Dive Brief:
- Although Ohio was promised $71 million, the funding has retroactively been given restraints tying it to better accountability practices for the state's troubled charters.
- The funding is also now contingent upon a federal review of Ohio's original application, which was written by a former charter leader who resigned amid scandal.
- Questions now have arisen over whether Ohio will in fact be able to retain the grant money at all.
Dive Insight:
Federal officials said in a letter "preliminary determination that these concerns and issues should not disqualify" Ohio from the grant competition, the Dispatch reported. After that the department said there is additional information that concerns oversight and accountability of the state's charter schools.
Because the original application was written by David Hansen, who left his position after admitting to scrubbing grades, questions are hanging over the grant money. Ohio is also supposed to hand over seven years of charter audits to the feds. Ohio has long been plagued by accountability and transparency issues, and recently, two bills were proposed at the federal level in an attempt to advance oversight measures. The governor has also refused to hand over documents in relation to the charter grade-scrubbing scandal.