After allowing substandard education and systemic corruption to fester in Ohio’s charter school industry for years, Ohio lawmakers finally have approved legislation to strengthen oversight and implement badly needed reform.

It took a full court press by newspapers around the state, coupled with a handful of persistent lawmakers to pass an acceptable measure governing how charter schools conduct operations and spend taxpayer money.

The political inclination now is to move on to more hot-button issues, from trade to gun control and abortion, which are tailor-made for partisan play. But charter schools in Ohio, many of which are among the worst in the nation, won’t be fixed overnight.

And I suspect real reform won’t be aggressively pursued in the state as long as, to paraphrase a well-worn phrase, the fish continues to stink from the head down. “Dick Ross [Ohio State Superintendent Richard Ross] is not a friend of any educator in Ohio,” said state Rep. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo), ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee.

The former teacher, a strong critic of charter operations, has pushed hard for more accountability and transparency in school management. She is pleased that her legislative colleagues, at long last, passed charter oversight reform but remains concerned about how those at the top of the Ohio Department of Education will enforce the changes.

“We still have problems — and no public confidence — with the ODE and all its dysfunction,” she said. “I still think we need to go after the agency’s public records that the state school board president [Tom Gunlock ] doesn’t want to hand over to [state auditor] David Yost.”

What is the ODE trying to hide? The man in charge, a close associate and former adviser to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, has been acting fishy lately.

Mr. Ross circumvented state school board members to secretly craft and help enact the so-called Youngstown Plan, a Kasich-backed plot to seize control of failing schools districts. Questions continue to swirl about the recent charter scandal that happened on Mr. Ross’ watch.

Mr. Ross insists he was unaware of the gross irregularities in online charter evaluations manufactured by his charter school chief before David Hansen was caught and forced to resign. But there’s more.

Even after Mr. Hansen admitted doctoring online charter evaluations to make them look better, Mr. Ross submitted a federal grant application for charter money drafted by Mr. Hansen and based on those skewed evaluations.

“He [Hansen] was writing that grant while he was getting called down to answer charges about e-charter school data scrubbing,” Ms. Fedor said. Nonetheless, Superintendent Ross signed off on the state’s grant application.

In doing so, the Akron Beacon Journal reported, Mr. Ross agreed to “criminal, civil, or administrative penalties” if statements made on application were not “true, complete and accurate to the best of my knowledge.” According to the Beacon Journal, only after the federal grant application was sent and being processed did the ODE leader move to rescind the manipulated charter evaluations inserted by Mr. Hansen and ask for his resignation. Timing is everything.

The apparent charter subterfuge, advanced by Mr. Ross, hit pay dirt. Despite an urgent request from Ms. Fedor in the summer to federal education officials to withhold the grant funding because of alleged ODE lawbreaking over charter statistics, the feds scored Ohio’s application at face value — no questions asked.

The result? With the allegedly false and misleading ODE information, Ohio received glowing scores as an example of charter school quality and oversight. The reward for such due diligence was top prize.

The state education department is the largest recipient of a new $157 million federal grant to create and expand charters. Ohio, swimming in failing charter schools with woeful oversight and scandalous behavior by pro-charter ODE leaders, gets as much as $71 million to keep up the good work.

There is rampant speculation that the grant money will be funneled to charter upstarts in Youngstown as part of the Kasich administration’s grand scheme to privatize public education.

“There were more decisions made up the food chain [governor, superintendent] that arranged for all of this to happen at the same time,” Ms. Fedor suggested.

It stinks.

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

First Published October 17, 2015, 4:00 a.m.