Ron Packard: The New David Brennan

Not many people paid much attention to the passing of the torch, but when Ron Packard -- the infamous former owner of the oft-maligned K12, Inc. (whose diplomas aren't accepted by the NCAA) -- started buying up David Brennan's former White Hat Management empire in 2015, it didn't mark the end of an era.

It marked its continuation. (Except for the massive political contributions -- for now.)

A little background. Packard founded K12, Inc. and was paid millions to run the only school operation ever sold on the New York Stock Exchange -- a notoriously poor-performing online charter school operation that at the time of his departure was the nation's largest. Now he runs the Accel Schools chain in Ohio, which according to the latest data from the Ohio Department of Education operates 37 Ohio charter schools.

Tellingly, Accel started barely a handful of these schools. Nearly all were snatched up from mostly White Hat Management, including OHDELA -- long the cash cow of the White Hat operation, along with the dropout recovery Life Skills operation. And while Packard portrays himself as a turnaround guy, what he really seems to be is the education sector's Gordon Gecko -- an education corporate raider.

Accel recently took another page out of White Hat (which has dissolved into several small operations that run one or two Life Skills schools) and started splitting off some of its schools. Instead of operating all 37 under the single Accel Schools umbrella, now Accel schools in Akron, Canton, Columbus and Cleveland are run by splinter Accel Schools operators. 

Why would Packard do this?

Perhaps to boost the academic rating of the Accel Schools umbrella brand? 

See, prior to the splintering, Accel rated a D as a charter school operator, according to the state. This year, with those schools now run by "different" operators, the ones remaining under the umbrella Accel Schools operation got a C.

That's a higher grade than the D received each of the last three years by the revered Breakthrough Schools in Cleveland (a result I will examine more closely in a future post).

But see, here's the thing. In a recent story about how Ohio Charter Schools want a 22% raise from the state, Packard is quoted as saying, 

"Brick and mortar schools are a very low margin business."

This is what happens when you say you want to run schools like a business. You get guys talking about profit margins in education like they're restaurants or something.

But aside from that, this quote is straight Brennan. Remember K12, Inc.? The nation's largest online charter school operator that Packard founded and ran for many years?

Guess which state propped up his national operation? If you said, "Ohio", you'd be half right. Between Ohio and Pennsylvania's generosity with their taxpayers' money, Packard consistently reported to the SEC that about 1/4 of his company's total revenue came from those two states.

As he reported in his annual 10-K from 2012 (and other years around that time):

"In fiscal year 2012, we derived approximately 12% and 13% of our revenues, respectively, from the Ohio Virtual Academy and the Agora Cyber Charter School in Pennsylvania. In aggregate, these schools accounted for approximately 25% of our total revenues. If our contracts with either of these virtual public schools are terminated, the charters to operate either of these schools are not renewed or are revoked, enrollments decline substantially, funding is reduced, or more restrictive legislation is enacted, our business, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected."

He knows that in Ohio, there is a TON of profit to be made in the online charter school sector. In fact, there's enough for Ohio taxpayers to essentially subsidize an entire national operation.

Which is why he felt the need to qualify his "low margin business" quote to the PD to just the brick and mortar sector. And why he probably leaped at the chance to grab OHDELA from Brennan's fire sale.

But see, here's the problem. Brick and Mortar schools are not a very low margin business. We are told, even by charter school proponents, that they are a "non-profit" business. In fact, all charters are considered "non-profit" by the state.

Except the schools can hire sharks like Packard to run their operations. And Packard is allowed to make a profit. This profiteering hasn't led to billion dollar scandals or anything, has it?

Wait. Perhaps it has. 

Which is why Packard's growth and increased voice in Ohio should worry Ohio taxpayers who have been burned by 20 years of charter school profiteering.

This is why I'm so encouraged by House Speaker Larry Householder saying a few weeks ago that "those management entities, I believe should be nonprofit."

Not low profit margins. No profit margins.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Ohio's Largest Campaign Finance Violator named Trump's Education Secretary

Well, this is something. Amway Billionaire Betsy DeVos was named as Donald Trump's Education Secretary choice today.

Wow.

DeVos has a bad history here in Ohio. In 2006, she allowed David Brennan to launder campaign cash through her All Children Matter PAC. That led to the largest fine ever levied against a candidate or PAC by the Ohio Elections Commission -- $5.2 million. By all accounts, that fine was larger than all fines put together.

DeVos is an avowed school choice champion. She has been politically active to elect pro-school choice candidates around the country. And there is little question she would continue to push for more vouchers and charter schools as Secretary.

However, there's not a great track record with federal charter school investment. Just in Ohio, we found that about 1/3 of all the money sent to grow high-quality charters went to charters that closed shortly after receiving the federal funding, or never opened in the first place.

In all other federal grant programs, only 2% of the entities failed or failed to open.

I hope DeVos is focused on quality rather than choice for choice's sake. But combining this news with the crazy, unwarranted and clearly politically motivated attacks against state Sen. Peggy Lehner and her family (which will be the subject of a standalone post form me later), one starts to think that perhaps the quality-based choice advocates are about to be crushed.

And that would be terrible for our nation's kids.

Ohio's Dropout Recovery Schools Embarrassingly Poor Performing

The data on Ohio's dropout recovery charter schools is so bad I'm wondering if anything can ever really be done to repair this portion of the charter sector. Dropout recovery students are inherently more difficult to reach. Look, I get it. But the performance metrics released last week by the Ohio Department of Education are just alarming, especially considering these schools are "educating" our most vulnerable students in desperate need of high-quality educational opportunities to catch them up to speed.

How alarming is this performance?

Try these data points:

• There are only two Dropout Recovery Schools (out of 93) that have any kids reportedly accomplishing industry credentials, and only two schools have any kids achieving dual enrollment credit in an institution of higher education. And the percentage of kids that have achieved this are 1.3% or less of the Class of 2014 that graduated from each of the schools.
• The State of Ohio says a Dropout Recovery School meets its "standard" if 28 out of 210 eligible students graduate ... IN 8 YEARS!
• The State of Ohio says a Dropout Recovery School meets its "standard" if 8.4% of the school's students graduate in 4 years.
• The Greater Ohio Virtual School graduated a stunning 3 out of 149 students ... IN 8 YEARS!
• Out of the 1,100 students eligible to graduate in four years from the state's 13 Life Skills Centers (run by major political donor David Brennan's White Hat Management), only 57 graduated -- 18 of whom came from one school. That's a stunningly low 5.2% four-year graduation rate overall. Eliminating the one Life Skills Center with the 18 graduates drops the average in the remaining 12 schools to an incredible 4.4% -- only about 1/2 of the state's minimum graduation rate.

• Overall, there were 7,324 students eligible to graduate from Dropout Recovery schools in four years. Only 1,590 did. That rate of 22% is actually 3 percentage points higher than the eight-year graduation rate, which was an amazing 19% (1,527 out of 8,015).
• Schools "exceed" state standards on four-year graduation rates if they have rates higher than 37%. Only 23 schools met that criterion.

I could go on. But suffice it to say, Ohio's Dropout Recovery Schools, on the whole, are utterly failing at their primary purpose -- rescuing dropouts and graduating them. 

And to add insult to injury, they have very little fear from the state. Why's that? Because a loophole in Ohio law allows even a substandard Dropout Recovery school to continue operations as long as it improves its four-year graduation rate by 10% a year for two straight years.

How that would apply to Life Skills of North Akron, which graduated 0 of its 61 eligible kids, is unclear (because 10% of 0 is 0). However, for Life Skills of Toledo, which graduated 1 out of 48 kids (for a 2.1% graduation rate), as long as the school graduates 1.2 kids in two years, it can remain open.

Only in Ohio.

Dropout Recovery Schools and eSchools are two of the biggest problems in the charter school sector here. It is no coincidence that the state's two biggest political players make their money operating Dropout Recovery Schools and eSchools. 

Let's hope our state's leaders finally take a serious look at both sectors and save the kids who are being utterly failed by these dismally performing schools. 

We have to stop helping the politically active adults who run these things and rescue our state's most vulnerable kids from their thieving clutches.

Ohio Supreme Court Justices Take Money from White Hat, Lets them Profit from Failure

Today, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that White Hat Management -- the state's worst performing large-scale charter school operator -- gets to keep all the equipment it uses public money to buy, even if the school was shut down for being one of the state's worst performing schools.

White Hat -- run by Republican mega donor David Brennan -- can sell the equipment how it sees fit, even if it was its own incompetence and failure that led to the school's closing.

While this opinion may seem somewhat surprising, what isn't surprising is that the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the opinion has taken $5,000 in campaign contributions from Brennan and his family. Justice Judith Lanzinger received that money in 2004.

Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor -- whose political career started in Brennan's Summit County backyard -- received money every year she was up for the court in 2002, 2008 and 2010 when she ran for the Chief Justice seat. She has received a total of $11,900. Surprised she signed onto Lanzinger's opinion?

Justice Judith French received $7,200 last year when she ran for the high court -- as the White Hat lawsuit was pending. Any surprise she voted to uphold White Hat's right to profit from their failed school management?

I credit Justice Terrence O'Donnell for recusing himself from the case. He received more money than any other sitting Justice -- $15,000.

Justice Paul Pfeiffer took money from Brennan in the early 1990s, but hasn't recently and dissented from the Lanzinger opinion.

The opinions on this case are complex and complicated, with many of the Justices trying to seem like they are with White Hat on some things, but not others. Don't let them fool you with their strained efforts. On the only thing that mattered -- allowing Brennan to profit from his failed operations -- they were lock step behind their benefactor.

This case demonstrates emphatically the problem with electing judges. Namely, you get politicians in robes. The Court sat on the case for more than a year, but the minute the media started calling them out for the delay, they drop this disjointed opinion. Their vote splitting on various issues reminds me of legislative maneuvering to let members in tight districts save some face on what will be a bad bottom line vote for their district.

The other big charter school donor in this state -- William Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, which received $100 million last year in state funding as well as all Fs and one D on the state report card -- also gave to Lanzinger, French, O'Connor and O'Donnell. While it wasn't Lager's issue that was before the court, the ruling would let Lager profit off the computers he lets kids use and other equipment he acquires while running that online school -- the nation's largest for-profit school.

We stagger as a state toward a respectable charter school program, while being constantly face slapped by the extraordinary challenges facing those who want quality school options for Ohio's kids. This case is another sobering reminder that, in the words of Robert Frost, we Ohioans who want quality options for kids have miles to go on this journey.

Like Frost, we have to keep seeking. We cannot sleep.

Ohio Charter School Sheriff All White Hat, No Cattle

Well, that was quick. Less than a week after telling the State School Board that he had broken the law when he didn't count Fs for online charter schools run by big Republican campaign donors, David Hansen -- the husband of Gov. John Kasich's new presidential campaign manager Beth Hansen -- has resigned as Ohio's top school choice official.

This also comes just about a month after the Fordham Institute wrote a very hopeful blog post praising the Ohio Department of Education's recent crack down on a few low-performing charter schools -- the culmination of what had been about a year of hopeful signs from the department, including Fordham's specific praising of Hansen's "more aggressive" crackdown approach. If I'm Fordham today, I'm feeling more than a little bit deceived. And pissed.

I was less enthusiastic than my friends at Fordham, but agreed with them that there were encouraging signs. I had noticed the department had started calling school choice "quality school choice" and had issued a few directives to charter school sponsors warning them to do a better job of monitoring their schools.

My enthusiasm was always tempered by the fact that Hansen and ODE were ignoring the big fish. And that was, unfortunately, Hansen's undoing. None of these crackdowns were against schools run by big Republican donors -- David Brennan of White Hat Management or Bill Lager of the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow -- whose schools rate among the worst in the state and who educate about 20% of all Ohio charter school students.

Those two men have given more than $6 million to mostly Republican Ohio politicians since the program began and have collected more than $1.7 billion in state funds -- about 1 in every 4 charter dollars ever spent.

Instead, Hansen rigged the system -- apparently illegally -- to make their schools' poor scores not count against the sponsors that oversee them.

That also meant that sponsors wouldn't be motivated to improve these schools, even under a new charter reform bill, whose focus is on forcing sponsors to do a better job overseeing charters rather than directly closing the poor performers.

It is no accident that White Hat Management -- about the same time we found out the state wasn't counting certain schools' poor grades -- announced it was selling off its "highest" performing schools, whose still poor scores would be counted, and keeping its E-School and dropout recovery schools, whose worse scores wouldn't be counted.

