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Teachers at Epic Charter Schools are some of the highest paid in the state. They are also some of the lowest paid in the state.

The wide variations in teacher compensation at the state’s largest online charter school are due to an unconventional program that allows teachers to earn a bonus of up to their base salary, which would double their pay. So a teacher earning $35,000, for instance, can earn an annual bonus of up to $35,000, pushing total pay to $70,000.

Bonus pay allowed more than half of Epic’s 218 certified teachers to earn well above the average pay for public school teachers, according to Oklahoma Department of Education data for 2015-16. But for some, the gamble didn’t pay off; they earned little or no bonus and their total compensation was less than the minimum salary required in traditional public schools.

Meanwhile, Epic, which enrolled more than 9,000 students in pre-K through 12 this year and is now the state’s 14th largest school system, has average to low school grades and hasn’t seen significant improvement in student achievement.

Epic has been using this model of performance pay — also known as merit pay —since it opened in 2011, an experiment in teacher compensation conducted using state per-pupil funds, which all charter schools receive.