Democrats in the Ohio Legislature continue to call for an independent investigation of altered charter-school sponsor evaluations a day after the state Education Department released thousands of records. From our Statehouse bureau Andy Chow reports.
The state's head of school choice, David Hansen, resigned after admitting to leaving out failing grades of online and dropout recovery schools while evaluating charter school sponsors. And reviews of public records released by ODE suggest that several employees knew, on some level, about the data-rigging, but not state school superintendent Richard Ross.
Democratic Representative Teresa Fedor of Toledo is still not convinced the superintendent's hands are clean of the scandal.
"It seems highly unlikely, if not impossible that he had no knowledge of the data scrubbing that happened on his watch," said Fedor.
Gov. John Kasich said he believes Ross, who was Kasich's former chief education advisor, is clear of any wrongdoing.