As an aside, it will be interesting indeed if Hansen ends up working for White Hat, just like former Voinovich education czar Thomas Needles did.

This incident also points out another issue: Even if the new charter legislation passes eventually (a dubious proposition that this point), the fact that it grants so much discretion to ODE is quite problematic. It is now apparent that the gubernatorial takeover of the department -- a process started under Gov. George Voinovoich when school board members started being appointed rather than exclusively elected -- is now complete. The current state superintendent, Richard Ross, was Kasich's education czar, then moved on over to the department. Hansen had obvious close connections with the Kasich administration.

ODE is supposed to be an independent voice for Ohio's kids -- not a gubernatorial, or legislative  rubber stamp. It's time for the state school board to exercise its constitutional authority and start bringing at least some independence back to the agency so these kinds of politically motivated shenanigans don't happen again.

There are 123,000 charter school kids in Ohio who are, in the vast majority of cases, being poorly served by these schools -- even compared with the worst-performing local public schools.

The state needs a real watchdog for these kids, not a sheriff that's all white hat and no cattle.

Plain Dealer Shows Faith in Authorizers Misplaced, and David Brennan's Power

An absolutely amazing story from the Cleveland Plain Dealer came out yesterday the demonstrated emphatically why all this charter reform talk focusing on sponsors (authorizers in every other state) is so flawed.

In it, the PD explained that the worst-performing general education schools in the state -- E-Schools -- are not being counted by the state when they calculate the performance of sponsors. SO, for example, even though the Ohio Council of Community Schools sponsors two of the worst-performing schools in the state -- the Ohio Virtual Academy and David Brennan's OHDELA, the astounding number of Fs those schools get on the state report doesn't count for OCCS's rating. So the state says they're academically perfect, even though OCCS gets $1.5 million in taxpayer money to oversee these schools.

The other schools not counted? Dropout Recovery schools. So the schools David Brennan earns his money on aren't counted on sponsor ratings? So that means that no sponsor should fear oversight of a horrible White Hat school, especially now that they'll only be online schools or dropout recovery schools, because they won't count.

Amazing what $4 million will buy you these days, isn't it?

I've said from the beginning that one of the biggest flaws in the current charter reform effort is the almost singular focus on sponsors, whose effectiveness in this state has been feckless, rather than the schools themselves. I would much rather figure out how to close the schools in which children are being "educated", not the sponsors, who don't actually have the kids.

This amazing PD story demonstrates the point clearly to me.

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.

What's so ironic is the Academies are White Hat's best performing schools. Again, a little perspective is helpful. When your other schools don't get As or Bs on the state report card and graduate as few as 2 out of 155 students, that's not a very high bar. But the 1 A and 5 Bs White Hat schools earned on the state report card last year came out of the Academies. So the company is dumping its "highest performing schools" so it can keep their worst performing schools because they don't really have to worry about closing.

Is there a greater indictment of the state's charter school regime, by the way, then saying it makes business sense to keep your worst schools because at least they'll stay open?

Obviously, the greatest danger to White Hat's bottom line is a strong state school closure law. Even this state's pretty weak one (only 24 of the 571 schools that have opened in Ohio have ever been closed under that statute) has nailed a few White Hat schools.

So this sale will minimize any instability in the White Hat portfolio. They will just sit on their remaining, horrible educational options, collect their millions from us taxpayers, and enjoy their lives.

If only the children they refuse to serve could too.

I know it was automatically generated, but I found meaning in the fact that the link to the Cleveland Plain Dealer story about the White Hat sale ended in "opera" (short for operation) because that's exactly what the Ohio White Hat story has been -- a Wagnerian, tragic, endless tale of cursed gold, hopelessly flawed, even evil gods, and fallen heroes. Only this isn't an opera. It's kids lives -- lives that have been sacrificed so one man's epic quest for gold can continue.

Where is our kids' Brunnhilde? We need her to brave the flames. Now.

Summit Academy Implodes. Our Most At-Risk Kids Suffer

I'll never forget my first exchange with someone from Summit Academy nearly a decade ago. It was at, of all places, a Town Hall meeting I held in Suffield Township -- one of the little burgs I represented while serving two terms in the Ohio House of Representatives.

I don't remember the name of the gentleman who approached me, but I think he had an Australian accent (No, it wasn't Matthew Dellavedova. Go Cavs!).

His first comment to me was this: "We are not David Brennan."

Last year, Summit Academy ran the largest single branded chain of privately run charter schools in the state with 26. Brennan's White Hat Management still ran more schools -- 31 -- but that's split among his different brands -- an online operation (OHDELA), traditional schools (Academies) and dropout recovery schools (Life Skills).

Anyway, I took the Aussie's invitation and visited Summit Academy. Summit serves almost exclusively special needs children. The presentation they gave to me (and other legislators) was impressive. They were asking to be exempt from state performance measures because their kids simply don't test well. And I get that.

But that first interaction with Summit's representative always stuck with me. Because if you're a charter school operator from Summit County (like Summit is), you always have to distinguish yourself from the area's -- and state's -- most notorious charter school operator.

The Akron Beacon Journal (again) is leading on the coverage of what can simply be called an implosion at Summit Academy -- an implosion that is frankly as Brennan-like as anything I've seen.

First, on Monday, the Beacon reported that 9 employees from Summit Academy were ousted from their positions -- most likely because of massive conflict of interest issues. Then today, they reported that Summit Academy makes a habit of suing teachers who leave their position that pays an amazingly paltry $28,000 a year.

Wonder why teachers would want to leave? Um, that horrendous salary to help educate among the state's toughest-to-educate children would explain it.

They sue teachers for the cost of their replacement. And win.

I'm not making this up.

Brennan doesn't do this stuff. Yes, he does horrible stuff. But he doesn't habitually sue teachers for the cost of replacing them. That's just wrong on so many levels.

And free market reformers wonder why teachers want to be in unions.

I digress.

The Beacon reported today that the guy heading up Summit Academy now makes $200,000 a year -- more than the state superintendent, who oversees all Ohio's children. Now that is Brennan-like.

What breaks my heart is the kids Summit Academy are supposed to be educating. It appears the company is profiting from the additional funding the state provides to educate our state's most at-risk youth. Which means this operation appears to be everything Brennan is and more.

