Punishment absent for school cheaters
Discipline languishes 5 years after scandal
The Ohio Department of Education’s lackadaisical progress in holding accountable Columbus City Schools’ administrators who cooked the books on student test performance feeds suspicion that the state was negligent — asleep at the wheel — in a cheating scheme that extended to other districts.
None carried out a plan as calculated and devious as the state’s largest urban district, as revealed by a Dispatch investigation more than five years ago. The district retroactively altered thousands of student attendance records to make kids with low test scores disappear, hoodwinking parents and taxpayers by making it appear schools and the district were more successful. Top administrators, including former Superintendent Gene Harris, were convicted.
It now has been more than a year since dozens of district administrators swept up in the scandal were mailed letters from the state education department offering a sort of plea bargain — including temporary license suspensions accommodated over summer break. Since, just 16 of the 64 have been disciplined.
In any business, an employee suspected of fraud would be out the door before day’s end, either fired or placed on paid leave. Incredibly, the standard of protection for those entrusted with our children doesn’t rise to that level.
Thirty-five of the 64 administrators suspected of falsifying data are still working as Columbus administrators. Most earn six-figure salaries. Two are top aides to the superintendent: the chief of staff and chief academic officer.
State Auditor Dave Yost’s probe ended more than three years ago. ODE’s tortoisespeed approach to resolving discipline and its lack of transparency is headshaking. Failing kids deserved remedial education services. Taxpayers deserved truth. State tests and report cards are meaningless if districts can cheat without consequence. This scandal shakes the foundation of the state’s school-accountability system.
It also unfairly leaves administrators under a cloud of suspicion, unable to clear their names. The department says its investigations are confidential; this conveniently not only shields the guilty but conceals any lack of rigorous action on the part of ODE.
And now, it appears as if the clock might have run out on the department’s ability to investigate and discipline — prompting Yost to launch his own investigation. He’s looking into the statute of limitations, and also why it has taken the education department so long to investigate. If ODE is this slow and ineffective in resolving a high-profile scandal, how is it performing on other complaints of educator misconduct?
“You’d think this was death row for how long it takes,” Yost said. “How long do these things lay around languishing in the Department of Education?”
“…The big question is, what about the kids? Do we have complaints about teachers who shouldn’t be in the classroom that just stretch on for months and years?”
The department defends itself saying it has been swamped; discipline referrals have doubled in the past decade, hitting 11,537 last year. It initiated 1,361 investigations in 2016 and resolved 1,032 of them.
Investigations do take time to resolve. No one wants an educator’s due process rights violated. But justice delayed is justice denied. One of the department’s main duties is licensure.
Given Yost’s aggressive, prosecutorial bent for digging out truth, the Columbus cheating scandal might yet result in discipline for education officials: In shielding Columbus administrators with a long and “confidential” investigation, ODE officials have put themselves in the line of fire. If they didn’t do their job, Yost will do his.