Ohio’s effort to reform its ridiculed charter schools is a big fail
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is expected to officially announce this month that he is running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Don’t expect to hear him tout his state’s charter schools.
Ohio lawmakers looked like they were actually going to do something about the state’s ridiculed $1 billion charter school system, the No. 1 sector in Ohio for misspending tax dollars. A two-year effort to write legislation that would strengthen oversight of these schools passed in the state Senate in June, and was believed to have majority support in the state House. But, alas, the bill never made it to a final vote.
What happened? The bill — which, again, had the votes to pass — was tabled because, apparently, some lawmakers still want to make changes. The bill is supposed to come up again in September, but who really knows, given tepid efforts in the past to improve schools. Even if a bill passes later, implementation will be significantly delayed.
You’d think that the lousy state of Ohio’s charter system would have set a fire under everyone with even half a fingerprint on it. How bad is it? A June story in the Akron Beacon Journal started this way:
No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio.
The newspaper had reviewed 4,263 audits released last year by the state and concluded that charter schools in the state appear to have misspent public money “nearly four times more often than any other type of taxpayer-funded agency.” It says that “since 2001, state auditors have uncovered $27.3 million improperly spent by charter schools, many run by for-profit companies, enrolling thousands of children and producing academic results that rival the worst in the nation.”
To understand why there is skepticism about Ohio’s effort to provide better oversight to charters, one only has to look at what it has already been trying to do. Kasich and lawmakers came up with a plan a few years ago to pressure the organizations that grant permission for groups to open charters to do a better oversight job. Those groups, called “agencies” in Ohio, include schools Ohio’s effort to reform its ridiculed charter schools is a big fail - The Washington Post:
