopted by many public school districts in Oklahoma and throughout the nation. She writes:

PL has gained traction nationwide not only for its ability to expand course options and engage students with a flexible learning schedule but also for the impressive student outcomes it produces. Gone is the "sage on the stage" lecture routine. Instead, PL provides students with a mix of digital and in-person instruction, which empowers teachers to serve as mentors and facilitators. Students are in the driver’s seat, where they have more responsibility and accountability for their own learning.

Staff with the Oklahoma Public School Resource Center (OPSRC) began working with school districts across the state in late 2015 to implement Oklahoma’s version of personalized learning: Momentum Schools. Momentum gives students the choice of how, when and where they attend school. For example, a school designates certain hours each day when the building is open. As long as students get their state-mandated 6.5 hours of seat time in each day, they can choose when to be physically present.

Further, instead of traditional group class time, students schedule meetings with individual teachers to assess schoolwork. Students work at their own pace to ensure they master the content. As a result, parents, teachers and, most importantly, students are excited about and engaged in their education, and their progress proves it. ...

With PL, though, students have a more extensive catalog of online courses from which to choose. Further, they can control the speed at which they learn the content. This means that many PL students are able to take far more classes than a traditional school setting would allow. And those students who need more time? They can work slower without the worry of falling behind or facing criticism from peers. In all, PL provides the opportunity for a richer educational experience for all students.

My only quibble has to do with the article's budgetary references, starting with the breathless lede: "Never in our state’s history have public schools been in such a dire financial crisis." That's not true, as economist Byron Schlomach has shown:

We're also told that schools have "no money in their coffers" and are "in the throes of extreme financial hardships." In truth, Oklahoma's education spending—in total and per-student—is higher than it was a decade ago, even when adjusted for inflation. In Chickasha, the one district mentioned in the article, total spending is down but per-pupil spending is up.

But those objections aside, I strongly recommend the piece and encourage you to read the whole thing here. If a teaching model can improve student learning, cut down on discipline problems, and deliver Mandarin Chinese and AP physics to kids from Boise City to Idabel, what's not to love?