And while their performance is actually not horrible on special education -- only 3 of their schools have below a C on the report card for student growth among special needs children and twice as many have As in that category -- their management performance is every bit as miscreant as Brennan.

As I think back to that initial encounter, I'm wondering if I should have pushed for further explanation.

Because judging from what's happened, instead of saying "We're not David Brennan," a more accurate disclaimer would be, "We're not David Brennan. We're worse."

Ohio Charter Schools' Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week (andit's not even over yet)

Talk about a rough week. Take a look at the news stories coming out about charter schools this week.

On Saturday, the Akron Beacon Journal (again) led the way on enterprise reporting on this topic by publishing an analysis of 4,263 audits done last year by the Auditor of State revealed that 

"No sector — not local governments, school districts, court systems, public universities or hospitals — misspends tax dollars like charter schools in Ohio."

 Yikes.

Among the findings:

• While charters only accounted for 400 of 5,800 audits, they accounted for 70% of the misspent money
• $25 million in misspent money remains unpaid
• For every $1 misspent found by private auditors, public auditors found $102

The misspending is probably worse than what the audits turned up because so many charters were next to impossible to audit, according to the Beacon Journal.

Then came a Columbus Dispatch editorial (historically, no friend of the charter critic) that called out charter school sponsors for wanting to hide their expenditures to oversee the sector, except in limited cases -- an argument not much different from one I made about the same time.

Later that same day, the Dispatch revealed that the troubled North Side Imagine charter school might be shut down because its board just up and quit. This is the same school that was found last year to be spending an exorbitant amount of money leasing the property from a subsidiary of Imagine Schools -- a practice that was found to be illegal in Missouri. Imagine Schools, Inc. run schools in 11 states and are no stranger to controversy.

Meanwhile, the same day, the Dayton Daily News reported that three former Dayton-area charter school officials were convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges in connection with their operation of the Arise! Academy. 

They all face at least 15 years in federal prison for steering lucrative contracts to each other. 

Yesterday, the Plain Dealer reported that 3 charters have been put on notice that the state's looking to close them, including another 2 Imagine schools. That's not all.

"All three are failing to manage their budgets properly, ODE also said in the letters, and the Villaview and Cleveland Community School partnership could face ethics charges."

As a follow-up, this morning, WKYC-TV in Cleveland reported that not 3, but 4 charters -- including another Imagine school in Canton -- would be suspended for failing to meet performance requirements.

And finally, yesterday, the Beacon Journal told the tale of how private auditors sent out by the State Auditor's office failed to catch more than $1.3 million that had been outright taken from one area charter school, calling into question whether private auditing firms should even be used as a substitute for public auditors.

What did the private firm miss? Try this:

"It was an abrupt turnabout: A private accounting firm had given the charter school a clean bill of financial health, finding “no material weakness” despite missing information later discovered by the state. Among the state’s discoveries were employee contracts that lacked signatures, a cruise boat company had charged the school for too many attendees for a training session (nothing in the audit suggested training on cruise boats might be inappropriate) and half of the receipts were missing."

These stories all have been told before, though not as rapid-fire and in as quick succession. What they indicate is pretty clear: We desperately need real, substantive charter school reform. Now. The Ohio Senate is currently considering SB 148, which would be a meaningful improvement on the current situation. However, it still doesn't make it easier for the state to shut down poor performing charters, nor does it fix a funding system that far too often forces local property taxpayers to subsidize the state funding losses to woefully underperforming charter schools.

To be clear, there are a few quite exemplary charter schools out there. And I want to see them thrive in more places around this state. So this is in no way directed at the Breakthrough Schools, or DECA or Columbus Prep, or the Toledo School for the Arts. This is about the more than 3 out of 4 charter schools that simply aren't cutting it.

Again, I am not anti-charter school. I am extremely concerned about the state of Ohio's overall charter school health.

So let's at least get this Senate bill done. Judging from this week's worth of news stories, I imagine that Ohio's lawmakers and education advocates will be dealing with charter school issues for many more moons. It is indeed a shame that Ohio's sector is such a mess, both academically and financially. But when you turn over the program to big campaign contributors whose greatest talent is making money, not educating kids, is this result really so surprising?

Let's do what we can to fix this now. Forget politics. This is about saving kids. And we've got tens of thousands who need to be rescued from this system that has -- in the vast majority of cases -- lost its way amid profits and power. 

While some Ohio charter critics may rejoice at this awful spate of stories for the sector, I ache for the kids and parents who this is hurting. They deserve better. And so do the taxpayers who are seeing nearly $1 billion of their state money and hundreds of millions of their local tax money go to pay for and subsidize these operations.

It's a tragedy. An entire generation of kids has now gone through this utterly broken system. 

I shudder to think of the consequences.

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.

Ohio: Charters' 7.2% Grad Rate "Meets Standards". Really????

In the lame duck 2005-2006 legislative session, Ohio's legislature and historically unpopular Gov. Bob Taft exempted Ohio's Dropout Recovery Charter Schools from having to adhere to any new closure standards. In exchange, the State Board of Education had to develop operating standards for these schools by December 2007.

However, those standards were never adopted. Instead, Dropout Recovery Charter Schools operated without fear of closure, which made their operators -- including notorious political donor David Brennan's Life Skills Centers -- lots of money.

The state finally adopted Dropout Recovery standards a couple years ago. In exchange, these Charter Schools (now 90 strong) receive their own, much more lenient report card. This year was the first for Dropout Recovery Schools to have measurable data. And wow do these data raise serious questions about whether the state has any meaningful operating standards for these schools.

According to the Dropout Recovery report card, a 7.2% four-year graduation rate is designated "meets standards" (in which case, the Charter wouldn't close) while a 30% rate exceeds them. Wow. Really? 7.2%? 30%?

Sheesh but that's awful. Now, I understand that dropout recovery schools have a very challenging population of kids. I get it. But are we really going to say that spending $117.3 million on these 90 schools is a good use of taxpayer money? Dropout recovery is among the most important functions of our educational institutions. These are our most at-risk kids.

Yet the state says that if only 8 out of 111 eligible graduates graduate -- as is the case at Life Skills Center of Columbus North -- then the school has met the state's "rigorous" standards? Wow. Just. Wow.

