State broke the law by ignoring online school F's, state school board says
COLUMBUS, Ohio – State school board members accused the Ohio Department of Education Tuesday of breaking state law by throwing F grades for online schools out of a key charter school evaluation this year.
Members of the state school board and stateSen. Peggy Lehner said David Hansen, ODE's school choice director, was required by state law to include online schools and dropout recovery schools in evaluations of charter school oversight agencies.
But after questioning Hansen Tuesday, Lehner and the board confirmed a June 14 Plain Dealer report that he had left failing grades for those schools out of the evaluations.
That deliberate omission boosted the rating of two oversight agencies, who could now be eligible for new state perks.
Hansen, who has close ties to Gov. John Kasich, offered rushed and muddled explanations for that decision in his appearance before the board. He said he wanted to look at other, stronger schools instead, because online struggles "mask" successes elsewhere.
And Hansen said he left online schools out because they all started receiving low grades after the state changed some grading rules a few years ago. At the same time, Hansen admitted to the board that those changes made the grades more accurate.
But school board President Tom Gunlock told The Plain Dealer that Hansen's reasons don't matter. State law says the schools should be counted in measuring the academic performance of the oversight agencies, he said, so they should have been.
"If you don't like the law, change it," Gunlock said. "Until such time, you have to obey it."
Gunlock said he will discuss with state Superintendent Richard Ross how to handle the already-completed evaluations that would be affected by the exclusion.
Ross, who is Hansen's boss, sat by him as he was questioned but offered no comment.
Ross later said, in a prepared statement, that ODE will include online school and dropout recovery school grades in future years. But he made no comment about whether he would continue leaving those grades out as evaluations continue this year.
"We will include academic performance data of e-schools and dropout prevention and recovery schools in our evaluation process as soon as we get the data we need from the 2014-15 school report cards," he wrote. "This evaluation process is still new, but we will work to get it right."
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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 from the more than 14,000 students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and OHDELA, the online school run by White Hat Management.
Those schools received F grades on state report cards, which would have likely blocked State broke the law by ignoring online school F's, state school board says | cleveland.com:
