hansen, david

<div class="gwt-HTML" aria-hidden="false" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div class="gwt-HTML" aria-hidden="false" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades">http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades</a></div> July 22, 2015<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; clear: both; background-image: url("/sites/all/themes/tb_nex/images/bg-ico-categories.png"); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;"><ul class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/authors/jan-resseger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jan Resseger</a></li></ul></div><div class="section field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="line-height: 20.8px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="field-item odd" property="content:encoded" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
The Ohio 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 online charters were quietly omitted.The act is 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 David Hansen, the department's director of school choice, 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, 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<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/29/states-school-choice-chief-married-to-kasichs-chief-of-staff.html" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> served </a>as Kasich’s chief of staff for some time, but she recently left the position to chair Kasich's campaign staff, as he plans to soon announce his candidacy for president.Before coming to the Ohio Department of Education in 2013, David Hansen<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/29/states-school-choice-chief-married-to-kasichs-chief-of-staff.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> led </a>the extremely conservative Buckeye Policy Institute, which is part of the <a href="http://stinktanks.org/" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">far-right </a>State Policy Network.  The Plain Dealer <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/inexcusable_oversight_of_onlin.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">noted </a>in a recent editorial: “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.”Patrick O’Donnell, an education reporter in Cleveland,<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/states_top_school_choice_offic.html" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> reported</a>: “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 from the more than 14,000 students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and OHDELA, the online school run by White Hat Management.” David Brennan, owner of White Hat Management, and William Lager, the founder of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) and the private company that provides services for ECOT, Altair Management, are known to be among the state’s largest contributors to the campaigns of Ohio’s Republican elected officials. It is well known that Ohio Virtual Academy (Ohio’s K12 affiliate), OHDELA, and ECOT have among the state’s highest dropout rates and notoriously low student achievement.Last Friday, in a<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/will_f_grades_for_the_ecot_e-s.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> follow up </a>to the story that had broken earlier in the week<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/will_f_grades_for_the_ecot_e-s.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </a>O’Donnell <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/will_f_grades_for_the_ecot_e-s.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">noted</a> that when asked whether he would count ECOT’s persistently low scores in an upcoming evaluation of ECOT’s sponsor, “State Superintendent Richard Ross is refusing to say whether he will count the F grades for the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, or ECOT, Ohio’s largest online school and one run by a major Republican contributor, in a key charter school evaluation coming soon… Though an evaluation involving ECOT is imminent, he declined to answer direct questions from The Plain Dealer about how ODE will handle failing state report card grades for the online school that receives close to $100 million in state tax dollars for its 14,600 students.”On Friday,<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/07/17/charter-exclusion-has-yost-concerned.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> the Columbus Dispatch reported</a> that Ohio’s state auditor, Dave Yost, “is examining how the Ohio Department of Education excluded poor student-performanc data from online charter schools when it rated the schools’ sponsors last spring.” "You don’t get to pick and choose the laws you obey," Yost said. State Senator Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat, has<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/07/18/oh-charter-school-official-resigns.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> demanded </a>the resignation of Richard Ross, Ohio’s state superintendent.  The Plain Dealer’s editors<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/inexcusable_oversight_of_onlin.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> do not spare </a>Ross in yesterday’s editorial: “If Richard Ross, state superintendent of schools, hopes to regain his credibility and make true inroads in reforming Ohio’s broken charter school system, he must explain why he allowed this to happen.  An Ohio law requires state evaluations of all online schools and requires those evaluations to be part of overall sponsor evaluations—that means honest evaluations, not cooked grades… Ross must correct course immediately.”What few have said directly is that the mess is also an enormous embarrassment to Governor Kasich. Hansen’s quick resignation is clearly part of an attempt to contain the damage.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-section field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; clear: both; background-image: url("/sites/all/themes/tb_nex/images/bg-ico-categories.png"); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Section: <ul class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: left;"><li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/section/public-school-shakedown-project-progressive" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Public School Shakedown - A Project of The Progressive</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; clear: both; background-image: url("/sites/all/themes/tb_nex/images/bg-ico-categories.png"); background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: 0% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;">Topics: <ul class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: left;"><li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/topics/education" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Education</a></li> <li class="field-item odd" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/topics/politics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Politics</a></li> <li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/topics/public-school-shakedown" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Public School Shakedown</a></li></ul></div>- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades#sthash.E06OXrGA.dpuf - See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades#sthash.E06OXrGA.dpuf=<div class="gwt-HTML" aria-hidden="false" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div class="gwt-HTML" aria-hidden="false" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades">http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades</a></div> July 22, 2015<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-8 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; clear: both; background-image: url(" sites="sites" all="all" themes="themes" tb_nex="tb_nex" images="images" bg-ico-categories.png="bg-ico-categories.png" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat"><ul class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/authors/jan-resseger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jan Resseger</a></li></ul></div><div class="section field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="line-height: 20.8px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="field-item odd" property="content:encoded" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