The average graduation rate (dropout recovery schools are tracked for 4, 5, 6, and 7 years) is about 20-25% (take Life Skills out of the equation, and the rate jumps almost 5%). Shouldn't that be meeting standards? The highest 4-year graduation rate is 88.9% at Franklin Local Community School. I would think any rate over 50% would exceed standards, right? Wrong. It's 30%.

Life Skills Centers -- the largest single group of Dropout Recovery Charters -- are especially horrendous at graduating children, which I thought was the whole point of dropout recovery. They single handedly drag down the overall Dropout Recovery graduation rate by about 5% and represent 6 of the 11 Dropout Recovery schools that "Does Not Meet Standards" for four-year graduation rates in Ohio's eyes. But given that their operator, White Hat Management, is run by David Brennan, who has given $4 million to Ohio politicians, does it surprise you that these standards are so low?

And to add insult to injury, even the Life Skills Centers (whose diplomas at one time weren't accepted by the military) that graduate 2 out of 155 kids (yes, Life Skills of Northeast Ohio owns this shameful graduation rate) and fail to meet even these ridiculously low standards can stay open in perpetuity. How? By simply improving their graduation rate (and test scores) 10% a year for two consecutive years, thanks to Mr. Brennan's friends in the legislature and Governor's mansion.

So, let's do some math. The 2 out of 155 kids that graduate from Life Skills of Northeast Ohio is a 1.3% graduation rate. Improving by 10% a year for two years would put that rate at 1.573%. How many more kids is that? .43. That's right. If Life Skills of Northeast Ohio graduates the equivalent of .43 of a student more over the next not one, but two years, the school gets to stay open. That's right. He doesn't have to graduate even 1 more kid. They don't even have to improve to 7.2% and graduate 9 more kids to "Meet Standards." They just have to graduate a fraction of one more.

I wish I was joking.

Now, that, is a loophole. And that, my friends is what $4 million will buy you -- the right to run horrible schools and collect billions. Brennan has collected more than $1 billion in state revenue since Charters started in 1999 without ever testifying before the Ohio General Assembly. In fact, about 15 cents of every dollar spent on Ohio charters since 1999 ($7.4 billion total) has gone to Mr. Brennan. Let's see: turning $4 million into $1 billion.

Anyone want that return on investment? Tough to beat 25,000%.

Perhaps that's how Mr. Brennan can afford a $10 million Naples, Fla. home and guest home (the most expensive multi-million dollar property on Naples' ritzy Nelsons Walk, according to the Collier County Auditor's property appraisal office).

David Brennan's $10 million Naples property
Source: Collier County, Fla. Auditor

Don't forget that Gov. John Kasich's most recent budget gave the biggest per pupil increases to (wait for it) Life Skills Centers. Funny how that works, isn't it?

For our state's most at-risk kids, that's not funny. It's awful.

Dropout Recovery Charter Schools in Ohio are a mess. We know how to best prevent dropouts. Among those strategies -- early childhood education, family engagement teams (which Ohio paid for in the Evidence Based Model, but not anymore), and tutoring (also paid for in the Evidence-Based Model, but not anymore). Let's do what we know works.

Let's stop giving David Brennan $17.5 million, or more than $8,400 per pupil (a greater per pupil sum than the state gives to all but 3 public school districts, and more than double what the state spends -- $3,920 -- on average in all districts) to graduate 113 of the 1,496 kids in his care last year at all Life Skills Centers. Two of his schools aren't rated yet by the state, so the graduation rate is probably even worse than that.

By the way, that's a mighty lofty 7.6% graduation rate for Life Skills. That would "meet standards" in Ohio's eyes. I know. Horrific, right?

You, dear reader, know that I'm not one for eliminating Charters. I want great educational experiences for all kids, regardless of school type. But these Dropout Recovery "standards" are an embarrassment. All they do is hurt our most vulnerable children and let profiteers live lavishly.

What a travesty.

In Ohio, Quality Should Be Job 1

In a recent post by the Fordham Institute, Aaron Churchill takes Bill Phillis -- the legendary public education defender who ran the campaign that ended up having the state's school funding declared unconstitutional four times -- and Join the Future to task for daring to compare Charter School with School District performance.

Note: All calculations in this post come from the new State Report Card, located here.

The rest of Churchill's column makes cogent points about focusing on what works and eliminating what does not. And on that, I completely agree with Churchill. That is the argument I have been making ever since I first spoke about this issue on the floor of the Ohio House.

Unfortunately, though, I have to disagree with a couple of his arguments.

1) "Both authors make spurious comparisons that ought to be dismissed. Both make the mistake of comparing the performance index scores of charter schools to school districts." 

This argument is often made by Charter School advocates. And, frankly, I understand what they're saying: Charter Schools are typically small, one-building operations. Comparing their performance with much larger, diverse districts is unfair, right? Well, except that eSchools like ECOT and the Ohio Virtual Academy -- Charter Schools both -- are bigger than all but about a dozen Ohio School Districts. And there are 161 Ohio School Districts that didn't have 1,000 kids in them last year. So not all School Districts are hulking leviathans.

Most importantly, though, is that Ohio law treats Charters as if they are School Districts for funding and accountability purposes. They are paid like School Districts. They are considered Local Education Agencies for federal funding purposes, just as School Districts are. They are required to have Superintendents and Treasurers, just like School Districts. They have boards that oversee them, just like School Districts. They are, under law, School Districts.

In addition, only one School District did not lose money or students to Charters last year. And 47% of all kids in Charters last year did not come from a Big 8 Urban School District. If Charters take kids and money from every School District, why should they only be compared with 8 of them, especially when 47% of the kids do not come from there?

When you compare Charter with School District performance, the comparison is really not very good for Charters. As Churchill himself points out:

Recent blogs by William Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding (posted on Diane Ravitch’s website) and Join the Future highlight the academic woes of some of Ohio’s charter schools. Phillis writes: “The Department of Education’s ranking of schools and districts reveals that 83 out of the bottom 84 schools are charter schools.” Join the Future exclaims “Out of the bottom 200 districts, just 21 are traditional public schools, the remaining 179 are charter schools!”

2) "At a school building level, 139 of the bottom 200 schools were district schools. Both district and charter schools are therefore guilty of weak results on the state’s “performance index” score."

