Ohio's Charter School War fails us when we could really use them.

With all this COVID-19 talk, every Ohio Public School District is planning to move to online instruction through the end o fthe year. While that seems like a heavy lift, it really shouldn't be. Why?

Because no state has more students already attending virtual schools than Ohio.

Yet in no instance has the Ohio Department of Education or any shcool district -- despite this emergency crisis -- said, "Hey, we have a lot of online schools already, why don't we ask them for help?"

Why haven't districts sought help? Simple: Ohio's online schools perform so poorly and have garnered such bad faith in the local public school community that I am willing to bet it never crossed school leaders' minds to reach out to, for example, the Ohio Virtual Academy -- whose diplmoas aren't accepted by the NCAA -- to see if the school could help the district transition.

Instead, districts are choosing to reinvent their own wheel.

Maybe if the state had actually spent the last 20 years trying to ensure quality online education was going on, we'd be in a different place. Instead, they've avoided doing much if anything about online schools. If they had held these schools to more account, our local public schools could be smoothly transitioning to online education using our robust online education sector as a model.

Instead these schools, which educate about 35,000 students exclusively in the online realm where all 1.6 million kids will soon be, are not even an afterthought.

After years of failing online schools -- epitomized by the ECOT disaster but replicated in other states -- and constant denials of the online schools' academic and ficnanicial impact on local public schools, the relationship has seriously been poisoned, if it ever really existed.

Perhaps during this crisis, an opportunity to improve online education and develop a positive working relationship between them and local public schools will occur.

But I'm not holding my breath. And that, my friends, is the tragic fallout from Ohio lawmakers' 20-year blind devotion to a failing online school sector.

It didn't have to be this way.

But here we are.

Are Ohio eSchools Spending $207 million More Than They Should?

I don't mean to be alarmist here, but if the Dispatch stories about Ohio's eSchools getting paid for far more kids than they actually have enrolled are extrapolated to all Ohio eSchools, we could be looking at a $207 million overpayment.

Last year, eSchools were paid more than $268 million.

The Ohio Department of Education has recently found that two of Ohio's eSchools (Provost Academy and Lakewood Digital Academy) only had about 22% of the kids they billed the state to educate. The two schools told the state they had 212 kids, but they really only had 48.

Extrapolating that disparity across the $268 million eSchool sector means the state should have only paid $61 million to these schools.

What a scandal if these numbers hold up.

What a travesty for our state's kids.

Newfound Concern about eSchool Attendance Not so New

Over the last several days, the Columbus Dispatch has been reporting that the Ohio Department of Education is going to start cracking down on attendance figures at Ohio's eSchools, even the most infamous of all -- The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), which is run by major political donor William Lager.

The reason is that Provost Academy was found to only have 32 full-time students, not the 155 the school reported. Likewise, Lakewood Digital Academy only had 16, not 57 students enrolled full time.

While I'm relieved that ODE is finally double checking these enrollment issues, I'm disheartened that we're acting like this is a new thing. Look at a Special Audit from ECOT's very first year of existence -- 2000. It should look familiar:

"In November of 2000, the Executive Director of ODE’s Office of School Finance, contacted the Auditor of State’s Office regarding the significant student enrollment reported by ECOT on its September 2000 and October 2000 Average Daily Membership (ADM) reports and possible irregularities in how those enrollment amounts were generated. Also in November 2000, representatives of the Auditor of State’s Office met with then ECOT Superintendent, Dr. Coletta Musick, who expressed concerns that numerous students included within ECOT’s enrollment numbers for September and October 2000 did not actually receive services from ECOT during those months."

This information was presented to the Auditor of State’s Special Audit Committee and on November 16, 2000, the Committee voted to initiate a Special Audit of ECOT. It was decided our procedures would be performed for the monthly enrollment reports submitted to ODE for September and October 2000 which were paid by ODE in November and December 2000, respectively"

But that's not all. The audit found that "during September and October 2000, ODE paid ECOT $1,688,836 for students who did not meet this definition" of a full-time student.

In fact, this dubious enrollment accounting is what caused ODE to reject ECOT (the state's first and largest eSchool) when it initially applied to be a charter -- one of the only schools the State Board ever rejected in the charter school program's first years. So ECOT went to the Lucas County Educational Service Center. The Lucas County ESC is now called Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West, which is now the state's largest and oldest sponsor of charters. The ESC of Lake Erie West has been the source of additional recent scrutiny.