The Ohio 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 online charters were quietly omitted.The act is 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 David Hansen, the department's director of school choice, 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, 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<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/29/states-school-choice-chief-married-to-kasichs-chief-of-staff.html" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> served </a>as Kasich’s chief of staff for some time, but she recently left the position to chair Kasich's campaign staff, as he plans to soon announce his candidacy for president.Before coming to the Ohio Department of Education in 2013, David Hansen<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/08/29/states-school-choice-chief-married-to-kasichs-chief-of-staff.html" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> led </a>the extremely conservative Buckeye Policy Institute, which is part of the <a href="http://stinktanks.org/" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">far-right </a>State Policy Network.  The Plain Dealer <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/inexcusable_oversight_of_onlin.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">noted </a>in a recent editorial: “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.”Patrick O’Donnell, an education reporter in Cleveland,<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/states_top_school_choice_offic.html" style="border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> reported</a>: “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 from the more than 14,000 students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and OHDELA, the online school run by White Hat Management.” David Brennan, owner of White Hat Management, and William Lager, the founder of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) and the private company that provides services for ECOT, Altair Management, are known to be among the state’s largest contributors to the campaigns of Ohio’s Republican elected officials. It is well known that Ohio Virtual Academy (Ohio’s K12 affiliate), OHDELA, and ECOT have among the state’s highest dropout rates and notoriously low student achievement.Last Friday, in a<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/will_f_grades_for_the_ecot_e-s.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> follow up </a>to the story that had broken earlier in the week<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/will_f_grades_for_the_ecot_e-s.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, </a>O’Donnell <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/will_f_grades_for_the_ecot_e-s.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">noted</a> that when asked whether he would count ECOT’s persistently low scores in an upcoming evaluation of ECOT’s sponsor, “State Superintendent Richard Ross is refusing to say whether he will count the F grades for the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, or ECOT, Ohio’s largest online school and one run by a major Republican contributor, in a key charter school evaluation coming soon… Though an evaluation involving ECOT is imminent, he declined to answer direct questions from The Plain Dealer about how ODE will handle failing state report card grades for the online school that receives close to $100 million in state tax dollars for its 14,600 students.”On Friday,<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/07/17/charter-exclusion-has-yost-concerned.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> the Columbus Dispatch reported</a> that Ohio’s state auditor, Dave Yost, “is examining how the Ohio Department of Education excluded poor student-performanc data from online charter schools when it rated the schools’ sponsors last spring.” "You don’t get to pick and choose the laws you obey," Yost said. State Senator Teresa Fedor, a Toledo Democrat, has<a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/07/18/oh-charter-school-official-resigns.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> demanded </a>the resignation of Richard Ross, Ohio’s state superintendent.  The Plain Dealer’s editors<a href="http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/07/inexcusable_oversight_of_onlin.html" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> do not spare </a>Ross in yesterday’s editorial: “If Richard Ross, state superintendent of schools, hopes to regain his credibility and make true inroads in reforming Ohio’s broken charter school system, he must explain why he allowed this to happen.  An Ohio law requires state evaluations of all online schools and requires those evaluations to be part of overall sponsor evaluations—that means honest evaluations, not cooked grades… Ross must correct course immediately.”What few have said directly is that the mess is also an enormous embarrassment to Governor Kasich. Hansen’s quick resignation is clearly part of an attempt to contain the damage.</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-section field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; clear: both; background-image: url(" sites="sites" all="all" themes="themes" tb_nex="tb_nex" images="images" bg-ico-categories.png="bg-ico-categories.png" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat">Section: <ul class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: left;"><li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/section/public-school-shakedown-project-progressive" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Public School Shakedown - A Project of The Progressive</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-inline clearfix clearfix" style="line-height: 20px; border: 0px; border-image-source: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-width: initial; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 20px; clear: both; background-image: url(" sites="sites" all="all" themes="themes" tb_nex="tb_nex" images="images" bg-ico-categories.png="bg-ico-categories.png" background-attachment="background-attachment" initial="initial" background-size="background-size" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" background-position="background-position" background-repeat="background-repeat" no-repeat="no-repeat">Topics: <ul class="field-items" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; float: left;"><li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/topics/education" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Education</a></li> <li class="field-item odd" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/topics/politics" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Politics</a></li> <li class="field-item even" style="border: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px !important;"><a href="http://www.progressive.org/topics/public-school-shakedown" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Public School Shakedown</a></li></ul></div>- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades#sthash.E06OXrGA.dpuf - See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/07/188231/ohio-charter-schools-werent-reporting-failing-grades#sthash.E06OXrGA.dpuf===<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/comment/36416#comment-36416">http://www.prwatch.org/comment/36416#comment-36416</a>
Ohio state education officials are now admitting that Ohio has <a href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/02/04/charter-school-federal-grant.html" target="_blank">almost ten times as many failing charter schools as the state initially claimed</a>.

