The Ohio Department of Education has a lot of explaining to do about its charter school grant

At this point, its nearly impossible to trust anything the Ohio Department of Education has to say on charter school performance, the subject of so much chicanery last year that in November the federal government froze a giant $71 million charter school expansion grant to Ohio.  And it just gets worse.

The latest news? A Jan. 29 letter from ODE to federal regulators sent in an attempt to win back the grant reveals that Ohio has nearly 10 times as many failing charter schools as it first reported to the U.S. Department of Education in its 2015 charter-school-expansion grant application.   The letter was in response to a federal government request for more information from Ohio as it reviews the states once-successful grant that would allow the best charter schools to expand using federal funds.   The feds froze the grant because of a separate issue David Hansen, then ODEs school choice director, failed to include the F grades of online schools, as required by state law, in a statewide evaluation of charter sponsors, organizations that are responsible for the schools.       The application is supposed to give the feds an honest evaluation of the states best- and worst-performing charter schools. But thats become murky, thanks to ODEs changing definitions.