Well, sort of. I agree that the bottom 200 buildings in the state on Performance Index are populated by both District and Charter buildings. However, Churchill misses the point. Of course there are more District Buildings in the bottom 200, assuming you use Building rather than District-level data to make the comparison. There are, after all, 3,050 Traditional School Buildings in the state that receive the Performance Index rating. There are only 262 Charter Schools that receive a Performance Index Score. There are nearly 12 times as many District Buildings as Charters. Math, as much as performance, dictates that many of the lowest performing Buildings would be District Buildings.

Why do I mention this? Well, because the 61 Charter Schools that do rate in the bottom 200 represent a little more than 23% of all Charter Schools rated by the Performance Index. That means nearly one out of every 4 Charter Schools in Ohio rate in the bottom 200 of the more than 3,300 District and Charter buildings that receive the Performance Index score. Put another way, one in 4 Charter Schools rate in the bottom 6% of all Ohio School Buildings -- Charter and Traditional -- on the Performance Index.

One more thing: The average Performance Index score of the bottom 23% of School Buildings (710 total) is 79.54. The average Performance Index score of the bottom 23% of Charter Schools (the 61 in Churchill's calculation) is 62.57.

Again, this is not to say Charter Schools should be eliminated. What I am saying is that Churchill has a point; it's time to talk about the quality of these things. We have far, far too many unsuccessful Charter Schools in Ohio, especially given that we're going to be spending upwards of $1 billion a year on these schools over the next couple years.

Yes, we must ensure that quality Charters are able to thrive in this state. Unfortunately, though, the average school run by the Breakthrough Schools in Cleveland -- routinely the highest-rated Charter group in the state -- was cut by about $200 in the most recent budget.

I welcome Churchill's call for a new approach to Charter policy in Ohio. However, we must confront how Ohio's Charters have, for the most part, failed so frighteningly frequently. This phenomenon helps explain why the high fliers have been so stifled. And it also explains why some School Districts have struggled. For when kids in Districts like Columbus and Cincinnati who don't attend Charters lose about 25% of their state revenue to the Charter School funding system, isn't that as important an impediment to their success as anything else?

ABJ Details How White Hat Operates Above the Law

Last weekend, the Akron Beacon Journal did another classic Beacon Journal story about Charter Schools by pointing out huge state loopholes for well-heeled political contributors -- loopholes that allow poor performing Charter Schools to simply re-open under new names with little change and remain open for years.

And what it does exceptionally well is explain how David Brennan -- the state's largest individual Republican campaign contributor -- kept his failing Charter Schools open. Here's an extended snippet from the story:

At one time, White Hat Management operated a Life Skills Center for high school dropouts on the northeast side of downtown Canton and a Hope Academy for grades K-8 on the southwest side.

The Hope Academy failed academically and had to close in the spring of 2010.

What transpired over the next few years was reconstructed by the Beacon Journal by tracking school incorporation papers, funding, street addresses and “IRNs,” which are the unique identification numbers the state applies to each school so that it can track enrollment, academic performance and funding.

When Hope Academy on Garfield Avenue Southwest closed in the spring of 2010, department records show that its name and IRN were wiped from the books.

But the building didn’t miss a beat. A new elementary school, Brighten Heights, opened months later. The legal paperwork creating Brighten was handled by lawyers at Brennan’s law firm, Brennan, Manna & Diamond LLC of Akron.

However, while the school name was new, the IRN wasn’t: It was the same number — 142901 — used to identify Life Skills of Canton the previous year.

But the Life Skills Center on Cleveland Avenue Northeast hadn’t closed, either. Signs suggest it had been renamed Brighten Heights high school.

After the disappearance of Hope, state records show that enrollment at IRN 142901 — the old Life Skills school — surged and funding doubled from $1.5 million to $3 million in 2010-11.

What changed? For this year, IRN 142901 included elementary school children.

The next year, it changed again. IRN 142901 returned to Life Skills of Canton, and a new school called Garfield Academy with its own IRN opened in the old Hope Academy building.

After one year, Brighten Heights ceased operations.

Through three school years, the elementary building on Garfield Avenue Southwest had three different IRNs, was a failed Hope Academy, the elementary campus of Brighten Heights K-12, and then Garfield Academy.

And through it all, White Hat managed all schools, retaining more than two-thirds of the staff. Lawyers associated with Brennan created each new school and managed each name change. School board members for Hope, Life Skills, Brighten and Garfield appear to have never changed.

Even more disturbing is White Hat's utter contempt for accountability.

Charter schools are nonprofit organizations that receive public money, are audited by the state and are expected to comply with state public records and open meetings laws.

However, the Beacon Journal was unsuccessful in gaining meaningful information from any of the Canton charter schools or White Hat.

For example, in an attempt to understand whether the board members exercised any power in the closing and opening of schools, the Beacon Journal asked a Garfield employee for board-member contact information. The employee said board information could not be given out. “You’d have to call our corporate office [White Hat] for that information,” she said.

Attempts to interview a White Hat representative for this story began on Aug. 13 and have been unsuccessful. The company would accept only written questions. A request for the names and contact information of board members was answered on Aug. 23 with a list of lawyers instead.

A search of federal tax reports and Web sites for the schools suggested five names as board members. Messages seeking comment from persons believed to be those board members have not been returned. 

Imagine if any of this had happened at a traditional public school? If you couldn't reach the school board members, or the superintendent, treasurer, business manager, or anyone else? Imagine that outrage.

Imagine if any traditional public school was graduating barely 6% of its children in four years, the way White Hat's Life Skills Centers do on average. Then imagine if all we expected for that traditional school to remain open was less than a percentage point improvement, as Life Skills Centers will be allowed to do under the state's new dropout recovery school "standards."

Again, all we heard at the beginning of the Charter School movement in Ohio was how traditional schools only gave us excuses for failure, not successfully educated children. Now, Charter School operators like White Hat won't even give excuses; they just take our hard earned tax dollars with impunity.

They don't have any time to answer questions. Because under the current system in Ohio, they don't have to.

They know they can get away with anything. Because the state lets them.

This needs to be stopped. Because it is shameful.

Politics and Education's Volatile Mix UPDATE

Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett resigned today after emails were leaked recently that showed his staff -- while he was commissioner in Indiana -- changed their state's report card system and a prominent donor's Charter School went from a C to an A.

