Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy - EdTribune OK - Oklahoma Education Data

Traditional Schools Lost 33,300 Students. The State Totals Hid It.

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Oklahoma's statewide enrollment has barely moved in a decade. At 686,718 students in 2025-26, the total sits just 5,952 below its 2015-16 level, a decline of 0.9%. By national standards, that number looks like stability.

It is not. The state total blends two school systems moving in opposite directions. Traditional public schools enrolled 682,769 students in 2015-16. This year they enrolled 649,469, a loss of 33,300 students, or 4.9%. Virtual charter schools, led by Epic Charter Schools, grew from 9,901 to 37,249 over the same period, absorbing enough students to make the combined number look almost flat.

The 27,348-student gap between the headline and reality is a structural shift that Oklahoma's aggregate enrollment data, the number that appears in state reports and national databases, was never designed to show. (Oklahoma does not flag charter or virtual schools in its enrollment files. The virtual sector here includes seven entities identified by name: Epic, Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy, Oklahoma Connections Academy, Insight School, eSCHOOL, Dove Virtual Academy, and Virtual Preparatory Academy. Brick-and-mortar charter schools remain in the traditional count.)

A decade of quiet erosion

Traditional districts were already losing students before COVID-19. Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, they shed 11,613 students at a pace of roughly 2,000 to 5,000 per year. The losses were steady enough to avoid headlines, spread across hundreds of small and mid-sized districts where a few dozen departures each year registered as background noise.

The pandemic changed the scale. In the single year from 2019-20 to 2020-21, traditional schools lost 44,056 students. Virtual charter enrollment doubled from 32,494 to 67,013. The state total fell by only 9,537, because the vast majority of the traditional loss transferred to virtual seats, not out of the public system entirely.

What happened next was partial, then reversed. Traditional enrollment rebounded by 39,537 students between 2020-21 and 2022-23, recovering roughly 90% of its COVID-year loss. But that recovery stalled. Since 2022-23, traditional schools have lost another 17,168 students. The 2025-26 single-year drop of 12,058 is the largest non-pandemic loss in the dataset, and it brought traditional enrollment to its lowest non-pandemic level in the 11-year series.

Epic's shadow over the data

The virtual sector's story is inseparable from one entity. Epic Charter Schools^↗ enrolled 6,037 students in 2015-16. By 2020-21, that number was 59,445, a tenfold increase that made Epic the largest public school enrollment entity in the state. Its two predecessor entities, Epic One on One and Epic Blended Learning, merged into a single district reporting unit in 2022-23 at 28,478 students, roughly half the peak.

Epic's co-founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, face felony charges of racketeering, embezzlement, and obtaining money by false pretenses. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation inquiry and State Auditor audit allege the co-founders funneled public funds through a Student Learning Fund they controlled. Preliminary hearings concluded in late February 2026 after roughly 18 hours of testimony; a judge will decide in April whether the case proceeds to trial.

"We remain fully focused on presenting the facts and evidence in this case. We are committed to ensuring that no one sidetracks justice or evades accountability." — Attorney General Gentner Drummond, Nov. 2025

Epic's enrollment has stabilized at 29,201 in 2025-26, still nearly five times its 2015-16 size. The broader virtual sector, including Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ (3,966 students), Oklahoma Connections Academy^↗ (1,508), Insight School of Oklahoma^↗ (1,455), and four smaller entities, totals 37,249 students, or 5.4% of statewide enrollment.

In 2015-16, virtual schools held 1.4% of state enrollment. That share spiked to 9.7% during the pandemic year, settled back, and has crept upward to 5.4%. The sector's growth has slowed, but it has not reversed: virtual enrollment in 2025-26 is the highest since the post-pandemic correction.

Two cities, two-thirds of the loss

Oklahoma City^↗ and Tulsa^↗ account for 22,890 of the 33,300 traditional students lost since 2015-16, or 68.7% of the total. Oklahoma City alone lost 14,473 students, a 31.8% decline that cost it the title of largest district in the state. Tulsa surpassed Oklahoma City in 2021-22 enrollment counts, the first time since 2013 it held that position. But Tulsa's lead is less a sign of strength than of slower decline: Tulsa itself lost 8,417 students, or 20.6%, over the same period.

Behind them, Midwest City-Del City^↗ (-2,908), Lawton^↗ (-1,712), and Union^↗ (-1,566) round out the top five. Together, these five districts lost 29,076 students, 87.3% of the traditional total.

Of 506 traditional districts with data in both years, 372 lost enrollment. The 132 that grew added a combined 22,987 students, nowhere near enough to offset the 72,523 lost by declining districts. The math is lopsided: for every student gained somewhere, three were lost somewhere else.

The suburban ring gained. It was not enough.

The districts growing fastest sit in the suburban rings around Oklahoma City: Mustang^↗ (+2,630, up 24.4%), Deer Creek^↗ (+2,537, up 45.1%), Bixby^↗ (+2,486, up 41.1%), and Piedmont^↗ (+1,848, up 50.6%). Edmond^↗ and Yukon^↗ added roughly 1,000 each.