So let's stop acting like verifying eSchool enrollment is some novel scandal or something. We've known it was a problem literally since the first month eSchools opened here. Responsible State School Board members raised these same concerns nearly two decades ago before an eSchool ever opened. Yet it did.

Here's my question: Why has it taken so long to finally crack down on this issue? ODE itself raised the question. The State Auditor verified the problem and ECOT was fined.

In 2001!  

For some perspective, Ohio's had four full classes of students go through the K-12 system in that same time.

This is what massive campaign contributions and complicit overseers get you, I suppose. I shudder to think of how much money we've paid these operations (which now collect about $270 million annually -- more than $100 million alone at ECOT) for kids that they never educated.

Can you imagine the potential outrage if some official would look at all the eSchool enrollment since 2000 and see how much we, the taxpayers, paid for kids these schools never saw? I sure wish someone would try.

Suffice it to say, I understand why the quality-based charter school community is trying to throw eSchools overboard, even claiming they're not really charters (even though they are).

This unfolding scandal could reveal enormous amounts of misspent taxpayer dollars -- among the largest ever -- if the results at Provost and Lakewood are repeated at all the state's eSchools.

Let's hope this is an isolated incident.

But I wouldn't bet on it.

Ohio E-Schools: Ohio's Baddest Apples

Four years ago, I helped write an Innovation Ohio analysis of Ohio's E-Schools that was one of the first examinations of the statewide impact of those schools on Ohio's kids and districts. Needless to say, E-School performance was dreadful. The report kind of put IO on the map and was cited by many national outlets and in Diane Ravitch's most recent book.

Fresh off the revelations that the Ohio Virtual Academy -- the state and nation's second-largest for-profit school -- may have been fudging their enrollment data to get paid, I decided to take another look, this time with our partners at KnowYourCharter.com. The results are worse now.

Here are the highlights:

• More than half of the money going from better performing Ohio school districts to worse performing charters goes to 6 statewide E-Schools
• 98% of all the children attending charters that performed worse than their feeder districts on all the state’s report card measures went to the same six statewide Ohio E-Schools – at a cost of $72 million
• Local Ohio taxpayers have had to subsidize $104 million of the cost of Ohio E-Schools because students in E-Schools receive so much more per pupil funding from the state than would their local public school.

What else is remarkable is that the school districts that have the most similar rates of poverty also outperform E-Schools. By a substantial margin. And E-Schools provide a substantial portion of the money and children lost to the worst performing charters in Ohio.

Charters would still be a problem in Ohio, and their performance would remain worse than districts overall. However, the gap would be narrowed.

The money is really what gets me. Charters get paid enough now to provide 15:1 student-teacher ratios, $2,000 laptops to every student and still clear about 35%. Instead, they only spend 17% of their funding on teachers. What else is there in an E-School, which has no buildings, janitors, lunch ladies, buses, etc.?

I commend Sens. Lehner and Sawyer for taking on E-Schools in their Senate Bill 148. It's a modest attempt, but given the fact that both Mssrs. Brennan (who runs OHDELA) and Lager (who runs ECOT) have contributed more to politicians over the last 16 years than any other individuals (while collecting about 1 in 4 charter dollars spent during that period), I admire the willingness to take on this issue.

I am also a realist. And as long as big campaign contributions are made, real reform will be a huge challenge. But here's hoping that this legislature is up to it. Our kids and taxpayers can't afford this anymore.

Brenner Strikes Again

Remember state Rep. Andrew Brenner, who last month claimed that public education was socialism? Well, he's back at it -- pimping and making excuses for statewide eSchools (which are among the worst performing schools in the state) while saying those same excuses are not allowed for traditional public schools.

Here's the Gongwer Report where he does this (subscription required). The opening sentence is perfect irony when he excuses poor performance of eSchools because they "can be tied to the challenging population they serve." Couldn't that be said of major urban districts too?

Oh no. Not to Brenner, who happens to be the vice chairman of the House Education Committee. He claimed that the urbans hadn't made the "management decisions" other districts have made.

For the record, the Big 8 Urban districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) spent 14% of their money on administrative, non-instructional costs last year. The major statewide eSchools (the Alternative Education Academy, Buckeye Online School for Success, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, Ohio Connections Academy, Ohio Virtual Academy, Treca Digital Academy and the Virtual Community School of Ohio)? Try 23%. Perhaps eSchools should be making the "management decisions" the Big 8 have made.