This revelation comes as Ohio tries to hang onto a $71 million

federal charter school grant in the wake of scandals over misleading the

grant application reviewers and breaking state law by altering charter

school performance statistics. That was the largest grant award by the

U.S. Department of Education last year.

Ohio newspapers and the Center for Media and Democracy reported last

October that the Ohio Department of Education's claims about the

excellence of the state's charter-school system were intentionally

misleading.

In the state's July 2015 grant application, education officials

reported that in the 2012-13 school year Ohio had no "poor performing"

charters, even though about a third of the schools didn't meet any of

the standards on state report cards and 60 percent earned D's or F's on a

measure of how students perform on state tests.

The grant application also said an automatic-closure law would shut

down any failing charter schools without disclosing that the law will

not be in effect for several years.

Meanwhile, it turns out that then-Ohio charter school chief David

Hansen, who drafted the grant application, also rigged charter school

sponsor evaluations to improve their ratings. Hansen resigned July 18,

two days after submitting the grant request to the feds and several days

after admitting he broke the law by excluding failing grades for some

charter schools in the evaluations.

Hansen's wife, Beth Hansen, is Ohio Governor John Kasich's former

chief of staff and the manager of Kasich's newly surging presidential

campaign. She left her government post for the campaign in the midst of

the scandal as the pre-primary season was beginning. Kasich has not been

asked about the charter school failures in the national debates.

In the latest news, Ohio's Department of Education now says there

were actually 57 poor-performing charter schools in the state in the

2013-14 school year, not six.

Its July grant application claimed there were only six.

Conversely, the state said there were 93 "high-performing charter schools" in July and now it says there are just 59.

These performance statistics are for 290 brick-and-mortar charter

schools and still do not include online charters (which Hansen

omitted).

These numbers were included in a January 29 letter to the federal

regulators who put a hold on Ohio's charter-school grant amid the

concerns. The 20-page letter is signed by interim state superintendent

Lonny J. Rivera, and was the state's third response to questions from

federal regulators since the review was opened.

Part of the reason Ohio won the

grant in the first place was a glowing endorsement from the National

Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA)—an organization that

had previously referred to the charter system in Ohio as "broken."

But NACSA rethought that assessment as it signed a $40,000-a-year

agreement with the Ohio Department of Education to lend assistance to

the state's charter school authorizers. The deal was brokered by former

NACSA senior executive and lobbyist Hansen before he resigned as head of

the Ohio Office of Quality School Choice.

During his time as NACSA's top lobbyist, Hansen represented the organization at meetings of the <a href="http://www.ALECexposed.org" target="blank">American Legislative Exchange Council</a> (ALEC), touting "high quality" charters. That's the post he took after he left the "<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Buckeye_Institute_for_Public_Policy_Solutions" target="blank">Buckeye Institute</a>" and before Kasich put him in charge of charters for the state of Ohio.

Hansen previously led the Buckeye Institute, an Ohio "think tank" that is part of the controversial "<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Portal:State_Policy_Network" target="_blank">State Policy Network</a>"

(SPN). SPN special interest groups amplify ALEC's lobbying agenda,

which includes numerous bills to siphon money from traditional public

schools to charters and for-profit enterprises. It should be no surprise

that a virtual school corporation, <a href="http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/01/13009/k12-inc-tries-pivot-virtual-school-failures" target="_blank">K12</a>,

sits on ALEC's corporate board and has co-chaired its education task

force where corporate lobbyists and special interest groups vote as

equals with state legislators on bills, behind closed doors at posh

resorts with fancy private parties. Before Hansen became Kasich's point

person on charters, NACSA sent Hansen to ALEC to advance its charter

school agenda there.

Cleveland's Plain Dealer reported last June that <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/06/ohio_ignores_online_school_fs_as_it_evaluates_charter_school_overseers.html" target="_blank">Hansen intentionally left F grades for online charter schools out of academic evaluations</a>

of charter school oversight agencies. Those F grades for schools run by

major Republican donors would have dragged down the rating of the

oversight agencies.

One of the largest such agencies in the state is the Ohio Council of

Community Schools, which collects about $1.5 million in sponsor fees a

year from students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and the Ohio Distance

and Electronic Learning Academy (OHDLA), an online school run by a

company owned by David Brennan, a big Republican campaign donor in Ohio.

Ohio has hoped to use the $71 million in federal aid to give grants

of up to $700,000 to applicants seeking to open new charter schools.

That's nearly a million dollar giveaway per charter to experiments,

which have often failed, while traditional public schools are facing

budget cuts that hurt school children and their learning environment.

But, as CMD revealed in its "<a href="http://www.prwatch.org/charter-school-black-hole" target="_blank">Charter School Black Hole</a>"

report last October, out of the 88 Ohio charter schools created by

planning and implementation grants under the Charter School Program

between 2008 and 2013, at least 15 closed within a few years and another

seven never opened at all. These charters received more than $4 million

in federal taxpayer money.

Despite this track record and despite the false and deceptive claims

the state made in its application for more federal tax dollars for

charters , Ohio landed the biggest one-year grant in the 2015

competition for federal funding, $32.6 million, with more planned in the

coming years.

Since 2004, Ohio has been granted more than $195 million in American

tax dollars by the U.S. Department of Education under the Charter School

Program for State Educational Agencies (CSP-SEA). That's part of the

more than $3.7 billion CMD has documented that the federal government

has spent fueling the charter school industry over the past few decades.==