The pattern is familiar in every state with a large urban core. Families moving to newer housing stock on the metro fringe take per-pupil funding with them. The suburban gains are real, but they represent redistribution, not growth. The entire ring of gainers absorbed about 11,500 students. Oklahoma City alone lost more than that.

What is driving the acceleration

The most recent year is what distinguishes this story from a slow-burn trend. Traditional schools lost 12,058 students between 2024-25 and 2025-26, more than triple the prior year's loss of 3,779 and the worst non-pandemic year in the series.

Declining birth rates are the most likely structural driver. Oklahoma Watch reported in January 2026 that falling birth rates are the primary factor behind the enrollment drop, with steeper losses concentrated in pre-K through third grade, the grades where smaller birth cohorts first appear in enrollment data.

A second contributing factor is the state's expanding school choice landscape. Oklahoma's Parental Choice Tax Credit, which provides $5,000 to $7,500 per child for private school tuition, approved 37,428 children for the 2025-26 school year, with 3,278 identified as switching from public to private schools for the first time. The program has nearly exhausted its $250 million cap. Whether the tax credit is drawing students who would have left anyway or accelerating departures is not yet clear from enrollment data alone. The 3,278 confirmed switchers represent a fraction of the 12,058 traditional-sector loss, but the program is in its second year and the cap may increase.

A third factor is the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds. Districts that used ESSER dollars to retain staff or add programs now face the same enrollment-driven budget pressure without the cushion.

"Operating a school building has fixed costs whether filled with 200 or 400 students, but fewer students means fewer dollars." — Oklahoma Watch, January 2026

The data cannot distinguish how much of the 2025-26 cliff is birth-rate driven, how much reflects private school transfers, and how much is families leaving the state. Oklahoma does not publish a public-to-private transfer dataset, and the Parental Choice Tax Credit reports identify only a subset of families who applied for the credit, not all private school enrollment.

What comes next

Virtual charters are growing modestly. Traditional schools are accelerating downward. The state total blends them together and produces a number that looks almost stable. That blending has been hiding a 33,300-student loss for a decade.

The mismatch matters most at budget time. A superintendent in a traditional district does not compete against the state average. She competes against the per-pupil formula, which sends dollars wherever students sit, and against the fixed cost of a building that was designed for 600 students and now holds 450. The headline enrollment number told her the state was roughly stable. Her empty classrooms told her something different. The classrooms were right.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Three in Four Oklahoma Districts Still Below Pre-COVID Enrollment

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Oklahoma's public school enrollment returned above pre-pandemic levels in 2022. It stayed there for three years. Then, in 2025-26, the bottom fell out: 10,640 students vanished in a single year, the largest one-year drop in at least a decade and bigger than the COVID year itself. The state now sits at 686,718 students, an all-time low in the data going back to 2016 and 11,868 students below where it stood before the pandemic.

The recovery was a mirage. Of 515 Oklahoma districts with data in both 2018-19 and 2025-26, only 136 (26.4%) have more students now than they did before COVID-19. The other 379 districts never got back to where they started, or got there briefly and lost it again.

A bounce, not a recovery

The statewide trajectory tells the story in three acts. Oklahoma peaked at 703,650 students in 2019-20, lost 9,537 in the COVID year, then clawed back 7,145 over the next two years to reach 701,258 by 2022-23. That number was 2,672 above the pre-COVID baseline. It looked like a recovery.

It was not. Enrollment slipped by 2,156 in 2023-24, another 1,744 in 2024-25, then cratered by 10,640 in 2025-26. The three-year slide of 14,540 students is more than the COVID drop and the years of growth before it combined. Oklahoma did not recover from the pandemic; it took a breather before a steeper fall.

Four trajectories, one dominant pattern

Tracking each district's enrollment in 2018-19, 2022-23, and 2025-26 reveals four distinct paths. The largest group, 283 districts (55%), never recovered at all: they were below 2019 levels in 2023 and still below in 2026. Another 96 districts (19%) appeared to recover by 2023 but then relapsed below their pre-COVID baseline by 2026. Edmond^↗, the state's third-largest district, fits this pattern: it grew from 25,281 to 26,190 between 2019 and 2023, then fell to 24,993.

Only 108 districts (21%) sustained their recovery through 2026. A final 28 districts (5%) were late recoverers, below 2019 levels in 2023 but above them by 2026.

The recovery-then-relapse group deserves particular attention. These 96 districts represent false positives in every statewide recovery narrative between 2022 and 2024. Their enrollment gains were real but temporary, suggesting that whatever drove the post-COVID return to school was a one-time event, not a trend reversal.

Two cities account for a third of the damage

The losses are heavily concentrated. Oklahoma City^↗ and Tulsa^↗, the state's two largest traditional districts, have lost a combined 19,640 students since 2019, a figure that accounts for 34.9% of all district-level losses statewide.

Oklahoma City's decline is especially severe: from 44,138 students in 2018-19 to 31,104 in 2025-26, a 29.5% contraction. That is not a COVID effect. OKC was already losing students before the pandemic (down to 42,513 by 2019-20) and never saw even a partial rebound. Its trajectory is a straight line down for a full decade.

