During a presidential campaign appearance this month before a national education advocacy group, Gov. John Kasich insisted: “We’re not going to tolerate failed charter schools.” To which weary Ohio taxpayers, parents, and students might respond: As of when?
Charter schools in Ohio collect nearly $1 billion a year in state aid, much of it diverted from traditional public schools. Some of these 400 charters are among the best schools in the state. Yet too many have been allowed to waste or misspend large sums of public money, provide inferior instruction, remain largely unaccountable to anyone — and stay in business.
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Ohio charters have achieved a national reputation for anything-goes practices. Several executives of major, and troubled, for-profit charter operators are big contributors to the campaigns of Ohio elected officials, mostly Republicans.
The GOP-controlled Ohio House has refused to enact a reform bill, unanimously approved by the state Senate, that would impose needed restrictions on charter schools. The State Department of Education is displaying a slowness to release public records about a former department executive who deleted data on poor student test scores from evaluations of sponsors of online charter schools, enabling them to enroll more students and pocket more state aid.
Governor Kasich could apply his influence usefully to getting action on both fronts, imposing the same standards on charter schools as those traditional schools must meet. But if he’s doing so, it isn’t apparent.
The stalled reform legislation would prohibit conflicts of interest among charter school operators, sponsors, and vendors. It would prevent operators of failing schools from recruiting new sponsors to stay open. It would streamline procedures for closing bad schools.
The measure would require more information to be made public about charter schools’ finances, operations, and student attendance and performance — no more nonsense about “proprietary” data. Such enhanced oversight, by both the state and charter sponsors, is essential.
Yet the House left for its long summer vacation without passing the bill; House GOP leaders said they needed more time to review changes made by the Senate. That delay is giving charter operators time to lobby furiously against the measure, claiming it would impose unfair new mandates on charter schools.
The operators argue that the new standards in the bill could especially afflict charters that serve large numbers of students who are poor, disabled, at risk of school failure, or not proficient in English. Leaders of traditional schools who make similar arguments about the obstacles they face are routinely scorned — not least by charter operators who assert they can do better. Yet research shows that Ohio charter schools perform no better overall, and often worse, than traditional schools.
Some stern words in the ears of House GOP leaders from the Republican governor when the General Assembly returns next month might stimulate action on the reform bill. It’s worth a try, if Mr. Kasich cares enough.
Ohio Superintendent of Education Richard Ross has named a panel to develop a new process for rating charter school sponsors. The presence of Perrysburg Schools Superintendent Thomas Hosler on the three-member advisory panel gives it credibility. But the group’s work must supplement, not replace, comprehensive reform legislation.
At the same time, the data rigging in the Education Department requires a thorough investigation — another area in which Governor Kasich could intervene helpfully. Instead, he has dismissed as “political” the demands of seven of the 19 members of the State Board of Education (all but one of them Democrats) for an outside probe of the department, to determine whether any other officials knew of or took part in the arguably illegal manipulation. Instead, he says he wants to change the board’s composition.
The Blade and other Ohio news media are seeking access to records related to David Hansen, the data-scrubbing former official. Kimberly Norris, an associate director of the Education Department, told The Blade’s editorial page that the department is reviewing 60,000 emails and other documents generated by Mr. Hansen prior to their release. “We are working on them very diligently,” she said. That process needs to accelerate.
Governor Kasich’s remarks at this month’s education summit included the observation that improving schools sometimes requires adults to “get out of our comfort zone on behalf of children.” If Mr. Kasich is willing to lead a cleanup of Ohio’s corrupt charter school system, the 120,000 or so children who attend those schools surely would benefit.
First Published August 30, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
