After a year embroiled in scandal during which a top state education official rigged charter school evaluations, the education department has laid out the way it will evaluate sponsors going forward.
The new rules call for these evaluations to judge a sponsors' academic performance using the same report card system as traditional public schools. To get a good evaluation sponsors must also follow the law and use best practices.
The guidelines also state very clearly that online schools and dropout recovery schools, older than two years, must be included.
These were the schools scrubbed from earlier evaluations by an ODE official.
Lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, questioned the need for the department to come up with this new overall framework. They said Ohio law already spelled out the guidelines and it was that ODE official who acted out of line.
View the full Ohio Department of Education report here.