Tulsa has followed a parallel path, falling from 39,056 to 32,450 (16.9%). Together, the two urban anchors have shed more students than 490 of the state's other districts lost or gained combined.

The districts that did grow since 2019 are concentrated in OKC's outer suburbs: Bixby^↗ (+1,871), Mustang^↗ (+1,526), Deer Creek^↗ (+1,519), and Piedmont^↗ (+1,196). Virtual charter schools also gained substantially, with Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ adding 1,412 students and Insight School of Oklahoma^↗ adding 869.

Where the students went

Three forces are pulling students out of traditional public schools, and the data cannot fully distinguish among them.

The most visible is the virtual and charter sector. Entities identifiable by name as virtual or charter schools enrolled 28,970 students in 2018-19. By 2025-26, that figure had nearly doubled to 57,136, an increase of 28,166. Over the same period, traditional districts lost 40,034 students. The virtual/charter share of total public enrollment rose from 4.1% to 8.3%. Epic Charter Schools alone enrolled 29,201 students in 2025-26 after a scandal-driven collapse from a peak of 59,445 in 2020-21 to a restructured enrollment of 28,478 by 2022-23.

The second force is private school choice. Oklahoma's Parental Choice Tax Credit, enacted in 2023, subsidized private tuition for more than 37,000 students in 2025-26, with 3,278 children switching from public to private school for the first time that year. The program's cap grew from $150 million to $250 million over two years. Because these students leave the public enrollment count entirely, the tax credit represents a direct reduction in the numbers reported here.

The third force is demographic. The Tulsa World reported that Oklahoma State Department of Education officials "don't know why Oklahoma has suddenly lost" so many students. Union Public Schools Superintendent John Federline cited "a relatively cool housing market" and declining birth rates, adding that private school vouchers have "siphoned off" both students and funding. The U.S. fertility rate of 1.6 in 2024, according to Oklahoma Watch, is well below the 2.1 replacement level. In the past, immigration offset declining births, but that buffer appears to be shrinking.

Oklahoma does not require families to register when they choose homeschooling, so there is no official count of homeschool students. Census Bureau estimates suggest roughly 46,000 Oklahoma children were being homeschooled as of mid-2024, though the precision of that figure is uncertain.

The pipeline is collapsing from the bottom

The grade-level pattern makes the demographic story concrete. Pre-K enrollment is down 6,846 students (16.3%) since 2019. Kindergarten is down 6,835 (13.0%). First grade is down 4,387 (8.4%). Every grade from PK through sixth is below its 2019 level.

Meanwhile, grades 8 through 12 are all above 2019 levels. Eleventh grade is up 5,525 (11.9%) and twelfth grade is up 5,241 (11.9%). These upper-grade gains reflect larger cohorts from before the birth rate decline flowing through the system. When those cohorts graduate, they will be replaced by the smaller kindergarten classes now entering the pipeline.

Combined PK and kindergarten enrollment has fallen from 94,390 to 80,709 since 2019, a loss of 13,681 students (14.5%). Combined 11th and 12th grade enrollment has risen from 90,479 to 101,245, a gain of 10,766 (11.9%). The system is top-heavy. Within three to four years, as the current upper-grade bulge graduates, the smaller lower-grade cohorts will move into high school, and the current statewide decline will accelerate.

What the recovery rate hides

The 26.4% recovery rate does not vary as much by district size as one might expect. Among the smallest quintile of districts (median enrollment of 143 in 2019), 30.1% have recovered. Among the largest quintile (median 2,265), 33.0% have recovered. The middle quintiles fare worst, with the second quintile at just 19.4%.

This pattern suggests the non-recovery is not simply a big-city problem exported to the statewide number by Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Mid-sized districts, the ones too small to absorb losses through internal rebalancing and too large to benefit from a single new housing development, are bearing disproportionate pain. Ponca City^↗ (-584), Muskogee^↗ (-1,046), and Shawnee^↗ (-558) are characteristic of this group: communities where a few hundred fewer students translates directly into fewer sections, fewer teachers, and tighter budgets.

What the recovery failure means

COVID may not have been the primary cause. The pandemic may have just accelerated forces already in motion -- declining births, expanding school choice, outward migration from urban cores -- that would have eroded enrollment regardless.

The 96 districts that appeared to recover but then relapsed are the clearest evidence. Their brief enrollment gains were not a trend reversal. They were families returning from the pandemic's disruption, a one-time event that looked like a recovery and was not. Five years out, three in four Oklahoma districts are smaller than before the pandemic. The recovery narrative is over. What remains is the structural decline it was masking.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Two of Three Oklahoma Districts Lost Students This Year

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

In 2019, 333 Oklahoma districts lost students. The state still grew by 3,770, because a handful of fast-expanding charter and virtual schools more than offset the losses. In 2025-26, 350 districts lost students, a nearly identical count. The state dropped by 10,640.

The difference: the districts still growing can no longer compensate.

The broadest decline outside the pandemic

Oklahoma's 2025-26 enrollment of 686,718 represents a 1.5% decline from the prior year, a single-year loss that exceeds even the COVID drop of 9,537 in 2020-21. But the pandemic was a shock concentrated in one year: 427 of 539 districts declined in 2021, a 4.6-to-1 ratio of losers to gainers. The system rebounded quickly, with 368 districts growing the following year.

This year's 350-to-181 ratio, roughly 2-to-1, is less extreme. It is also harder to dismiss. The decline is neither a one-time shock nor a recovery dip. It is the third consecutive year of statewide losses, following drops of 2,156 in 2024 and 1,744 in 2025, and it arrived five times larger than either predecessor.

Districts holding 73% of Oklahoma's total enrollment shrank this year. Declining districts collectively lost 17,337 students. Growing districts added 6,719. The net: a deficit that accounts for nearly all of the statewide drop.

Losses run deep, not just wide

The top 10 losing districts account for 40.1% of total losses. Oklahoma City^↗ alone shed 1,646 students, a 5.0% decline. Tulsa^↗ lost 1,167 (3.5%). Moore^↗, Edmond^↗, and Putnam City^↗ lost 852, 753, and 714 respectively. Six of the eight largest traditional districts in the state are on the list.

But here is the finding that distinguishes 2026 from prior years: the other half of the losses, 49.6%, came from 330 districts, most of them small. That distribution matters. When losses concentrate in a few large urban systems, policymakers can point to city-specific factors. When 185 districts with fewer than 500 students each collectively lose 3,167, the explanation has to be structural.

Across all size categories, a majority of districts shrank. Among the 13 districts enrolling 10,000 or more students, 10 declined (76.9%). Among the 309 districts under 500 students, 185 declined (59.9%). The median percentage decline was steepest at the extremes: -2.9% for the largest districts, -2.4% for the smallest.

Who is still growing

The gainers list tells its own story. Epic Charter School^↗ added 665 students. Dove Schools of OKC^↗ gained 642. Insight School of Oklahoma^↗, a virtual charter, grew by 374. Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ added 353.

Of the top 10 gainers, eight are charter or virtual entities.

Among traditional districts, Norman^↗ stands out. It added 582 students, a 3.6% gain, the only traditional district in the top five gainers. Bixby^↗ gained 158, Piedmont^↗ 90, and Deer Creek^↗ a modest 9. Suburban growth pockets remain, but they are narrowing.

The sector split is stark. Charter and virtual entities gained a net 2,607 students; traditional districts lost 13,225. That divergence is not new. Traditional enrollment fell from 667,904 in 2020 to 636,960 in 2026, a net loss of 30,944 students (4.6%), with partial recoveries in 2022 and 2023 before resuming decline. Charter and virtual enrollment over the same period rose from 35,746 to 49,758, a gain of 14,012 (39.2%).

Birth rates, school choice, and the limits of explanation

Oklahoma's fertility rate fell 12.2% between 2011 and 2023, according to the March of Dimes, the second-largest drop in a 17-state regional comparison. Fewer births a decade ago means fewer kindergartners now: Oklahoma's kindergarten class has fallen from 52,732 in 2020 to 45,680 in 2026, a 13.4% decline. That pipeline pressure will propagate upward through the grade structure for years.

The state's Parental Choice Tax Credit, enacted in 2023 and launched in 2024, provides refundable credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per child for private school tuition and $1,000 for homeschool expenses. In its first full year, the program served 39,485 students, though only 3,762 of those, fewer than 10%, had been enrolled in public school the prior semester, according to Oklahoma Tax Commission data reported by Oklahoma Watch. The program's funding cap rises from $150 million in 2024 to $250 million in 2026, so its pull on public enrollment may strengthen.

Neither explanation is complete on its own. Birth rate decline is the most plausible driver of the broad-based losses affecting small rural districts. School choice policy more directly affects metro-area systems where private school options are concentrated. The two forces overlap in the aggregate number but likely operate through different channels at different scales.

One significant unknown: Oklahoma does not require families to register or notify the state when they choose homeschooling, and no comprehensive count of private school students exists. The gap between the 10,640-student statewide decline and the 3,762 students who demonstrably switched to the tax credit program leaves roughly 6,900 students unaccounted for by school choice alone.

121 districts have declined three straight years

Beyond the single-year count, 121 districts have now lost enrollment in each of the past three years, from 2024 through 2026. That is nearly one in four Oklahoma districts locked in a multi-year contraction with no reversal in sight.

"I see what's coming... if it doesn't go through, we can hang in here, and we can be like a lot of other schools that have slowly dwindled." — David Morris, Paoli superintendent, on a proposed annexation with Whitebead Public Schools, KGOU, May 2025

More than 100 Oklahoma schools have been absorbed by neighboring districts since the state began tracking annexations in 1976. The current enrollment trajectory suggests more will follow. At 309 districts with fewer than 500 students, Oklahoma's district structure is a product of an era when the state's school-age population was larger. At statehood, the state had nearly 6,000 districts. It has 539 today, and 185 of those lost students this year while already below 500.

What to watch next

The kindergarten class of 2026 is 7,052 students smaller than the class of 2020. Those students do not reappear. Each year's kindergarten cohort becomes the next year's first graders, and no grade above kindergarten can grow faster than the cohort that feeds into it. The pipeline is contracting.

