Ohio Department Of Education Under Fire

State school board mem­bers on Tues­day, accused the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion of break­ing the law by throw­ing online schools’ fail­ing grades out of a char­ter school eval­u­a­tion this year. Accord­ing to the Plain Dealer in Cleve­land, School Choice Direc­tor David Hansen was bound by law to include online school and dropout recov­ery schools in eval­u­a­tions of char­ter school over­sight agen­cies. But the board con­firmed Tues­day after ques­tion­ing Hansen that he left fail­ing grades for those schools out of the eval­u­a­tions. That omis­sion boosted the rat­ing of two over­sight agen­cies, which could make them eli­gi­ble for new state perks. Hansen told the board that he wanted to look at other schools because online strug­gles “mask” suc­cesses else­where. He said he left online schools out because they started receiv­ing low grades after the state altered the grad­ing rules in recent years. State Super­in­ten­dent Richard Ross said in a state­ment, that online school and dropout recov­ery school grades would be included in the future.