The Ohio School Choice program is a fair and reasonable pilot program.  It seeks to serve parents and students in one of the most challenging school districts in Ohio.  The program is designed to afford opportunities to public, private and parochial students.

To date the program has more than 4,600 participants and a waiting list of students that would like to participate.  The taxpayers of Ohio support this program with roughly 11 million dollars per year.  Statewide education spending exceeds 10 billion dollars per year.

There are more than 50 schools participating in this program. The vast majority of them are well-established state chartered schools that have an outstanding track record of administrative integrity.  There are a handful of new, and in some cases, struggling schools.  It is important that the unfortunate failure of a single school with less than 100 students not become the standard by which this program is judged.  Such a judgment would be unfair to the children, parents and educators that are giving so sacrificially to achieve academic excellence through the program.

While this program is straightforward in its purpose and design, it is not an easy program to administer.  There are many necessary restraints and regulations within the legislation that create lots of paperwork, accounting and continual administrative follow-up.

For example, the program requires accurate reporting and verification of the residence, employment and income of every parents or guardian in the plan.  This information is vital in the computation of the proper scholarship amounts being sent to each parent or guardian.  This data also is required for the annual lottery by which scholarships are distributed.  Gathering this information and verifying its constant accuracy is not an easy task especially in a highly transient urban setting.

Over the past thirteen months, the State Auditor has released two evaluations regarding the Program.  The first was an overall analysis of the administration and operations and the second focused on a single troubled school, the Islamic Academy.

In the case of the first audit, most of the Auditor's concern have been resolved.  In the case of the second audit, the troubled school is already closed an legal actions are being pursued regard accounting deficiencies.

A strong case could be made that by comparison the accountability in the Ohio School Choice Plan far exceeds, in speed and impact, any similar review process in the public school systems across the state.  The transportation problems with the Cleveland district have been resolved.  The Islamic school has not just been exposed--it is closed.