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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > September > 11 > Entry
Editorial: Dann loses again, but he’s not all wrong
A strategy pioneered by disgraced former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has flopped.
There’s a news flash.
Mr. Dann’s tortured idea of treating charter schools as “charitable trusts” — which would allow him to sue the low-scoring ones — has been soundly rejected by the courts.
Well, it wasn’t exactly his idea. Actually the plan came from a lawyer for the Ohio Education Association, a state teachers’ union that is critical of charters and that supported Mr. Dann, according to e-mails unearthed in 2007 by the Columbus Dispatch.
On Friday, the Dayton area’s 2nd District Court of Appeals became the fourth Ohio court to say Mr. Dann had it wrong — that his office did not have jurisdiction over charter schools, which are publicly financed schools that operate independently of local school districts.
Two Dayton schools were targeted by Mr. Dann. He succeeded in shuttering the Colin Powell Leadership Academy, but New Choices Community School has helped lead the successful courtroom counter offensive.
Richard Cordray, who is the new attorney general, is still deciding whether to appeal the district court’s ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court. That’s an easy call. It’s time for the state to give up this losing battle.
But before everyone writes off the episode as just another kooky gambit from the embarrassing Dann era, consider this: in one sense, Mr. Dann was right. Undoubtedly, it was, and is, time for somebody to get tough on perpetually failing charter schools. Consider what Mr. Dann said about Colin Powell Leadership Academy in his initial complaint:
• It has met only one of the 61 applicable indicators of school performance during its six years of operation.
• Its Performance Index Scores have been persistently abysmal, averaging 51.58 out of a possible 120, giving the equivalent of a very low “F.”
• It has failed to meet federal “Adequate Yearly Progress” standards for the last five school years.
• It has consistently lagged behind the performance of the Dayton City School District on the state tests common to both Colin Powell Leadership Academy and Dayton. The litany is pretty damning, and it doesn’t even mention that state auditors found its books were a fiscal mess, too.
How could such a school have been allowed to operate for six years? Without Mr. Dann’s lawsuit, it might still be open.
Even some strong supporters of charter schools have been frustrated with Ohio’s laid-back approach toward low-end charters. The true believers in the charter school movement want bad charters to close, if for no other reason than they are tarring the reputation of the good charters.
Ohio’s charter school law gives primary oversight of the schools to sponsors, which include nonprofit groups and school districts. That system could work if the sponsors all were reliable, or if the Ohio Department of Education insisted they be. But that hasn’t been the case.
Ohio has established better standards for poor charters — a new law closes down schools that can’t break out of the state’s lowest rating categories after three years — but it’s still not expecting enough from sponsors.
Just back in May, state Auditor Mary Taylor’s office came out with another devastating report on a local charter school, this time an outfit called New City School.
Ms. Taylor’s investigators found the school had more than $200,000 in debt, had stopped paying health insurance without telling its employees and failed to follow basic accounting procedures. Its academic performance wasn’t much better.
Then last month her office cited another low-scoring school — Main Street Automotive — for fraud, saying the school’s operators owed the state $116,000 in missing student aid. Both schools are sponsored by the Lucas County Educational Service Center.
The Colin Powell school was sponsored by Education Resource Consultants of Ohio, a Cincinnati-based group that also sponsors several other troubled charter schools. Isn’t it time for the state to expect more from sponsors?
Marc Dann’s lawsuits were a stretch, but his creative lawyering aside, he was right that somebody needs to step in when charter schools don’t measure up.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Education, Scott Elliott
Comments
By School Supporter
September 14, 2009 9:07 AM | Link to this
Really. We are to believe Ohio’s worst charter schools are in or adjacent to John Husted’s district. This was union-supported political payback from the start. Imagine—CPLA kids doing worse than average for DPS kids! But wait! CPLA was the public school closest to DeSoto Bass, and the achievement scores closely track poverty. If we’re serious about the standards Marc Dann wants New Choices to meet, why don’t we liqudiate the entire Youngstown district?