For the 185 districts under 500 students that shrank this year, that contraction is not abstract budget math. It is the difference between fielding a basketball team and not, between keeping a music teacher and sharing one with a district 30 miles away. Paoli's superintendent is already talking about annexation. He will not be the last.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Oklahoma's Virtual Schools Now Enroll More Students Than Any District Except Two

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 12:00:00 GMT

If Oklahoma's seven virtual charter schools were a single district, it would be the state's third-largest. At 37,249 students in 2025-26, the virtual sector enrolls more students than Edmond^↗ (24,993), Moore^↗ (22,715), Broken Arrow^↗ (19,765), or any of the state's other 530-plus traditional districts. Only Tulsa^↗ (32,450) and Oklahoma City^↗ (31,104) are larger, and neither by much.

A decade ago the sector barely existed. Four virtual schools served 9,901 students in 2015-16, just 1.4% of the state. By 2025-26 that figure had nearly quadrupled, surviving a pandemic-driven spike that briefly pushed virtual enrollment past 67,000 and a criminal scandal that sent the sector's dominant operator into freefall.

A sector shaped by one school's rise and fall

The story of virtual education in Oklahoma is, in large part, the story of Epic Charter Schools^↗. In 2015-16, Epic enrolled 6,037 students across a single entity. By 2020-21, it had exploded to 59,445 across two campuses, accounting for 88.7% of all virtual enrollment and 8.6% of the entire state.

The collapse was nearly as swift. Epic's co-founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, face multiple felony charges, including racketeering, embezzlement, and obtaining money by false pretenses, following a multi-year investigation by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. The preliminary hearing resumed in February 2026 after a nearly two-year delay. In June 2025, Epic cut 357 jobs including 83 teachers and 274 administrative staff, phasing out its learning center model entirely.

Epic's enrollment cratered from 59,445 in 2020-21 to 27,054 in 2023-24 before partially rebounding to 29,201 in 2025-26. It remains the state's third-largest enrollment entity by a wide margin. But its share of the virtual sector has fallen from 88.7% at the 2021 peak to 78.4%.

The rest of the sector is quietly doubling

While Epic dominated headlines, the six other virtual schools collectively grew from 3,864 students in 2015-16 to 8,048 in 2025-26, a 108.3% increase over 10 years. Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ (3,966 students), Oklahoma Connections Academy^↗ (1,508), and Insight School of Oklahoma^↗ (1,455) anchor the non-Epic tier. Three smaller operators, eSCHOOL Virtual Charter Academy (481), Dove Virtual Academy (338), and Virtual Preparatory Charter Academy of Oklahoma (300), round out the sector.

The non-Epic tier has grown in six of the last seven years, including through Epic's post-scandal contraction. That steady growth suggests the demand for virtual schooling extends well beyond one operator's marketing machine.

Nearly 1 in 10 high schoolers

The grade-level distribution reveals where virtual schools have their deepest foothold. In grades 9 through 11, virtual schools account for 9.1% to 9.5% of all students. In elementary grades, that figure drops to 2.7% to 3.7%.

The high school skew has practical consequences. In 11th grade, virtual schools claim 4,931 of 52,032 students statewide. That is roughly one out of every 11 juniors in Oklahoma taking their courses through a screen rather than in a building. By contrast, fewer than one in 30 first-graders are enrolled virtually.

The pattern likely reflects a mix of factors: older students who may be working, parenting, or recovering credits; families who tried and left traditional high schools; and the flexibility that virtual models offer students who do not fit conventional schedules. The data cannot distinguish between students choosing virtual schools proactively and those pushed out of brick-and-mortar options.

What the research shows so far

Academic outcomes for virtual charter students in Oklahoma are, on average, substantially worse than for their peers in traditional schools. A peer-reviewed study published in the Oklahoma Education Journal tracked over 800,000 test scores and found that students attending virtual charters scored 0.21 standard deviations lower in English language arts and 0.30 standard deviations lower in math, deficits the authors estimated at roughly two-thirds of a year's learning.

"Average annual achievement growth is 0.31 standard deviations in ELA and 0.42 standard deviations in math for students in Grades 3 to 8." -- Hamlin, Adams, & Adigun, Oklahoma Education Journal (2023)

The researchers cautioned that "we cannot say that fully virtual schooling causes learning loss," since the students who enroll virtually may differ from those who stay in traditional schools in ways the data cannot capture. A student dealing with chronic illness, bullying, or housing instability may choose virtual school precisely because their circumstances are already affecting their learning. The performance gap may partly reflect who enrolls, not just how the school performs.

The funding equation

Oklahoma's school funding formula sends per-pupil dollars wherever students enroll. When 37,249 students attend virtual schools, 37,249 per-pupil allocations follow them out of traditional district budgets. The state ranks 49th in per-pupil spending according to the National Education Association, which means the margin between a school staying open and closing is thinner than in most states.

Traditional districts have shed 33,300 students since 2015-16, a 4.9% decline. But the decline has not been steady. In 2021-22 and 2022-23, traditional districts clawed back 27,216 and 12,321 students respectively as families returned from the pandemic's virtual experiment. In 2025-26, traditional districts lost 12,058 students, the steepest single-year drop since the pandemic itself.

