Or the Sword of Damocles? Or a guillotine for politicians who feasted at William Lager’s full trough while the getting was good?

Politico Morning Education reports:

WILL A FAILED VIRTUAL CHARTER HAUNT REPUBLICANS COME NOVEMBER? Ohio Democrats for years have complained about the state’s welcome of virtual charter schools, which educate thousands of kids who log on at home.

— Then, in January, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — one of the nation’s largest K-12 schools — collapsed, leaving 12,000 Ohio students to find a new school. With that, Democrats believe they’ve found a politically potent issue ahead of the November midterms.

— Ohio Democrats on the campaign trail are charging that Republicans turned a blind eye to ECOT’s clear problems, while accepting campaign contributions from the school’s owner. The line of attack is creating a political headache for GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine and on down the ballot.

— “People should’ve held a big failing charter school like this accountable, should’ve stopped the millions of dollars from pouring into it over many years, should have investigated a lot of the rumors about inflated attendance figures,” Richard Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who is DeWine’s Democratic challenger in a closely watched race, told POLITICO.

— The GOP calls the Democrats disingenuous. They argue it’s Republicans like DeWine and State Auditor Dave Yost, the party’s candidate for attorney general, who are tackling the problem. “Republicans have made necessary reforms to Ohio’s charter school system and held bad actors accountable while Democrats have done nothing but hurl misleading attacks from the sidelines,” said Blaine Kelly, an Ohio Republican Party spokesman.

— The issue plays out as the Ohio Supreme Court decides whether the school must return $80 million to Ohio coffers, since the state alleges scores of students went sometimes days at a time without logging in. The school’s graduation rate was 40 percent. Read more from your host.

— Meanwhile, Cleveland.com reports that Ron Packard, the founder and former CEO of online learning giant K12 Inc., which has also faced scrutiny over the years, has acquired a different virtual school in Ohio, the Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy. Like ECOT, it has struggled academically.

— The changes proposed by Packard include requiring more in-person meetings between teachers and students and less advertising. “We’re trying to create the next generation model, which will be a more service-intensive design to get kids engaged in the process and have more face-to-face time,” Packard said.

Also in the same edition of Politico Morning Education:

BIG SCHOOL FUNDING RULING FROM OUT WEST: A state court judge has ruled that New Mexico has an “inadequate system” to fund the state’s schools that violates the constitutional rights of at-risk students. District Judge Sarah Singleton set an April 15 deadline for the state to rectify the situation.

— “Reforms to the current system of financing public education and managing schools should address the shortcomings of the current system by ensuring, as a part of that process, that every public school in New Mexico would have the resources necessary for providing the opportunity for a sufficient education for all at-risk students,” Singleton wrote.

— The ruling came in the consolidated lawsuits of Yazzie v. State of New Mexico and Martinez v. State of New Mexico. It’s unclear yet whether state state officials, who were reviewing the ruling over the weekend, will appeal it, WRAL reported.

— The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty, which represented the plaintiffs, are holding a press conference at 10 a.m. mountain time today in Albuquerque to discuss the ruling. Watch it on Facebook Live. Read the decision here.

New Mexico has the highest percentage of children in poverty of any state other than Mississippi. Its schools are underfunded. This is a first step towards educational equity for the state. It has been firmly under the control of conservative Republicans and Reformers for the past eight years and is stuck at about 49th on NAEP. New Mexico schools showed no improvement during the reign of Reformer Hannah Skandera. There is a good chance that Democrats will sweep the state this fall and kick the Reformers out and replace them with educators who have ideas about how to help kids that don’t involve privatizing their schools or punishing their teachers.