At the end of March we wrote a story about rumors filtering out of the Tulsa Public School system claiming that Epic Charter Schools were once again the target of an investigation. The rumor stated that investigators from the federal Department of Education had been seen questioning administration and the issue was concerning special needs kids education.
Well, it turns out it was the Tulsa Public School system being investigated, not Epic, and it was the State Department of Education finding that the school had failed its most vulnerable students.
Lacking any shred of shame the administration and teacher unions spread the gossip that Epic was under investigation to cover up the fact that their own school was under investigation. That is a new low.
The Oklahoma State Department of Education is requiring that Tulsa Public Schools (TPS) make a review of all 7000 special ed students after parental complaints showed that the basic requirements were not being met for disabled students. Federal law dictates that educators and parents are to develop a written plan for each special ed student, the IEP, Individualized Education Program. The IEP is to include annual goals based upon the students capabilities and needs. What was found by state investigators was that generic IEPs were used with some very basic and useless goals. And the progress reports were basically canned responses, putting the TPS in noncompliance with federal law.
So now the State has to step in and monitor the corrective actions and results. The district has to re train special ed staff and create individualized goals for each student by August 30th.
All of this started with a single complaint made by the parents of once child. TPS was embarrassed by the investigation and rather than admit they have a problem they use the opportunity to deflect attention and lay blame on Epic Charter Schools. One can make an argument on the practicality and effectiveness of spending massive tax dollars educating a child that might not be any better off after their education is complete. The old quandary of do you save one child by spending $10,000 on a risky surgery or do you spend that $10,000 on vaccines or clean drinking water and save a thousand kids? But like it or not we have to follow federal law until it is changed.
If there is any indications of any investigations into Epic Charter Schools we are not privy to them. We do have pending Open Records requests into both TPS and the Oklahoma Department of Education. What we are sure of is that Charter Schools are operating on a third of the tax money that the bloated teacher union ran schools are using and the Charter Schools are putting out better students. Which is why Epic and the other Charter Schools are under attack.