The virtual sector is not the only pressure on traditional enrollment. The Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit, enacted in 2023, has approved 37,428 children for private school tax credits of $5,000 to $7,500 per student. Of those, 3,278 switched from public to private schools for the first time in 2025-26. Combined with the 37,249 students in virtual charters, roughly 74,000 Oklahoma students now participate in alternatives to traditional public schools through just these two programs.

The Statewide Charter School Board question

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board, which assumed sole authority over virtual charter sponsorship on July 1, 2024, faces a straightforward challenge: how to oversee a sector that enrolls more students than all but two districts while the state's largest virtual operator is simultaneously fighting felony charges and restructuring its operations.

Robert Franklin, the board's chairman, has publicly acknowledged that the state could be approaching a saturation point for virtual schools. The Oklahoma Public Charter School Association disagrees. The data so far suggests the sector is still growing, adding 1,418 students in 2025-26 after a 2,035-student gain the year before.

37,249 families chose virtual. The research says those students are learning less. Oklahoma built one of the country's largest virtual sectors without building a system to check whether it works.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Oklahoma Lost More Students This Year Than During COVID

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

The last time Oklahoma lost this many students in a single year, schools were closed, parents were afraid to send children to classrooms, and a pandemic had upended American life. This time there is no pandemic.

Oklahoma's public schools enrolled 686,718 students in the 2025-26 October count, a drop of 10,640 from the prior year, 1.5% of the student body. That loss exceeds the 9,537-student COVID drop of 2020-21 by more than 1,100 students, making it the largest single-year decline in the state's 11-year enrollment dataset. The state now sits 7,395 students below the COVID-era floor it hit in 2021, at the lowest enrollment recorded since at least 2015-16.

A false recovery

The trajectory since 2020 tells the story in two acts. After the COVID plunge, Oklahoma clawed back 7,145 students over two years, recovering 74.9% of the loss by 2022-23. That partial recovery peaked at 701,258 students. Then enrollment reversed again: small losses of 2,156 and 1,744 in the next two years, followed by the 10,640-student cliff in 2025-26. The three-year post-recovery slide has now erased 14,540 students, more than 1.5 times the original COVID loss.

The pattern is not a gradual decline accelerating slowly. The state added students through 2019-20, lost them to COVID, got most back, and then fell off a ledge. Of 539 districts reporting in both years, 350 shrank in 2025-26. Only 181 grew. The losses are not concentrated in a handful of places: 183 districts, 35.3% of those with five or more years of data, are at their all-time enrollment low.

Where the students are leaving

Oklahoma City^↗ lost 1,646 students in a single year, dropping from 32,750 to 31,104. That is a 5.0% decline in one year for the state's second-largest district, part of a longer collapse that has seen OKC shed 14,473 students since 2015-16, a 31.8% loss. Tulsa^↗ lost 1,167, falling to 32,450. Tulsa overtook OKC as the state's largest district in 2021-22 and has held that position for five straight years as OKC's decline has been steeper.

The suburban metro districts felt it too. Moore^↗ lost 852 students (3.6%), Edmond^↗ lost 753 (2.9%), and Putnam City^↗ lost 714 (3.8%). The eight largest losing districts together shed 6,439 students, 61% of the statewide loss. Lawton^↗, the state's largest district outside the two metros, lost 376.

The exceptions tell their own story. Norman^↗ gained 582 students. Epic Charter School^↗, which operates as a statewide virtual charter, added 665 students to reach 29,201. Four of the five largest gainers were charter or virtual schools. Dove Schools of OKC^↗ added 642 students, Insight School of Oklahoma^↗ added 374, and Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ added 353.

Three forces, no single villain

The most likely primary driver is demographics. Oklahoma's fertility rate fell nearly 12% between 2013 and 2023, and the national rate hit an all-time low of 1.6 births per woman in 2024, well below the 2.1 replacement level. Kindergarten enrollment in Oklahoma has fallen from 53,453 in 2015-16 to 45,680 in 2025-26, a 14.5% decline. Twelfth-grade enrollment over the same period rose 17.0%, from 42,061 to 49,213. In 2024-25, kindergarten dropped below 12th grade for the first time. The ratio now stands at 92.8 kindergartners for every 100 seniors, down from 127.1 a decade ago. Fewer children are entering the system than leaving it.

The state's Parental Choice Tax Credit, signed in 2023 and launched in 2024, provides $5,000 to $7,500 per child for private school tuition. Approximately 39,485 students received credits in 2025-26, but the direct enrollment impact is more modest than the headline number suggests: 3,762 of those students attended public school the prior semester, meaning the tax credit accounts for roughly a third of the 10,640-student loss at most. The rest were already in private schools or newly entering students who chose private from the start. The program's cap rose from $150 million to $250 million for the 2026 tax year.

A competing explanation is the continued growth of virtual and charter schools within the public system. Enrollment in identifiable virtual and charter entities reached approximately 57,000 students in 2025-26, or 8.3% of the state total. Epic Charter School alone enrolled 29,201 students, despite an ongoing criminal investigation in which co-founders Ben Harris and David Chaney face racketeering and embezzlement charges. Virtual charter growth does not reduce total public enrollment, but it does redistribute per-pupil funding away from brick-and-mortar districts, compounding the fiscal impact of the headcount decline.

What reporting says

"There were 10,000 fewer students enrolled in Oklahoma public schools this year compared to last year, a dip of 1.5%. Falling birth rates are the main culprit." -- Oklahoma Watch, Jan. 28, 2026

Oklahoma Watch's Jennifer Palmer reported that enrollment decreased in every grade except 4th, 7th, and 11th, with the steepest drops among the youngest students in pre-K through 3rd grade. That pattern aligns with the birth-rate explanation: the children not being born five and six years ago are now the kindergartners not enrolling.

"Nearly 70 percent of children using the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit program to leave public schools and enroll in private schools for the first time in the 2025-2026 school year are from low- and middle-income families." -- Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, 2025

State Rep. John Waldron noted that "few private schools have opened up or expanded to take in kids from economically challenged regions," a constraint on how much the tax credit can grow.

The fiscal math

Only 28.5% of districts with comparable data have recovered to their pre-COVID enrollment levels. The other 71.5%, 369 districts, are funding operations on a smaller student base than they had six years ago. In a state that ranks 48th nationally in student outcomes and near the bottom in per-pupil spending, the loss of 10,640 funded seats translates directly into reduced state aid. Oklahoma's funding formula allocates dollars based on weighted average daily membership. Fewer students means less money, regardless of whether fixed costs like building maintenance, transportation routes, and administrative staff have changed.

The pipeline chart points to where this is headed. With 45,680 kindergartners and 49,213 seniors, each graduating class is being replaced by a smaller incoming one. Unless migration or policy reverses the pattern, the state will continue shedding students through at least the end of the decade as today's smaller elementary cohorts advance through the system.

The children who will enter kindergarten in fall 2027 were born in 2022, one of Oklahoma's lowest birth years on record. The cliff was not a one-time adjustment. It was the first year the pipeline math caught up with the birth rate.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.

Epic Charter: The School That Swallowed Oklahoma

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In 2016, Epic Charter Schools enrolled 6,037 students, less than 1% of Oklahoma's public school population. Five years later it enrolled 59,445, more than any other public school entity in the state. No single school entity in Oklahoma history had grown that fast, and none had ever overtaken both of the state's two largest districts in a single year.

Then it fell apart. Co-founders charged with racketeering. A forensic investigation. 500 employees terminated. Enrollment cut in half. In 2025-26, Epic Charter School^↗ enrolls 29,201 students, 4.3% of the state total. It remains Oklahoma's third-largest public school entity, larger than Edmond or Moore, but its trajectory looks nothing like it did four years ago.

From startup to state's largest in five years

Epic began as a single virtual charter school in 2011, offering a one-on-one online learning model. By 2016, it had expanded to 6,037 students. A second entity, Epic Blended Learning Charter, launched in 2017-18, and the two operations together reached 13,158 students by 2018, a 118% increase in two years.

The pre-pandemic growth was already extraordinary. Epic added 8,147 students in 2018-19 alone, reaching 21,305. COVID-19 turned that growth exponential. As families pulled children from in-person classrooms across Oklahoma, Epic added 6,763 students in 2019-20 and then 31,377 in 2020-21, more than doubling its enrollment in a single year.

At its 2020-21 peak, Epic's combined enrollment of 59,445 made it the largest public school entity in Oklahoma. Tulsa^↗ fell to 35,765 that year. Oklahoma City^↗ fell to 37,344. Epic was larger than both by a wide margin, a virtual school system that had eclipsed two urban districts with decades of history and hundreds of physical buildings.

The 9.8-fold increase from 2016 to 2021 occurred across all grade levels. At the peak, 28,254 of Epic's students were in elementary grades (PK through fifth), 12,803 in middle school, and 18,388 in high school. Nearly half of its peak enrollment was elementary-age children, a population that would prove the least sticky when in-person schooling resumed.

The unraveling

The reversal was almost as fast as the rise. Epic lost 21,111 students between 2020-21 and 2021-22, a 35.5% decline in a single year. It lost another 9,856 the following year. By 2022-23, enrollment had fallen to 28,478, a 52.1% decline from the peak.

The initial decline was a return-to-school effect. Families who had enrolled in Epic as a pandemic alternative went back to their neighborhood schools when buildings reopened. Elementary enrollment took the hardest hit: Epic's PK-5 enrollment fell from 28,254 to 7,370 between 2021 and 2026, a 73.9% drop. High school enrollment, by contrast, fell only 18.2%, from 18,388 to 15,041. The students most likely to stay were those who had chosen virtual learning as a deliberate preference, not a pandemic refuge.

But the enrollment decline was compounded by a governance crisis that had been building for years. Epic's co-founders, Ben Harris and David Chaney, were charged in 2022 with 15 felonies each, including racketeering, embezzlement, and obtaining money by false pretenses. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation had alleged that the co-founders used a student "Learning Fund" to commingle funds, make political donations, and pay personal expenses. Authorities estimated the scheme cost Oklahoma taxpayers $22 million.

