A post from guest blogger and Fordham writer and researcher Emmy Partin .
Common sense prevailed today in the Buckeye State with a court ruling that dismisses the latest legal shenanigan of charter-school foes here. Last September, then-state Attorney General Marc Dann sued to close a handful of charter schools on the grounds that their poor academic performance and overall mismanagement put them out of compliance with the state's charitable trust laws.?? Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Michael Tucker disagrees:
"This court concludes... that New Choices [charter school] is a political subdivision. Given this conclusion, there is simply no charitable trust role for the Attorney General either by statute or at common law."
As we noted when the case was first announced, Dann's lawsuits were never about rescuing kids from bad schools. They were political maneuvering, pure and simple.?? E-mails revealed that the legal strategy was offered to him by his cronies at the Ohio Education Association.??And the OEA, in return for Dann's filing the suits, agreed to drop its own lawsuit against the state for allegedly failing to monitor charter schools properly.??With today's ruling and the fact that Dann resigned from office amid scandal last spring, they are sure to be rethinking that decision.
We're no apologists for lousy public schools (district or charter), of which Ohio has too many-especially in the urban centers.?? Last school year, 51 percent of students in Ohio's eight biggest cities attended a school rated D or F by the state.??Fordham laid out recommendations in 2006 for addressing underperforming charter schools, and again this month called on Ohio to be more aggressive in closing bad charter schools. We've even provided ideas for how to do this in a way that is fair, transparent, and legal.
Ohio's scarce resources shouldn't be spent on law firms and courtrooms but in classrooms.??Instead of continuing to fight against the mere existence of charter schools, traditional districts and their allies in the General Assembly and statewide office should be seeking ways to work with and learn from the good ones like we see happening in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and just down the highway in Indianapolis.