Ohio officials consider more oversight of charter schools

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and other state leaders want increased oversight of charter schools after disclosures that dozens of so-called "dropout recovery" schools get millions of tax dollars for thousands of habitually absent students.
Half of the registered students never show up for class at some of these privately operated schools, according to Scripps Howard News Service's national reporting project called "Ghost Schools." Absenteeism at one Cincinnati campus averaged 64 percent during the 2004-2005 school year, the worst for any charter program in the nation.
Strickland, several key state lawmakers and the Ohio Board of Education want legislation putting all charter schools under state authority, ending a legal loophole that protected them from meeting state attendance and academic performance standards.
"The governor is aware of the issue and aware of the reporting done by Scripps Howard both here in Ohio and nationally," said Strickland's press secretary, Keith Dailey.
"The governor supports a proposal that the Ohio Department of Education has put forward that would bring all Ohio charter schools under that department's authority. He believes this would improve accountability," Dailey said.
The state school board, which overseas the Ohio Department of Education, has sought such authority since 2005.
"The board has recommended it have oversight over all community schools sponsors," said Ohio Department of Education spokesman Scott Blake. "But the sponsors that were in place prior to April 2003 are subject to a grandfather provision."
That means the state has limited authority over schools established before 2003.
The problem is that Ohio pays charter schools for each student officially enrolled, not for each student who actually shows up for class. Ohio paid $29.9 million for absent students who were enrolled at 47 of these special charter schools during the 2006-2007 school year. These schools had an average truancy rate of 33 percent, even though state law requires most public schools to have fewer than 7 percent absenteeism.
One way the schools get paid for absent students is that the schools report the students as having "excused absences."
School officials say there is little they can do to check whether excused absences are valid.
"Do we verify that these notes are authentic? We don't have the necessary staff to go to every parent who wrote a note," Blake said.
The question has raised interest among members of the Ohio Legislature.
"The question is who is going to investigate whether these are false records. That's the key," State. Rep. Mike Skindell, D-Columbus, told Scripps Howard News Service.
"One of the things I've advocated for is a False Claims Act. I'd like to make this a violation. And if it's a violation, that empowers the state to actually investigate these documents when they suspect that a school is fudging records to gain state money," Skindell said.
Skindell said odds of passage of reform legislation improve dramatically when Democrats take control of the state House next year. He said chances are also better that the measure can pass the GOP-controlled Senate following disclosure of abuse of at least $100 million in school funds in the last five years.
"If we give assurances to the Republican caucus that remains in control of the Senate that we are talking about accountability of taxpayer money and not just shutting down charter schools, hopefully we can sell this to them," Skindell said.

(E-mail Thomas Hargrove at hargrovet(at)shns.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)