The Ohio Senate has added an amendment to a House-passed education bill that would establish penalties for school districts and charter schools that report inaccurate membership counts and average daily-attendance data.
The amendment, which was sponsored by Sen. Jim Jordan, a Republican, and passed the upper house last month, would require the Ohio Department of Education to craft a proposal outlining penalties for those districts and charters that intentionally report inaccurate data. The bill now goes back to the house for approval.
Lawmakers were responding to the 63,000-student Cleveland school district’s recent admission that it had underreported excused absences for 2004-05 by roughly 518,000.
J.C. Benton, a spokesman for the education department, said the state board of education would discuss drafting legislative recommendations that would give the department more control over the collection of all school data at the board’s Nov. 14-15 meeting.
