OCPA column: Paying for "ghost" students

Paying for “ghost” students By Jonathan Small Status-quo defenders insist waste, fraud and mismanagement in state government is overhyped. Then how do they explain Oklahoma schools being paid to educate more than 55,000 “ghost students”? Ghost-student funding has been in place for years, but COVID-19 has put it on steroids. Oklahoma law distributes state funding based on several factors, one of which is “the highest weighted average daily membership for the school district of the two (2) preceding school years. Put in plain English, that means a school can be paid for students who attended two years ago but are no longer there. Thus, even amidst a significant enrollment decline, districts receive huge sums for “teaching” nonexistent “ghost” students. This funding farce is now too big to ignore. Due to COVID-19 and several districts’ refusal to provide full-time, in-person instruction, there has been a mass exodus to alternatives, including credible online providers such as Epic, other districts, private schools, and homeschooling. Newly released enrollment figures show Oklahoma schools can now claim more than 55,000 ghost students this year via use of old enrollment numbers. If ghost students were confined to a single school district, it would be larger than any brick-and-mortar district in Oklahoma—by far. Read more » by Jamison Faught - January 16, 2021 at 08:29AM

OCPA column: Paying for "ghost" students Click the title to read the entire article at Muskogee Politico