White Hat Sale Proves Ohio Charter Regime Failing

Finally.

Now we know what White Hat Management is all about. There was always a pretty strong indication that White Hat was about making money, not educating children.

After all, when you get exactly 1 A on a state report card and have 72 opportunities to get an A, you're probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.

When you've collected more than $1 billion in taxpayer money without having to make a single appearance before a legislative committee, as White Hat founder David Brennan has been able to do, you're probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.

When you contribute more than $4 million to politicians, you're probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.

But then we got the news last week that Brennan's White Hat Management was going to sell off their least profitable, "highest performing", and most at-risk for closure schools to a group run by K12, Inc.'s founder Ron Packard. That's right, the same guy who gave us the Ohio Virtual Academy and all its "success."

But White Hat will keep its cash cow online school, OHDELA, which has the worst performance index score of any statewide E-School -- and that's saying something, given how abjectly horrible Ohio's statewide E-Schools perform. Its performance index score actually dropped more than 4% from four years ago, the only statewide E-School to see such a precipitous drop. Again, that's saying something.

It will also keep its other bloated carcass -- Life Skills -- which proudly graduated 2 out of 155 students in one of its locations last year. But don't worry, the state won't ever be able to close these schools because Brennan had the legislature essentially create an exemption for his atrociously performing schools.

So White Hat is now able to sit back and rake in the money from its online operation (the state pays OHDELA enough that the school could provide 15:1 student-teacher ratios, $2,000 laptops to every child every year and still clear 34.5%), while continuously milk Ohio taxpayers through the perpetually operating Life Skills schools, which will never be able to be closed even though no one in their right mind would possibly think that graduating 2 out of 155 children is, in any way, serving our communities' most at-risk children.

Why am I cynical about this sale? Well, look at the reasons White Hat has had schools close. The only ones to ever close because of the state's closure law were the Hope Academies (now called simply the Academies). Five of those schools have closed overall (then re-opened under different names). Only one Life Skills has ever closed, and that was for slipping enrollment, which means the school wasn't hitting their profit margin. This relative instability in the Academies led to this sale, not any other reason.

(Read more at 10th Period)

Ohio ignores online school F's as it evaluates charter school overseers

It turns out that Ohio's grand plan to stop the national ridicule of its charter school system is giving overseers of many of the lowest-performing schools a pass from taking heat for some of their worst problems.

Gov. John Kasich and both houses of the state legislature are banking on a roundabout plan to improve a $1 billion charter school industry that, on average, fails to teach kids across the state as much as the traditional schools right in their own neighborhoods.

But The Plain Dealer has learned that this plan of making charters better by rating their oversight agencies, known as sponsors or authorizers, is pulling its punches and letting sponsors off the hook for years of not holding some schools to high standards.

The state this year has slammed two sponsors/authorizers with "ineffective" ratings so far. But it has given three others the top rating of "exemplary" by overlooking significant drawbacks for two of them and mixed results for the third.

The state's not penalizing sponsors, we found, for poor graduation rates at dropout recovery schools, portfolios of charter schools that have more bad grades than good ones and, most surprising, failing grades for online schools.

Online school F grades aren't counted

We found that the state isn't counting the performance of online charter schools -- one of the most-controversial and lowest-performing charter sectors -- in the calculations in this first year of ratings.

(Readm ore at Cleveland.com)

Half of Ohio charter school's students 'didn't exist at all'

A special audit has found that a now-closed Ohio charter school padded its rolls by nearly half and collected $1.1 million in tax dollars it wasn't owed.

Auditor Dave Yost said Monday that General Chappie James Leadership Academy, in Montgomery County, reported having 459 students in attendance, but only 239 students could be documented. He said at a news conference that the other 220 "didn't exist at all."

Several missing students were reported as attending over several years. Yost said that signaled potential fraud, not just bookkeeping errors.

He urged lawmakers to act to reform Ohio's charter school regulations.

The Ohio Department of Education calculated the unjustified payments for the review period from July 1, 2011, through June 30, 2014. Schools receive money based on how many students they have.

State lacks info on 1,700 Ohio charter-school students

As the Ohio Department of Education attempts to close the financial books on last school year, one thing is certain: Making sure charter schools get the right amount of money is no easy task.

The state is continuing to withhold or reduce payments to schools that educate about 1,700 charter-school students because they have been “flagged.” That means the state got conflicting claims about where the students lived or what schools they attended.

Although the number is down from about 5,000 flagged students this spring — mainly because a state computer system that charters and districts use to resolve enrollment disputes went down for maintenance — the 1,700 flags are still more than triple the number the state ended with last school year.

Out of 385 charters, 240 have been paid for students even though it is uncertain whether the students were enrolled at those schools. Other charters might have been shortchanged and are owed money by the state. To lessen the financial blow, the Ohio Department of Education has said it won’t reduce a charter’s payments by more than 5 percent in a month.

(Read more at the Dispatch)

Nine ousted or investigated in Ohio’s largest charter school network

At least nine employees, from secretaries to school board presidents to founding executives, have been named in two separate internal investigations as family ties link taxpayer-funded jobs in Ohio’ largest chain of charter schools.

The governing board of Akron-based Summit Academy Management, one of Ohio’s oldest charter school management companies, has placed president Gerald Horak, vice president James Bostic and Horak’s son, Joseph, on paid leave, according to the board president of a local charter school that hired the company to run the operations.

Joseph Horak’s wife also works for Summit, though she has not been named in the investigation. The Beacon Journal reported in mid-May that top officers had been removed, but the company has not elaborated on who or the reasons.

And while the private company won’t disclose the nature of its investigation, a second investigation conducted by the schools’ sponsor — a public agency — has uncovered potential conflicts of interest involving school board members and family members who work for the company.

Three school board members, including Bostic’s sister-in-law, have stepped down following a review of family relationships by the Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West — which sponsors 24 of the 26 Ohio charter schools managed by Summit.

The sponsor issued letters to the three Dayton, Xenia and Akron charter schools, citing state law prohibiting nepotism and calling the family relationships “potential legal and ethical issues.”

(Read more at Ohio.com)

Charter Schools Continue To Fail Ohio Students. Where is David Hansen??

It’s a bad week to be David Hansen, who heads Ohio’s charter school accountability office.

The Columbus Dispatch tells us that the Imagine Columbus Primary Academy, a chronically failing charter, might be forced to close its doors amid concerns over an exorbitant, conflict-laden lease that leaves little money for classroom instruction.

WDTN in Dayton reports that three people were convicted of bribery and taking kickbacks at a Dayton charter.

And today the ODE sent letters to three charter schools (Imagine Cleveland, Villaview and Cleveland Community School) threatening to shut the schools down because their “performance has generally been a failure.”

While these developments are new, charter school scandals in Ohio are routine. In fact, Ohio’s charters are so famously bad that even the head of the pro-charter group, StudentsFirst, said that most Ohio charter schools “stink.”

Lest anyone think the comment was taken out of context, here is the full quote from Greg Harris, who directs StudentsFirst Ohio:

“We think a lot of them (charters) need to be closed, because they’re not doing a good job,” Harris said. “We think charters have a role in the education base, but we also think most of the charters in Ohio stink.”

Back to David Hansen, whose official title is head of the Office of Quality School Choice and Funding.

What does he do for the tax dollars we pay him? Has he taken any steps to correct the pattern of wrongdoing? Does he have a position on the charter school reform bills moving through the legislature?

Lots of other folks have positions and are not shy about giving them.

(Read more at Plunderbund)