Gov. John Kasich said recently, “We are going to fix the lack of regulation of charter schools.” That is a good idea for a lot of reasons, but I suspect it will not be easy to do for two reasons. One is that legislators get campaign contributions from charter schools. The other is that many legislators seem unaware of the problems with charter schools.

The most recent problem to surface is attendance. The state auditor’s office went to 30 charter schools to check attendance. State Auditor David Yost said the results said the results left him “speechless” and added that what they found was “quite a morass.”

They found all 95 pupils supposedly enrolled in one school were not there. At six other schools they found between 34 percent and 85 percent of the pupils missing. These schools were receiving funding for these missing pupils. Charter schools were supposed to provide opportunity for pupils to go to a better school than their local public school.

An analysis by the Ohio Education Association and Innovation Ohio a year ago shows that is not happening.

(Read more at Athens Messenger)