Ohio Department of Education retracts charter school assessments; top officials under scrutiny
The Ohio Department of Education on Friday retracted evaluations of charter school-related organizations because a high-ranking department official with ties to the charter school industry altered results of large, poorly performing online schools.
The acknowledgment of tampering heightened the calls for an investigation of the department and followed a request for the resignation of the state superintendent of education, Richard Ross, by the senior Democrat on the House Education Committee, Teresa Fedor of Toledo.
On Friday, she also called for an investigation by the state auditor.
The department said it is rescinding the evaluations of charter school sponsors, which are independent organizations empowered by the legislature to authorize the startup of a charter school and to oversee their financial and academic performance.
Sponsor evaluations are partially based on the performance of the charter schools they monitor.
It was confirmed at a state school board meeting this week that David Hansen, the department’s head of school choice and husband of Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign manager, had deleted some of the academic results of the state’s online charter schools in evaluating the sponsors.
Sponsors make money based on the number of students enrolled in the schools they oversee. Online charter schools are critical to their finances because those schools are among the largest in the state.
Hansen was grilled at the state school board meeting while Ross sat silently. Hansen confirmed that he dropped some of the worst scores for online schools because the numbers “masked” potential success.
Potential conflict
On Friday, the Beacon Journal also found in public documents that Hansen served on the board of one of the state’s largest charter schools, Great Western Academy, in the 2013-14 school year, which could be a conflict of interest with his job with the state.
An official for the for-profit school management company, Imagine Schools, said that Hansen was on the board of its Great Western Academy during the time he also was employed as the department’s head of charter school oversight.
The school enrolls about 900 students and receives about $7 million in public dollars annually.
A request seeking comment from the department was sent on deadline Friday.
Before Hansen was hired by Ross to his $107,000-a-year job, he was a vice president for government relations for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which advocates for the expansion of charter schools. He is scheduled this fall to participate in an association panel discussion on sponsor accountability.
He also served on the board of two Columbus charter schools, one as recently as the 2013-14 school year, according to the school’s federal tax filings, and was president of the Buckeye Institute, a libertarian organization.
Growing discontent
The announcement Friday follows a rising chorus of public and private voices demanding that lawmakers return to Columbus to finish what they’ve started: an attempt to fix Ohio’s troubled charter schools.
This year began with political promises to reform Ohio charter schools, which are among the nation’s lowest performers and guilty of the most abuses of Ohio Department of Education retracts charter school assessments; top officials under scrutiny - Break News - Ohio:
