Illegal conduct under a renegade state superintendent at the Ohio Department of Education could torpedo Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential ambitions. It is that bad.

“I’m taking a leadership role in demanding the resignation and removal of [state schools superintendent] Dick Ross, and an investigation to clean up the Department of Education,” said state Rep. Teresa Fedor of Toledo, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee. “I’m not just thinking charter schools. I’m talking about the whole department.

“A majority of people already left,” she said. “They saw the signs coming and were replaced with Kasich people.”

Stealthy maneuvers to duck scrutiny and cloud transparency pass for public service at the Education Department with Kasich-backed chieftains. It is that bad.

The charter school experiment in Ohio is a national joke. The laugh is on Ohio children.

Mr. Kasich, the newly minted Republican presidential candidate, must account for the outrageous behavior of Education Department officials under his administration and the refusal of Statehouse Republicans to budge on charter school reform.

The governor, like GOP pals who control the General Assembly, has sold out traditional public education in Ohio. They allowed huge sums of money to be diverted from traditional public schools to proliferating charter school operations. Some of the most problematic charter operators were among the biggest campaign contributors to the GOP.

Mr. Kasich can run but he can’t hide from the educational mess that has flourished under his leadership. Even as the Ohio governor was announcing his candidacy for the White House, pressure was building for his state schools superintendent to resign over eroding trust and integrity at the department.

Mr. Ross, formerly a top educational adviser to Mr. Kasich, presides over a department critics say is hopelessly corrupt. But the state remains committed to promoting and funding the privatization of public education.

Charter school students in Ohio consistently fare worse academically than their traditional public school counterparts. Fraud, abuse, and waste by charter school operators are legendary.

According to an Akron Beacon Journal review in May, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million of taxpayer money improperly spent by charter schools since 2001. It’s that bad — and worse.

Last month, the Kasich administration’s first director of school choice at the department quit abruptly. He was caught breaking the law.

David Hansen, husband of Beth Hansen, the governor’s former chief of staff and now his presidential campaign manager, admitted cooking the books on academic evaluations for online charters by withholding failing grades. The data scrubbing made the failing schools look better than their dismal scores would suggest.

Plunderbund, a liberal-leaning blog, reported that the disgraced charter czar had altered charter school data before to improve the image of charter school operators. As the president of the Buckeye Institute, a conservative think tank, Mr. Hansen allegedly massaged data about charter school graduation rates.

Yet the Kasich administration still saw fit to hire Mr. Hansen to oversee expansion of school choice in Ohio. State Superintendent Ross praised his new subordinate’s “impressive background as both a public servant, policy expert, and advocate for education.”

Meanwhile, the Education Department boss was busy circumventing the State Board of Education. Unbeknownst to board members, Mr. Ross secretly consulted with outside parties on a new state plan to intervene in “failing” school districts.

He helped shape and ram through legislation to formalize that plan. The measure was a last-minute amendment to a pending education bill that was introduced and passed by the legislature in a day.

The sweeping changes swiftly were signed into law by Governor Kasich. They target the troubled Youngstown school district, but apply to all public school systems in academic distress.

The new law effectively transfers local school control to an unelected chief executive officer with the power to override the district superintendent and apparently parts of negotiated union contracts. The changes include eventual replacement of locally elected school boards with mayoral appointments.

The changes also champion more charter schools.

“The [charter] system in Ohio is about taking money from public schools and rewarding laissez-faire, do-whatever-you-want charter schools,” said Ms. Fedor, who was an educator for 18 years. The hypocrisy that permeates school choice “cannot be tolerated one more day,” she said.

Ohio students are not learning. On Governor Kasich’s watch, they’re tragically left behind.

Contact Blade columnist Marilou Johanek at: mjohanek@theblade.com

First Published August 1, 2015, 4:00 a.m.