Kasich Plans to Increase Charter Funding and Cut Public Schools

Ohio has some of the worst charter schools in the nation, and White Hat Management runs many of them. White Hat's multimillionaire boss, David Brennan, has stuffed the pockets of politicians for years to become one of the grandest corporate welfare kingpins in charter school history. 

What does Governor Kasich plan to do about that giant sucking sound that dollars make when they disappear down the giant charter drain?  From the Columbus Dispatch:

Charter-school funding in Ohio could exceed $1 billion by 2017 under Gov. John Kasich’s proposed two-year budget, which provides increases to every school.

Most of the attention thus far has focused on the charter-school accountability and transparency provisions included in Kasich’s budget. Lawmakers more recently got a look at the breakdown in charter-school funding.

About half of traditional public schools would see funding cuts over the next two years under Kasich’s education funding plan, though it spends $459 million more. The non-partisan Legislative Service Commission calculated that charter-school funding will rise 5.4 percent over two years, with no schools facing a cut. . . .

Thirteen Ohio School Districts "Scrubbing" Low Scoring Students

From CantonRep.com:

Four more Ohio districts, including Canton City Schools, removed poor-performing students from their rolls, state Auditor David Yost said Monday in the final step of his investigation into a practice whereby schools attempted to improve performance ratings. 

More than 70 schools or districts also had attendance reporting errors, though these didn’t appear to be purposeful, Yost said. 

The four districts bring to nine the number that Yost has identified in his investigation of the data withdrawal practice known as “scrubbing.” 

The districts Yost identified Monday are Canton and Cincinnati city schools, Winton Woods city schools in Hamilton County and Northridge Local schools in Montgomery County. 

Yost’s top recommendation Monday was requiring the state to peg school funding on yearlong attendance figures to encourage attendance through the entire year. Now, attendance figures are based on a count in October. 

“Importantly, schools that break enrollment under such a system would suffer a loss of funding as a result,” Yost’s report said. 

Yost also said the state should require independent oversight of districts’ data reporting instead of the current honor system, and the state should also independently monitor transfers by at-risk students. 

Yost previously said Campbell, Cleveland, Columbus, Marion and Toledo city schools improperly removed students. . . . 

I have seen no better example than this of Campbell's Law:

"The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."