Bennett's resignation indicates there may have been more to this story than even that. But I'll leave it to the facts that come out in the ensuing days to determine that. What I'm really chilled by is how this story unfolded.

The first I heard of this story was a couple days ago. And it sounded an awful lot like what goes on in Ohio with David Brennan and other big money Charter School operators here. Their sway over Ohio politicians is well documented here and here.

However, I saw shortly after the story broke that Bennett explained his actions to Rick Hess (of the conservative American Enterprise Institute) here. And the explanation at least sounded plausible. The new report card system did not properly calculate test scores for schools that did not have 11th or 12th grades, like the Charter School that Bennett's department worked so hard to help.

Now Bennett's quick resignation makes me wonder if this is all to this story. I was a reporter with a pretty good BS meter, after all. And, in fact, according to Ann Hyslop's blog, I have good reason to have my radar on.

But let's just say, for argument's sake, that Bennett's explanation is exactly what happened.

If Indiana was able to fix a problem with a new accountability tool because a well-connected Charter School operator told them there was a problem, does it mean they are rigging the system for that operator? Or does it mean they are fixing a flaw in the system?

Coming from Ohio, where Charter School operators do stuff like this a lot, has so built up my cynicism about this stuff that rigging becomes my immediate reaction. But what if David Brennan pointed out something that was a problem with Ohio's new accountability system that happened to benefit his schools? Would that make the problem NOT a problem? And would the system get fixed? Or would the politics dictate a scandal?

I think what this incident points out is just how poisonous education policy has become thanks to big campaign contributions. Everything officials do now is questioned if it benefits big contributors, even if the change is potentially good.

Let me call it the Ohioification of Education Politics. In Ohio, this practice of rewarding big campaign contributors is so ingrained that it is second nature around here. So big political contributors like Ohio Charter School operators keep getting more and more money while school districts' coffers are consistently drained to do it. Tell me something I haven't known for 15 years, right?

This is why School Choice advocates who fight for quality school choices in Ohio are up in arms and face such a struggle to make necessary changes to the education policy landscape here. If Bennett had done what he did in Ohio, there would have maybe been a story or two somewhere, but there is no way he would have resigned. No way. His story would have been enough to keep him on the job.

But in Florida and Indiana, where the politics haven't been nearly as big, centralized and entrenched as Ohio's, that's too much. Don't worry, though, give those states a few more years and a couple David Brennan types and pretty soon people like Bennett will be able to survive such accusations.

OH Turns Corner on Charter Schools?

One of the most important Education Policy developments coming out of this recently passed Ohio biennial budget wasn't even contained in the budget itself. It's contained in the reaction to it.

As I have reported at 10th Period, the budget disproportionately helped poorly performing Charter Schools, especially those of major campaign contributors. In fact, schools run by David Brennan and William Lager received 38% of all the increase to Charter Schools, even though they only have 9% of the schools. In addition, those two major Republican Party financiers (between the two of them, they've given about $1 million since 2008, mostly to legislative and executive branch leaders) received 19% of all the state revenue going to Ohio's Charter Schools.

A growing coalition of high-performing Charter Schools and Charter School quality advocates have had enough, though. And in the Akron Beacon Journal yesterday, they finally spoke up. Take this quote from Greg Harris, Executive Director of Students First Ohio -- the Ohio arm of conservative Education Policy darling Michelle Rhee:

"Harris has only one explanation for how funding would be distributed.

“A lot of times it has to do not with how well your school is performing but how well your lobbyist is paid,” he said.

...

We need to stop wasting taxpayer dollars on [low-performing schools] and, more importantly, we need to stop wasting kids’ lives,” said Greg Harris, a school reform lobbyist and director of the Ohio chapter of Students First, a national advocacy firm that promotes quality school choice.

Harris and other charter-school advocates lobbied Ohio senators a month ago to increase the investment in the state’s highest-performing charter schools.

The charter-school movement was meant to offer better choices for parents, who would invest in the best options by enrolling their children in high-performing schools.

“Twenty years into the [national] charter movement there are no more excuses,” Harris said. “Our funding policies have to be reformed accordingly. And that is not reflected in this [state] budget.”

Financially rewarding the lowest performing schools undermines the entire movement, Harris said.

But that’s what the next two-year state budget would do. 

 Or try this comment from the top-rated group of Charter Schools in the state:

“Not only will high-quality charters not get funding, but low-quality charters could get a boost. That can’t be right. No legislator in their right mind would get behind something like this,” said John Zitzner, president of Friends of Breakthrough Schools, the marketing and fundraising arm for Citizens Academy East and other top-performing charter schools.

I can't emphasize enough how momentous these comments are for the progress of School Choice in Ohio. I can't think of a time in the history of this state where any Charter School advocates have dared suggest that Brennan's ability to benefit from state legislators didn't also benefit those who didn't contribute millions of dollars to politicians. But perhaps enough is enough. Here's how the Beacon story concluded, perhaps nailing down the explanation for this new-found anger within the Charter School community:

The biggest winners in this budget are dropout recovery programs that cater to high school students.

Brennan operates at least 17 such facilities, with two in Summit County and one in Stark. Each of the 2,476 students who attends the centers, most of which are named Life Skills, would bring in an additional $1,438 on average under the proposed budget. That’s a $2.41 million bump, or 10.7 percent of the entire $22.6 increase in basic state aid for Ohio charter schools.

Life Skills serves about 2 percent of the state’s charter-school population.

These Life Skills facilities, like all dropout recovery programs, are also some of the state’s least regulated charter schools. They’ll be the last to receive a grade under the new report card. Academic standards for measuring these schools won’t be determined until the end of next year.

While these programs attempt to educate the most challenging of students, they often have graduation rates in the single digits.

In order to remain open, these dropout recovery programs would only need to improve graduation rates by as little as one percentage point to meet regulations added to the budget by the House.

An amendment later added by the Senate calls for dropout recovery programs to receive “separate report cards that do not include letter grades and are subject to separate closure standards.” 

Exactly. This is how it has always worked for Brennan. The difference is today, even Charter School advocates are fed up with the games. Time will tell whether that's enough to change the conversation in Ohio from one of Choice for Choice's sake to better Choices. As I've said over and over again, in Ohio we could invest heavily only in the high-performing Charter Schools and still have enough money remaining to fund universal pre-school throughout our state.

