Columbus
Dispatch...
Kasich balks at House
changes to charter plan
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
By Catherine Candisky
Last-minute charter-school provisions that House Republicans added to
the budget should come out, Gov. John Kasich’s top education adviser
said yesterday.
Robert Sommers, director of the Governor’s Office of 21st Century
Education, told the State Board of Education that the administration
supports expanding school choice, but not at the expense of strong
oversight and accountability.
In his previous job as executive director of Cornerstone Charter
Schools in Detroit, Sommers said, “we did not want to come to Ohio
because we didn’t want to be in the same state with poor-performing
schools.”
Kasich’s budget proposal expands school choice by:
• Lifting the cap on the state’s 330 tax-funded, privately operated
charter schools.
• Increasing the number of tax-funded vouchers available to parents to
pay private-school tuition from the current 14,000 to 60,000 over the
next two years.
Majority Republicans in the House approved the budget last week after
adding sweeping changes to Ohio’s charter-school laws, including one
provision that would allow for-profit entities to start charter schools
with no oversight. Another would make anything bought with public money
the operators’ property.
Critics, including many charter-school supporters, say the House
provisions threaten to undermine public accountability.
The Senate’s Republican majority appears willing to comply with the
administration’s request.
Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, who heads the Senate Education
Committee and sits on the Finance Committee, said last week that the
Senate probably will strip out the House wording related to for-profit
charter schools. “There are a number of us who have been working for
weeks to make very careful, very thoughtful changes, and this House
language just sort of appeared out of nowhere,” Lehner said.
House leaders refuse to say which legislator submitted the budget
amendments. However, at least some were made at the request of major
Republican donor and leading for-profit charter-school operator David
L. Brennan, who runs White Hat Management in Akron.
Sommers told state board members yesterday that school choice creates
competition that will improve Ohio’s education system. But both charter
schools and traditional public schools alike must be accountable for
student performance and public financing, and poorly performing schools
must be shut down.
He also cited the need for “more transparency about funding for charter
schools.”
Sommers did not specify the administration’s concerns about changes
made by the House but said they should be part of a “more holistic
review” after the budget is approved.
The administration’s overall education focus is on “performance and
transparency and cost-effectiveness,” Sommers told the board.
Read it at the Columbus Dispatch
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