The media has swallowed the myth that John Kasich is a moderate. They have forgotten that he tried to eliminate collective bargaining but was rebuked by Ohio’s voters. Certainly the media doesn’t know about the shameful profiteering in Ohio’s charter sector, where wealthy campaign contributors have been excused from any accountability. Just keep those campaign bucks coming!

At least the Cleveland Plain Dealer knows the story. Kasich’s campaign manager is Beth Hansen. Her husband David Hansen resigned as director of charter school operations after he presented phony data to the feds and won a $71 million grant to create more charter schools. Unfortunately–it must have been a “lapse of judgment”–he neglected to include in his report to the US Department of Education the F grades of Ohio’s online charter schools (a source of great profit to their owners and a reliable source of political donations).

In an editorial the newspaper said:

At this point, it’s nearly impossible to trust anything the Ohio Department of Education has to say on charter school performance, the subject of so much chicanery last year that in November the federal government froze a giant $71 million charter school expansion grant to Ohio.

And it just gets worse.

The latest news? A Jan. 29 letter from ODE to federal regulators sent in an attempt to win back the grant reveals that Ohio has nearly 10 times as many failing charter schools as it first reported to the U.S. Department of Education in its 2015 charter-school-expansion grant application.

The letter was in response to a federal government request for more information from Ohio as it reviews the state’s once-successful grant that would allow the best charter schools to expand using federal funds.

The state department of education seems to be more committed to the well-being of the charter industry than to Ohio’s children, say the editorial writers.

Here is the latest restatement of the charter data:

In the letter, the state increased the number of failing charter schools to 57 in 2013-2014 compared with six in the original application. That’s a nearly tenfold difference. At the same time, the letter reported 59 high-performing charter schools instead of 93, a 36 percent decrease.

So Ohio has 57 failing charter schools, and 59 high-performing charter schools. Picking a successful charter is akin to flipping a coin. Meanwhile, scarce taxpayer dollars are subsiding an inexcusable number of failing charter schools. And the state wants more.

If you want a candidate to take from the middle class and give to the rich, if you want a candidate to protect the powerful, if you want a candidate to attack unions and working people, Kasich is for you.

Valerie Strauss posted earlier today a review of Kasich’s education record. It is a mess and nothing to boast about. He is no more a moderate than Cruz, Rubio, or Bush.

Most Dayton charter schools received an F grade from the state of Ohio for failing to teach children in grades K-3 to read.

Most local charter schools got F’s in K-3 Literacy on the recently released state report card, failing to help struggling kindergarten through third-grade readers make adequate improvement.

Of the 15 Montgomery County charter schools that were graded in K-3 Literacy improvement, 13 received F’s. Charter schools accounted for eight of the 10 worst K-3 Literacy improvement scores in the county (of 69 graded schools), with two Dayton Public Schools also on that list.

State Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, wondered whether smaller charter schools are making the changes required by the state’s new K-3 requirements, as well as larger public districts that have more infrastructure. She also advised patience with any new measure.

“K-3 Literacy is a new metric, and I think the jury is still out on exactly what it is telling us,” said Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee. “But this is troublesome. We’ll have to look at this much closer, and hear from the charters why they think we’re seeing this.”

The two top scoring charters managed to teach half their students to read.

While top charters scored better than DPS, the worst charters scored worse than the public district. Only two of Dayton Public’s 19 graded schools scored below 15 percent on the K-3 Literacy measure, while more than half of charters (eight) scored that poorly. The only graded Greene County charter, Summit Academy, also received an F.

Meanwhile Governor John Kasich–and every other Republican candidate– is in New Hampshire and Iowa, touting the success of charter schools. When will our elected officials be honest and admit that there is no secret recipe in charter schools? In Ohio, public schools outperform charter schools, yet state officials are obsessed with charters, charters, charters.

William Phillis, a retired Deputy Commissioner of Ohio, leads the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition. He fears for the future of public education because of the capture of the State Legislature by the privatization movement. The greatest danger, he writes, is charters, because they are promoted as reforms when they are a threat to pubic education and an insidious tool for privatization.

He writes:

 
The privatization of the public common school movement can be stopped: but a different approach is necessary

Many, if not most, public common school officials and public education advocates in Ohio have humored state officials since 1999 about the supposed merits of charter schools; and at the same time have given these state officials a pass on not creating a constitutional school funding system.
So what has been the result of this passive approach?
Loss of tangible personal property tax funds/state reimbursement for the loss
*Current public school funding level at about where it was seven years ago and no progress toward a constitutional system
*$1 billion being extracted from school districts this school year for a grossly failing charter industry
*Harmful education mandates being foisted on school districts
*$200 million being extracted this year from school districts for vouchers
*Charters are the epicenter of the privatization movement.

So what is the definitive goal of the privatizers?

Replace the common school, not supplement it

Eliminate teachers unions, boards of education and the teaching profession as it currently exists
Charters in Ohio have performed less well for children in neighborhoods with a high concentration of poverty; nevertheless, the market-driven reformers, aided by the Wall Street billionaires, education philanthropists and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are moving forward with their agenda-replace the public common school system with a multi-faceted, privately-operated array of education competitors.

It is now time to recognize and renounce the dishonesty and greed inherent in the Ohio charter industry. The Ohio charter experiment is not fixable because it was created under false pretenses and is not answerable to the people it claims to serve.
Common school officials and public education advocates need to engage every community in a campaign to repeal the laws that created the parasitic charter industry.

 
William Phillis
Ohio E & A

ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net
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