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Andrew Brenner, chairman of Ohio's House Education Committee, said that legislators may delay rating charter school oversight agencies because 2014-15 test scores are flawed.

(Patrick O'Donnell/The Plain Dealer)

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The state legislature is considering delaying - yet again - the ratings of charter school oversight agencies that were supposed to be the centerpiece of Gov. John Kasich's plan to fix Ohio's troubled charter industry.

The House Education Committee will consider proposals next month to skip rating those agencies, known as sponsors or authorizers, for 2014-15 and this ongoing 2015-16 school year.

Committee Chairman Andrew Brenner said the committee has two possible amendments to another bill that would halt ratings for just 2014-15 or for both years.

The state legislature voted in 2012 to rate sponsors to encourage them to improve the schools they oversee. The ratings were supposed to be completed last year, but David Hansen, the state's former school choice chief, artificially inflated some of them by leaving out the F grades of online schools.

That violated state law and led the state to throw out the first ratings. It also led to the resignation of Hansen, husband of Kasich's Presidential campaign manager Beth Hansen,

Then they were delayed again for several months while former State Superintendent Richard Ross developed a new rating plan.

If new delays are approved, there would be no ratings anytime soon to start the three-year process that Kasich proposed last year for shutting down poorly-rated sponsors. In the meantime, sponsors would continue collecting millions in tax dollars in fees without having to fix the academic performance of charter schools that lag behind traditional schools statewide.

In addition, delays could jeopardize $71 million in charter school expansion grants the state is in line to receive from the federal government.

To win the grants, the state had boasted in its application of the strong accountability the sponsor rating system would provide. But the state had to adjust that claim after Hansen rigged the ratings. It is still unclear if an additional delay would void the grant award.

The rating delays were scheduled to be discussed in legislative meetings this week, but have been postponed until late next month to gather more information, Brenner said.

"Everybody wants to see (charter accountability rules) implemented sooner, rather than later," Brenner said. "But we also want to implement it in a fair way."

Charter school advocates have complained loudly in recent months that it would be unfair to judge them based on test scores right now.

Ohio has given teachers and traditional public schools and districts, but not sponsors, a "safe harbor"from any negative consequences from bad scores on state tests. That lasts through the 2016-17 school year while Ohio shifts to the new Common Core educational standards and new state tests.

Results of the 2014-15 state tests, which will be released in state report cards on Thursday, were with PARCC, the multi-state testing consortium that Ohio fired in July.

The tests this spring will be through another testing company, the American Institutes for Research, but have still not been used in Ohio yet.

Ron Adler, head of the charter school advocacy group Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, has questioned why charter sponsors should be treated differently from districts.

"It's inconceivable that the State of Ohio would extend the Safe Harbor protection clause to every public school and thousands of teachers - but not offer that same 'transition' protection to charter school sponsors," he said. "The State of Ohio cannot afford the perception of playing favorites."

Brenner, a Powell Republican, said legislators are sympathetic to that concern. Brenner, who led the charge to stop PARCC from handling testing in Ohio, said there is support for not rating sponsors using PARCC scores from 2014-15.

He noted that House Bill 2, the state's charter school reform bill that passed in the fall, only calls for penalties for sponsors based on test scores from 2015-16 and after. In addition, Ross didn't finish his new plan to rate the academic performance of sponsors until December - long after the 2014-15 school year had ended.

Some charter advocates, Brenner said, are pushing for 2015-16 scores to not count as well, since the rating plan wasn't set until halfway through the school year.

"We're in the process of still negotiating," Brenner said.

State Sen. Peggy Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said she can understand skipping the rating for 2014-15, but she opposes delaying them for the 2015-16 school year.

Chad Aldis of the Fordham Institute, a pro-charter group that also promotes accountability for charters, agreed with Lehner. Aldis said applying a new rating system to previous school years isn't fair, but skipping ratings for 2015-16 would be too much.

"It's time that this measure gets implemented and we start to see the benefit of properly incentivizing and sanctioning sponsors when necessary," he said.

"We need to make sure we don't delay accountability," Aldis added. "It's time."