Teresa Fedor to John Curry: The accountability system is shameful

Teresa Fedor to John Curry, November 25, 2006

Subject: RE: Joke of the day: What entity has three truant officers to cover the entire State of Ohio?
John,
The whole accountability system from the school’s sponsor to the State Auditor is failing the tax payer and parents of these students. ODE and is trained to “look the other way” by the Superintendent and the state school board – who is mandated to “oversee” the system and sponsors. The whole system is a shame.

Thank you for your attention to this – it matters greatly to retirees and their future.
Senator Teresa Fedor
District 11, Toledo, Ohio

From John Curry, November 25, 2006

Subject: Joke of the day: What entity has three truant officers to cover the entire State of Ohio?

Answer: ECOT!

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Count truants or lose state aid, 11 charters told

Friday, November 24, 2006

Bill Bush

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The Ohio Department of Education has answered a riddle: How can the same school report perfect attendance while also saying it has expelled some students for chronic truancy?

The state’s answer: It can’t.

The department is requiring 11 charter schools in that situation to change the way they take attendance. Nine of the 11 are Internet schools, including the state’s largest, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.

ECOT, which had 6,664 students last school year, reported 100 percent attendance to the state but expelled 1,946 chronically truant students — 29 percent of its enrollment.

The Elgin Digital Academy, a 23-student Internet school sponsored by the Elgin school district in Marion, forced out 13 truants — 57 percent of its enrollment — but also somehow listed perfect attendance on its state report card.

"It made no sense to have 100 percent attendance and have kids withdrawing for truancy," said Todd Hanes, executive director of the state department’s Office of Community Schools.

The 11 schools have until Jan. 10 to submit a plan to record student attendance accurately or face forfeiting up to 10 percent of their state aid payments, Hanes said.

For ECOT, that could mean a loss of about $4 million, said Education Department spokesman J.C. Benton.

ECOT officials said they have simply been following the state’s instructions and will continue to do so under revised rules.

"If (the Education Department) is stating that ECOT was not reporting attendance correctly in the manner they specifically prescribed for the 2005-2006 school year, then they are being disingenuous," ECOT Superintendent Jeffrey P. Forster said in a statement.

Under the revised rules, ECOT would have reported an attendance rate of more than 94 percent last school year — still meeting the state standard of 93 percent, said ECOT spokesman Nick Wilson.

Charters, like traditional public schools, don’t charge tuition. They are publicly funded but often are run by private companies.

Calculating attendance at Internet schools is different than at bricks-and-mortar ones because students can work online 24 hours a day. Students at Internet schools must perform 920 hours of work a year to earn perfect attendance.

Regular public schools calculate attendance by dividing the number of days each student shows up for school by the total days in the school year.

In light of the controversy over attendance, the Education Department is reminding all charter schools that they are responsible for following Ohio’s education laws and must report chronically truant students to the juvenile courts or a county child-welfare agency.

"There is an explicit safety net between schools and districts to ensure that students attend in compliance with state mandatory and compulsory education laws and with missing child laws," a letter sent on Nov. 8 to all charter-school sponsors says. "This benefits every child and ensures that no child falls through this education safety net."

Hanes said, "The idea is that we’re attempting to create an attendance policy that, if the student arrives at the school, that school is responsible for them."

ECOT employs three parttime police officers who cover the entire state for the school, checking up on truant students who miss more than 15 days of logging on for classes, Wilson said.

"They’re based regionally," Wilson said. "Their goal there is to basically work with the family, get the reason (the student) is not attending."

If those officers worked five days a week, 52 weeks a year, they would have needed to visit 2 1 /2 students a day, on average, just to cover the 1,946 whom ECOT expelled for truancy.

The Elgin Digital Academy has been closed, according to a worker answering the phone in the Elgin school-district office.

Only schools reporting 100 percent attendance that expelled students for truancy have to file corrective plans. Although other Internet schools had near-perfect attendance, the state didn’t review their truancy data, Hanes said.

bbush@dispatch.com

Note from John: I think that many readers of the above article are shaking their head after reading this article. This article begs the question, "Where was the Ohio Department of Education while all of this was going on?" Let's hope that the new administration takes a long hard look at the ODE and their shortcomings and takes remedial action. Ms. Zelman, where have you been?