Oversight Needed

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2014/07/18/oversight-is-needed.html

Some highlights:

Conflicts of interests
Weak Boards
Unqualified professionals
Accountability

"The allegations shed light on just how many things can go wrong in Ohio’s poorly structured and largely unmonitored charter-school system. If they prove true, that will be one more argument for overhauling the way charter schools are created and allowed to operate.

But traditional district schools typically operate under the scrutiny of taxpaying residents and publicly elected school-board members. The widespread data-tampering scheme that developed at the highest levels of Columbus City Schools is atypical; generally, if serious misconduct occurs in a district school, somebody is watching and will blow the whistle. Charter schools don’t have the same oversight.

Traditional school districts, in most cases, employ qualified professionals to manage finances, develop curriculum and ensure that applicable laws are followed. Charter schools are, by philosophy, less traditionally structured.

Ohio could do a lot to head off charter-school problems by reforming the process by which they are created.

A key weakness has been the lack of any way to hold accountable those charter-school sponsors who don’t act as watchdogs over the schools they sponsor. Weak Ohio law allows blatant conflicts of interest — for example, nothing bars sponsors, the supposed watchdogs, from selling services to the schools they are supposed to be holding accountable"

Always a potential conflict when you have poor structure and oversight with the potential for profits at the expense of results.