In Ohio, Political Contributions Yield Budget Gift for White Hat’s David Brennan | janresseger

In Ohio, Political Contributions Yield Budget Gift for White Hat’s David Brennan | janresseger:

In Ohio, Political Contributions Yield Budget Gift for White Hat’s David Brennan

Posted on June 20, 2014 by janresseger

Here’s what happened in Ohio’s mid-biennium budget review bill, signed into law on Monday by Governor John Kasich.  The governor and the legislature rewarded David Brennan, who runs the White Hat Life Skills Academy “dropout recovery” schools.  According to Brent Larkin in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, David Brennan “has poured more than $4 million into the coffers of Republican candidates in Ohio during the past decade.”

Recently this blog covered the scandal of Ohio’s so-called “dropout-recovery” charter schools, a scandal that has been exposed by Doug Livingston of the Akron Beacon Journal.  These schools offer students who have dropped out or are in danger of dropping out the opportunity to sit in a cubicle with a computer for four hours each day to recover enough credits to graduate from high school.  The state pays the dropout-recovery schools for all the students who are supposedly enrolled, but the dropout rate at these schools is higher than at any other secondary schools in the state, and the state keeps on paying for several weeks after the students stop attending.  Livingston has demonstrated that these schools are, in fact, driving up Ohio’s high school dropout rate.

Livingston writes, “Absenteeism tops the reasons why students drop out; charter schools continue to collect tax dollars for more than a month while they are gone.” “Administrators call it churning’ or ‘school hopping’—when student drop out, disappear for months and then return.”  “The state requires that students who are absent or truant for more than 23 days be taken off school rolls, but during that 23 days, the state reimburses the school. Livingston explains: “There were more than 11,000 removals for truancy last year, meaning taxpayers In Ohio, Political Contributions Yield Budget Gift for White Hat’s David Brennan | janresseger: