Ohio Regulator Favors Politically Connected Charter School Sponsors, Resigns When Exposed
Things unraveled pretty quickly last week for David Hansen, the director of school choice at the Ohio Department of Education. On Tuesday, the State Board of Education, dominated by appointees of Republican Governor John Kasich, met and discussed why, as Ohio began to evaluate the sponsor-authorizers of Ohio’s charter schools, the test scores of students at on-line charters were quietly omitted—a violation of state law as Republican chair of the state senate’s education committee, Peggy Lehner, and Republican state auditor, Dave Yost, have both confirmed. When underlings of Hansen could not adequately answer the questions of Senator Peggy Lehner, who had come to the meeting of the State Board to ask questions, she demanded their boss come downstairs to the meeting room to address her concerns.
On Saturday, David Hansen resigned from his post overseeing charter schools for the Ohio Department of Education.
This is all a huge embarrassment for Governor John Kasich. David Hansen’s wife, Beth, has been Kasich’s chief of staff for some time, but she recently resigned that position to chair his campaign staff, as he plans to announce soon as a Republican candidate for President.
Before he came to the Ohio Department of Education in 2013, David Hansen led the extremely conservative Buckeye Policy Institute, which is part of the far-right State Policy Network. (You can learn about the State Policy Network that coordinates the work of far-right think tanks across the states here.)
The Plain Dealer noted in its editorial yesterday: “A 2012 state law on evaluating charter schools clearly mandated ODE (Ohio Department of Education) to include the grades of all online charter schools when grading their sponsors—agencies with oversight over the charter schools. Lawmakers hoped the pressure on sponsors would force them to provide better oversight of their schools… However, Plain Dealer education reporter Patrick O’Donnell recently revealed that ODE quietly ignored that law, a revelation that shocked the state Board of Education among others.” Because Hansen excluded the performance of online schools from his rating of sponsors, one sponsor, “the Ohio Council of Community Schools… earned the highest grade—exemplary—even though its online schools including OHDELA, which is run by the politically connected White Hat Management, earned the lowest–Fs.”
In his story yesterday, O’Donnell reported: “The evaluations of charter school sponsors, also called authorizers—the agencies that help create and oversee charter schools—are the cornerstone of Gov. John Kasich and the state’s roundabout plan to improve Ohio’s charter schools… The key beneficiary of the exclusion—so far—was the Ohio Council of Community Schools, a non-profit agency which collects about $1.5 million in sponsor fees a year Ohio Regulator Favors Politically Connected Charter School Sponsors, Resigns When Exposed | janresseger:
