Board won’t check if claims accurate
After overpaying ECOT more than $60 million in a single school year because the school submitted attendance claims it couldn’t prove, the state Department of Education now will trust the besieged e-school and its sponsor that it meets criteria to now become a dropout recovery school.
With millions of tax dollars at stake, state Superintendent Paolo DeMaria said the department will verify some information in the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow’s application, but rely on the school and its sponsor, the Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West in Toledo, to assure the accuracy of the rest.
Critics say the arrangement is troubling.
Stephanie Dodd, a member of the state Board of Education, sees a conflict of interest because Lake Erie West determines in large part whether ECOT qualifies as a dropout recovery school and gains millions if it does.
“This could be a problem if the state has no ability to confirm what is being put in their application,” Dodd said.
ECOT faces closure and the loss of more than $100 million in tax funding next year because of failing grades. Lake Erie West would lose about $1.5 million a year in sponsor fees.
But if the Department of Education approves ECOT’s request to become dropout recovery school, academic performance and graduation rate requirements will be significantly lowered, allowing the school to remain open and continue to receive tax funding.
“Someone reviewing their own compliance presents a potential conflict of interest because they benefit financially,” said Chad Aldis, vice president of Ohio Programs and Policy for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
“They may very well qualify, but (the potential conflict is that) they are doing the checking.”
Aldis added that ECOT didn’t create the problem because it didn’t write the law or rules, and the legislature may want to reconsider allowing schools and their sponsors to confirm their own compliance.
Apryl Morin, executive director of Lake Erie West’s charter school center, said as a sponsor it provides oversight and technical assistance to its schools regarding compliance with legal and contractual responsibilities.
“We understand that the decision as to which report card a school should receive is controlled by the state and is the product of the state’s student data collection systems,” she said.
“With these facts in mind, the educational service center will continue to work with the school during the dropout prevention and recovery application process and throughout the year, but it does not control or currently have access to dayto-day operational details regarding ever-fluctuating enrollment figures or the individualized characteristics of enrolled students.”
Dropout recovery schools are defined as those in which at least half of the students are 16 to 22 years old and are either at least one grade level behind or have experienced a crisis that interfered with traditional schooling.
The Department of Education will verify that at least half of ECOT’s students are aged 16 to 22 but relies on ECOT and Lake Erie West to confirm the rest.
In an e-mail to the 19-member state board, DeMaria explained, “Both the school and the sponsor have to sign the application for the Dropout Prevention and Recovery Program designation. The sponsor’s signature indicates that the sponsor has verified the mechanism by which students meet the eligibility requirements to be enrolled in the Dropout Prevention and Recovery Program. The Department relies on these representations. The Department validates that a majority of students meet the age requirements for eligibility, but does not collect other student level information relative to eligibility.”
The education department will notify ECOT as early as next week on whether it received preliminary approval of its request based on the documentation the school submitted, said department spokeswoman Brittany Halpin.
Final approval, contingent on department verification that a majority of students meet the age requirement, will come in December or January, she said.