Budget collapse and the 500 layoffs

Even after the co-founders were removed from operations and the school's accreditation was downgraded to probation, Epic's financial troubles deepened. In April 2025, the school's budget swung from a $3.1 million surplus to an $8.7 million projected deficit within two weeks. The finance chief attributed the error to a benefits cost that was "mistakenly counted twice." Superintendent Bart Banfield resigned in June 2025.

The financial crisis was rooted in enrollment projections that bore little resemblance to reality. Administrators had projected 33,000 students for 2024-25. Actual enrollment came in at 28,536, a gap of roughly 4,500 students. The school had hired and budgeted as if those students were coming.

"Operating without basic budgeting and oversight controls for leaders to make informed, responsible decisions" created unsustainable costs. — Statewide Charter School Board, Forensic Investigation Report, January 2026

The forensic investigation by Carr, Riggs & Ingram, released January 2026, found no embezzlement by the post-scandal leadership. It found something arguably worse for institutional credibility: a finance superintendent who maintained two budget versions (one public, one private), a reported carryover of $60.4 million that was actually $43.7 million, and a governing board that asked just six questions across all of the finance chief's budget presentations that year.

The result was 501 employees terminated between October 2024 and July 2025, including 357 teachers and administrators in a single June layoff. Minimum teacher salary was cut from $60,000 to $50,000 for those with student rosters under 28.

The school that stayed

After three years of losses, Epic stabilized. Enrollment ticked up slightly from 27,054 in 2023-24 to 28,536 in 2024-25 and 29,201 in 2025-26, a net gain of 723 students over three years. The hemorrhaging stopped, but the recovery has been minimal: Epic's 2025-26 enrollment is less than half its 2020-21 peak.

Epic remains the state's third-largest public school entity, behind Tulsa (32,450) and Oklahoma City (31,104). The gap between Epic and Oklahoma City has narrowed to 1,903 students. Before Epic's pandemic surge, Oklahoma City held 45,577 students in 2015-16 and had been the state's largest district since well before the data begins. Tulsa overtook OKC in 2021-22, a crossover driven partly by OKC's own enrollment losses and partly by the destabilizing effect of Epic's peak: when 59,445 students were enrolled in a virtual school drawing from every ZIP code in the state, every brick-and-mortar district felt the pull.

A different school at the bottom

The Epic that exists in 2025-26 is structurally different from the one that peaked in 2021. At the peak, 47.5% of Epic's students were in elementary grades. Today, 25.2% are. High school students now make up 51.5% of Epic's enrollment, up from 30.9% at the peak.

This shift has consequences. Epic now enrolls 15,041 high school students, 7.3% of all ninth through twelfth graders in Oklahoma. In a state that ranks 49th in per-pupil spending according to the National Education Association, that concentration of high schoolers in a single virtual entity shapes graduation pipelines, course access, and extracurricular availability for thousands of families.

The pandemic families who enrolled kindergartners at Epic in 2020-21 mostly left. The families that remain are more likely to have chosen virtual schooling deliberately. Whether that represents a stable floor or a temporary plateau depends in part on what happens in court.

What the broader landscape absorbed

Epic's enrollment swings were large enough to distort statewide numbers. Oklahoma's total public enrollment in 2020-21 was 694,113, down 9,537 from the prior year's peak of 703,650. Exclude Epic, and non-Epic enrollment that year was 634,668, a loss of 40,914 from the prior year's non-Epic total. Epic absorbed students that the statewide number suggested had simply vanished.

The broader charter and virtual sector grew even as Epic contracted. Non-Epic charter and virtual entities enrolled 6,593 students in 2016. By 2026, that figure is 27,935 across 27 entities, a 323.6% increase. OKC Charter Santa Fe South^↗ now enrolls 4,845. Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy^↗ has 3,966. Dove Schools of OKC^↗ has 2,694. The sector that Epic helped pioneer has diversified well beyond a single operator.

The combined charter and virtual sector now enrolls 57,136 students, 8.3% of Oklahoma's 686,718 total. Even without Epic, the sector accounts for 4.1% of statewide enrollment. Virtual schooling survived Epic's scandal. It just scattered across more operators.

A criminal case still unresolved

The separate criminal prosecution of co-founders Harris and Chaney, which predates the budget collapse, entered its next phase in February 2026 after nearly two years of procedural delays. Both face 15 felony counts. A former Epic CFO testified in late February that the co-founders sought "retribution" against the state auditor who flagged the financial irregularities. Attorney General Gentner Drummond's office has said it remains "fully focused on presenting the facts and evidence."

The trial's outcome will not change Epic's enrollment trajectory. The 30,000 students who vanished from Epic between 2021 and 2023 are not coming back; they are enrolled elsewhere or have aged out. But the case will determine whether the institution that reshaped Oklahoma's competitive landscape did so through fraud or simply through the kind of aggressive growth that a lightly regulated charter environment allows.

For the 29,201 students who remain, that distinction matters less than whether the school's new leadership, now operating under tighter oversight from the Statewide Charter School Board, can run a budget without two versions.

Detailed code that reproduces the analysis and figures in this article is available exclusively to EdTribune subscribers.