And why should we be even comparing the statewide eSchools in performance or cost with the Big 8 anyway? About 80% of all statewide eSchool students come from non-Big 8 districts. So shouldn't the "apples-to-apples" comparison Brenner requested we make on performance be with non-Big 8 districts?

Anyway, remember that eSchools don't have busing, lunch rooms, buildings or any other fixed cost of a brick-and-mortar operation. Yet the average statewide eSchool still spends more per pupil than a handful of school districts, even though school districts get local revenue too. In fact, the average eSchool spends $7,266 per pupil while the average district spends $9,826 per pupil.

What's the difference?

Try operations support (busing, mostly). The average eSchool spends $78 on this category. The average district spends $1,935 per pupil. If you subtract out the districts' busing costs, the average Ohio eSchool spends more per pupil than 234 school districts, or nearly 4 in 10 districts. And they only get outspent by less than $3,000 per pupil in the Big 8.

And remember that because they're urban districts, the Big 8 are mandated to spend a lot of that money -- they have little choice. So actually, when you account for those spending realities, the average Big 8 district spends $8,490 per pupil -- not far off from the statewide eSchool average of $7,266. And remember that number includes busing. Subtract it and urbans are likely spending less per pupil than eSchools.

So how efficient are these virtual operations, really?

Which brings me to Brenner's most outrageous statement, where he claims that eSchools' performance is achieved spending "$6,000" while some districts are spending $20,000 for similarly bad results. Again, the statewide eSchools (which house nearly all of the eSchool kids) spend about 21% more than Brenner's claim -- $7,266 on average. And, for the record, there are 2. That's right, 2 school districts in Ohio spending $20,000 or more per pupil. One is Orange City Schools -- one of the state's top 5 districts. The other is Cleveland Heights, which, while struggling, is hardly as bad as, say, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow -- Ohio's oldest, largest eSchool.

That's it. And once you subtract costs for busing, etc. no Ohio district spends more than $20,000 per pupil. Not a one.

Again, Brenner is spinning the apocryphal story that public schools spend money less efficiently and get worse results. The truth, my friends, is the exact opposite. And when you look at Fleeter's analysis, the more discretionary money an Ohio school district has, the better they tend to perform. The highest performing districts in the state, in Fleeter's analysis, have the highest discretionary per pupil spending.

It wasn't that long ago that I discovered that the statewide eSchools received enough state money to pay for 15:1 student-teacher ratios and a $2,000 laptop every year for every student and still clear nearly 40% profit. I'm not the only one who's questioned why Ohio taxpayers should be forking over nearly double the per pupil amount for eSchools as they do for traditional public schools. The average online eSchool gets about $6,800 per pupil from the state (the rest of the $7,266 is mostly federal and private money). The average district gets a bit more than $3,500.

So, when kids go to eSchools, they typically remove more state money from the district than the state would have received if the kid had stayed in the district, which leaves kids not in eSchools (who are in mostly higher performing districts) with less state revenue.

It would be one thing if eSchools were rocking the socks off traditional districts on performance. But they aren't -- a fact Brenner, to his credit, acknowledged, before he made his excuses. In fact, ECOT graduates barely 1/3 of its kids. Yet they were able to pull Gov. John Kasich to speak at their 2011 graduation ceremony. Would Kasich go to to a traditional public school graduation where even 70% of the kids graduated? No way. Even though that's twice the rate of ECOT.

My biggest disappointment with Brenner is this: Our kids need guys like Brenner -- people who are strong choice proponents -- to be the fiercest proponents for excellence in choice. Brenner had an opportunity to stand before eSchools and demand they do better. The rest of the state has to do more with less. So should they. "The days of 35% graduation rates for double the state money are over," he could have said.

But he didn't.

Instead, he did that which folks in the choice movement have derided public school advocates for years: make excuses.

That constitutes a failure of leadership. And it's extremely disappointing. But I can't say it's unexpected. After all, the operator of ECOT -- William Lager -- did spend $180,000 on Republican lawmakers just in the last few weeks of the last budget. So perhaps Brenner is angling for some of that.

There's an old saying that goes something like this (PG rated version): "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, take their money, then vote against them the next day, you shouldn't be in politics." Brenner is in a great position to make much needed changes in Ohio's eSchool landscape. Instead, he excused their miserable failings by using misleading arguments.

Our kids deserve better.