The Ohio Auditor of State recently performed surprise visits at a random selection of Ohio's charter schools, to match up their claimed attendance to the number of actual students in classrooms on the day of the visit. This is the second time the Auditor has done this, and the second time the results are shocking.
Three charter schools were operating as virtual schools, despite only being authorized to operate as brick and mortar schools. How is it possible that ODE was unaware of this? No surprise then, that the Auditor, at his press conference said ODE was the worst run state agency.
Auditor Yost says Dept of Education is the worst run agency in the state
— Jim Siegel (@phrontpage) May 23, 2016
Attendance at drop-out recovery charter schools was an appalling 34%. The best attendance measured by the Auditor at a drop-out recovery schools was a ridiculous 50%.
All told, if the attendance being measured by the Auditor is typical, then the 44 charter schools he visited have over-billed the state for more than 2,500 students - wasting well over $17,000,000. If this is typical of the charter sector at large, then Ohio is wasting ~$200 million to educate charter students not in the actual schools billing for them. This is money taken directly from traditional public schools.
Here's the full report.