I get that media obsesses over traditional public schools that continuously struggle.
I do.
But I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on with the Columbus Dispatch story the other day about a proposal to allow the state to convert struggling traditional public schools with Charter Schools.
See, the story links to Ohio’s official list of Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CIS) Schools, which does indeed reveal that 117 of Ohio’s 2,978 traditional public school buildings qualify as needing these interventions. And yes, 34 of those 2,978 traditional public schools have been on the list since 2018.
But the list also includes Ohio Charter Schools. And wow. Does it include Ohio Charter Schools.
In the 2024-2025 school year, there were 340 Ohio charter schools in operation. And 114 of them ended up on the CSI list. Nearly 6 in 10 were on that list since 2018. For those who are visual learners, here’s what the percentage of CSI traditional and Charter buildings look like compared with their overall number.
Um. Yeah.
Tell me again why the state should be suggesting to anyone that Charter Schools have the solution to fixing what ails struggling traditional public schools when nearly 1 in 5 of Ohio’s Charter Schools have been on the state’s lowest performing schools list for 8 years?
I thought so.
In the Dispatch story, Akron School Board President Barbara Sykes, who witnessed Ohio’s Charter School explosion as a member of the Ohio General Assembly, asked the most relevant question: “How did you determine that the charter school would have a better outcome than the public school?”
What’s amazing to me is there is no follow up on that question in the story.
In fact, I would argue that be the only story.
We are now 30 years into this program, and 1 in 5 Ohio Charter Schools have been on Ohio’s lowest-performing-schools-in-the-state list since 2018.
And where are the legislators drafting bills to require any Ohio Charter School that finds itself on this list to be taken over by Ohio’s Traditional Public Schools, the way the state wants Charters to take over Traditionals?
Because it sure seems like going in reverse would be better for kids than what these clowns want to do.
Or how about this one: more than 90 percent of all so-called Dropout Recovery Charter Schools are on the list.
That’s right. Take a look below:
And before you complain about the extraordinarily challenged kids these schools educate, need I remind you that in order to qualify as a Dropout Recovery Charter School in Ohio, you only need to be one of the following:
“(1) Any community school that operates a drug recovery program in cooperation with a court; or
(2) Any community school in which the majority of students (emphasis added) are enrolled in a dropout prevention and recovery program operated by the school that meets the following criteria:
(a) The program serves only students not younger than sixteen years of age and not older than twenty-one years of age;
(b) The program enrolls students who, at the time of their initial enrollment, either, or both, are at least one grade level behind their cohort age groups or experience crises that significantly interfere with their academic progress such that they are prevented from continuing their traditional programs.”
So less than 50% of your students do not have to be struggling in any way and NONE have to be actual dropouts, the way you and I define them.
Even if you eliminate the “Dropout Recovery” schools from the equation, there are still more than 15% of Ohio Charter schools on this list — more than 5x the rate of Ohio’s Traditional Public Schools overall, and a slightly higher rate than Ohio’s Big 8 urban districts.
I thought these things were supposed to be decidedly better than urban districts, not slightly worse. Since when did “we produce similar results” become the battle cry of the great Ohio Education Reform Movement?
Which tells me this: Ohio’s Charter Schools shouldn’t be offered as a solution to really anything education related1.
We’ve had these things in Ohio for 30 years now. What have we gotten from them? Let’s take a look:
More than 1 in 3 are on the state’s lowest-performing building list
More than 9 in 10 “Dropout Recovery” charters are on the list
About 1 in 5 charters have been on the list since 2018
More than 1 in 2 charter schools that have ever opened in Ohio are now closed
They received more than 1/2 of all F grades ever given to schools on Ohio’s Report Card, despite representing about 10% of all Ohio school buildings
They spend almost double the share of their funding on non-instructional administrators that Ohio’s traditional public schools spend
They receive more than double the state funding that a traditional Ohio public school student receives
They spend more, on average, per pupil than a traditional Ohio Public School District, even though charters can’t collect local revenue (except for a handful in Cleveland)
They produced the single largest taxpayer ripoff scam in Ohio history, largely enabled by Sen. Jon Husted, and are constantly being busted for fraud and other corrupt practices.
Charter School students are about 7 percent of the state’s school population, but receive 12 percent of the state’s funding for schools
That funding (along with EdChoice vouchers) is preventing the state from fully funding its own formula to provide resources to the state’s 1.5 million traditional public school students
Charter Schools are now a $1.6 billion a year program, with only expansion and zero additional accountability being proposed by the current crowd at the statehouse and Governor. That money comes directly out of the same funding pot meant to fund kids in Ohio’s traditional public schools — preventing the state from fully funding its own formula to provide resources to traditional public school students.
It’s time to reign in this budget hog and start giving it lots of GLP-1s.
Like LOTS of GLP-1s.
Like maybe ALL the GLP-1s.
Again, Ohio’s Charter Schools are not all Charter Schools. There are some states that do this better than others. But Ohio? Ain’t one of those.