To bring you this story our reporters and other Ohio news organizations pressed the state for documents related to David Hansen’s resignation. In response, the Ohio Department of Education late Thursday released some 97,000 pages of emails, text messages, calendars and other records. We reviewed thousands of those pages to determine how thoroughly the state is overseeing charter school sponsors.
In October 2014, Ohio’s then director of school choice suggested in an email that a group of charter school sponsors be given uniformly high marks for their commitment on overseeing performance.
“Then we will put them all down as getting 92 and being exemplary,” wrote David Hansen.
Karlyn Geis, data manager for the Ohio Department of Education, responded, “Can we assume you are joking about putting them down as a 92? (looks of shock from others in the room).”
The email exchange was included in the nearly 97,000 pages of documents released by ODE late Thursday in response to public records requests from Ohio news organizations, including by this newspaper. Hansen told the Associated Press he was joking, but the exchange and other documents suggest that he sought to cast the state’s charter schools in the best possible light.
Hansen resigned in July after it was revealed he removed data on certain schools from the evaluations to boost the overall performance of their sponsors.
The resignation has raised questions about whether others in the Kasich administration were involved in hiding the true performance of some charters. State School Superintendent Richard Ross said this week he was unaware what Hansen had done, and the emails do not appear to implicate him. In fact, there is not a single message from Ross in the huge release that spans almost two years.
Ross “rarely uses e-mail to communicate,” ODE spokeswoman Kim Norris said.
Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said it’s difficult to believe Ross never sent any emails about charter school performance and evaluation, given the attention that the topic has been receiving in Ohio.
“All of this basically cries out for a separate, independent investigation,” Pepper said.
‘Ambiguous’ law
Hansen purposely excluded the failing grades of online and dropout-recovery charter schools from evaluations of five charter school sponsors. He told the state school board July 15 that he excluded those F’s so they wouldn’t “mask” successes of charter schools elsewhere.
In a statement sent to the Associated Press Thursday night, Hansen claimed he was acting “in good faith” under what he called an ambiguous law.
“The most practical design I could come up with consistent with my understanding of the goal of that statute phased in (online school) scores,” Hansen wrote. “ Suggestions that my design was somehow ‘illegal’ ignore the ambiguity in the statute.”
But Ross said Hansen’s way of doing evaluations “would never have crossed my mind, nor does it align with my general belief system.”
Hansen said he talked with Ross “in general terms” about academic evaluation of sponsors but added that “to the best of my recollection,” he did not discuss the details of the system with Ross, a decision he now says he regrets.
Ross told the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, “We missed the managerial controls that were needed.”
State Sen. Peggy Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said in an interview with this newspaper that the documents matched her belief Ross was not aware of Hansen’s evaluation system. But Lehner, R-Kettering, said Ross should have known what was going on in his department. She said it was “unacceptable” that he did not become aware of the information until the media reported it.
Document details
The huge batch of documents raise questions about the handling of some of the evaluations and whether the data was accurate. For example:
- In December 2013, Hansen emailed a charter school leader that he had "a personal goal of protecting, if not growing, the autonomy to which charters are entitled …" He added that he hoped to get ODE staff "to spend more time on traditional public schools and leave charters alone."
- In March 2014, about 16 months before the issue went public, Geis discussed removing online and dropout recovery schools from a rating system, writing, "Since you are focusing on brick and mortar schools, I redid the eSchool Consultants data removing Virtual Community School."
- On June 2, ODE data manager Kelsey Stephens wrote to Hansen that she would work on redoing some charter sponsor portfolio information, but added, "I also don't believe I'm allowed to just hand off the data. … I'm sorry, they're strict about that, especially when it comes to this analysis."
- A July 11 email to ODE staffers from Colleen Grady, senior policy adviser for House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, showed that some in state government were starting to ask questions about the evaluation system. "What in (the Ohio Revised Code) permitted ODE to select which schools to include in academic performance of the sponsor evaluation?" Grady wrote.
- A July 16 text from Geis appeared to show that ODE staffers were trying to avoid creating documents that would be saved as public records: "Per Kelsey: The ratios are on your laptop. Someone needs to calculate the overall authorizer scores and walk them up to Melissa today. They have to be walked up, not emailed, not printed. Just handwritten on paper. Thanks!"
‘He no longer works for the state’
David Hansen is married to Gov. John Kasich’s presidential campaign manager, Beth Hansen. Some Democratic state leaders have questioned whether Kasich’s office influenced Hansen, given widespread support for charter schools among many Ohio Republicans. The governor’s office on Friday afternoon sent this newspaper a limited response to its separate records request, turning over a few emails that did not show any link to Hansen’s evaluation system.
Kasich has indicated he thinks Hansen acted on his own, and Kasich added Thursday that he stands behind Ross, whom some Democrats have urged to resign.
“We will find out exactly what was involved in what (David Hansen) was doing and why he was doing it,” Kasich said. “But we want top-rated, high-profile charter schools. And when we thought that the numbers weren’t right, Dick Ross talked to (Hansen) and he no longer works for the state.”
Reform bill coming
ODE’s Norris emphasized that the faulty evaluations have been rescinded, with the state auditor’s office reporting that no money was paid out to those sponsors as a result of scores that were higher than they should have been.
The state now has a three-member panel (a school superintendent, an accountant and a lawyer) working to develop a new system for evaluating charter school sponsors.
State school board member A.J. Wagner of Dayton said some board members will offer a resolution at the Sept. 14-15 board meeting, calling for an impartial investigation. But he conceded it will be difficult to convince others on the board. Wagner is a Democrat, but the board majority is Republican.
State lawmakers hope to pass a charter school reform bill this fall, after it stalled in the summer.
“Hopefully House Bill 2 will be debated on own merits. Obviously, this (incident) will cloud some people’s thinking,” Lehner said. “But I think House Bill 2 is a good piece of legislation full of strong reforms and I think we just need to get it enacted.”
This story contains information from the Associated Press
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