Even though it seems like this budget is miles away from that outcome, perhaps it's a lot closer than we think. Now it is up to the legislators and Gov. John Kasich to heed these reasonable calls for temperance on the investment in poorly performing Charter Schools. The chart I have inserted below shows the percentage of state funding Ohio's kids who aren't in Charters have lost to Charters since the program's inception. You'll see it's pretty much been a steady increase since 1998, topping out last year at about 6.5%.

That means every child not in an Ohio Charter School loses, on average, 6.5% of their state revenue because Charter Schools remove so much money from school districts. And the vast majority of that money goes from districts that perform better than the Charter School to which they lose the money. Yesterday, that trend may have started to change.

OH Republican Mega Donors Get Lion's Share of Charter Money

As we reported today at Innovation Ohio, one of the real concerns with the current state budget, which is working its way through a joint House-Senate Conference Committee is this: Republican mega-donors David Brennan (White Hat Management) and William Lager (ECOT) saw major increases in their funding. Meanwhile, Charter Schools that actually do a far better job educating children received far less additional revenue.

To give you an idea of just how much better Brennan and Lager's schools do, take a look at this statistic: Brennan and Lager run 33 of the state's 369 Charter Schools, or 9 percent. Yet according to the Ohio Senate's Charter School simulations, Brennan and Lager's schools will receive $8.6 million additional over last school year. That represents 38 percent of all the increases to the rest of the 336 Charter Schools. So 38 percent of the increase to Charters went to 9 percent of the schools.

Looking at it another way, Brennan and Lager's schools take so much money away from the state's other Charter Schools that their average increase gets cut 32 percent.

Brennan and Lager are the top individual contributors to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate  (or close to it) . And they're no slouches when it comes to Gov. John Kasich either. They've given nearly $1 million to politicians since 2008.

Is it just a coincidence that they receive the lion's share of the benefit in the area of the budget that most interests them?

I think not.

White Hat Associate Now Ohio House Ed Policy Aide

Last week, when I attended a House hearing on education funding, I picked up information that Colleen Grady, who was a State Rep for about 2 months in 2008, was now the Education Policy Aide for House Republicans who was setting up all these hearings.

I didn't think much of this, until I re-read the story the Columbus Dispatch wrote last year detailing how cozy House Republicans are with David Brennan, the notorious owner of White Hat Management and the single largest donor to Ohio Republicans over the last decade. The head of White Hat is Thomas Needles, who was Gov. George Voinovich's Education Czar who turned his work creating Charter Schools under Voinovich into a lucrative career serving as Mr. Brennan's right hand man within days of leaving Voinovich's administration in 1998.

House staff members ran a number of charter-school-related amendments by Brennan's lobbyists. On April 19, nine days before the initial House budget changes were unveiled, lobbyist (and Needles associate) Colleen Grady sent Lisa Valentine, the top education policy adviser for the House Republicans, her opinion of 11 different amendments. Among the responses:

"Definitely no. Operators would object vigorously. Looks like more breakthrough schools stuff," she wrote, referring to a group of Cleveland-area charter schools. (Note: The Breakthrough Schools are among the finest Charter Schools the state has, by the way.)

"This one is good."

"Thank you. This is great."

"Might be nice to delete the Senate amendment starting at line 307. We could fix what they messed up."

So Brennan has been able to put one of his own as a top policy person in the Ohio House, less than one year after his cozy relationship with the Ohio House caused such a furor that even Charter School advocates blushed. Here's what Terry Ryan of the Fordham Institute said of Brennan's changes to Charter School oversight in last year's budget:

"What (the House) is proposing isn't a charter school. It's a corporate, private school, and the state simply funds it," Ryan said.

Then, I looked at Grady's LinkedIn profile and discovered she has been on staff with the Ohio Republican House Caucus since April, confirming the information I was told last week.

Grady has done work around Columbus since her 2008 defeat by Matt Patten for various education policy shops, including Fordham and even on her own, penning a report with the Ohio Association for Gifted Children (a group that gave me their service award in 2009) last year. That report basically said that excellence was too easy for schools to achieve in Ohio because how could a school be excellent if it wasn't serving every child?

I think that's a good question, actually.

However, the report did not mention that despite this supposedly "easy" school rating system, nearly half of all Charter Schools rate D or F on the report card. The Grady-OAGC report, I think, gave the Ohio Department of Education and others who have been complaining about how well public schools rate the ammunition to develop House Bill 555, whose most recent simulation indicates that as many as 85% of school districts were overrated by the prior system.

After the Grady Report, no one would bat an eyelash at that result, depsite its highly dubious outcome. However, if more schools are poorly rated, more districts would be opened up for Charters and Vouchers, further draining money from local school districts, who then must pass more levies to make up the difference.

Remember that every child in Ohio who does not attend a Charter School receives 6.5% less state revenue because of how Charter Schools are funded in this state.

The development is troubling because Grady, judging from the earlier Dispatch story, is hostile toward Breakthrough Schools, but is supportive of David Brennan's schools. Again, the Breakthrough Schools are among the finest Charters (or any schools, for that matter) in the state. Their excellent track record is, in many ways, what gave comfort to some people about allowing local revenue to go to the Cleveland Charters because Breakthrough would be getting the money, not the shadier Charter outfits. If Brennan's schools are able to get local revenue in next year's budget (which I'm sure will be attempted), he can actually thank Breakthrough for setting the precedent.

Ohio's trouble is not Breakthrough; it's that not enough Charters here resemble Breakthrough. Too many resemble Brennan's Life Skills centers -- a dropout recovery school operation which graduates 11% of its kids on average. The average of the state's other Charter dropout recovery schools is more than four times that.The dropout recovery standards currently in House Bill 555 (about 7 years after they were first ordered by the General Assembly) would allow dropout recovery schools to remain open as long as they improve by 10% per year (for at least 2 consecutive years) their graduation rates and percentage of kids who pass all high school testing before they are 22 years old. In Life Skills' case, that would entail about a 1% increase in graduation rates. So Life Skills would have about 20 years or so to catch up to the average Charter School dropout recovery program, assuming the law remains in place that long.

If the House's top education policy person is as hostile to some of the best Charter Schools in this state as her previous work indicates, it throws a wet blanket on the positive statements made last week by Students First about how Charters and Traditional Public Schools should be held to the same standards.