Fordham: Pay ALL Charter Schools More Because a Few Do Well. Maybe.

Fordham Institute cherry picks performance data that isn't as rosy as it claims, then wants to impart that data to benefit ALL charters with $150 million in more taxpayer revenue.

The Fordham Institute is nothing if not consistent. Namely, they always cherry pick data. That’s fine, I guess.

But when they then claim those cherry-picked data should require taxpayers to invest another $150 million or more in their policy objectives, I have to respond. Let’s look at their latest example:

“The charter model delivers not only different types of education but also superior results. While Ohio’s charter sector formerly struggled with outcomes, in recent years, Ohio’s brick-and-mortar charters have outperformed comparable traditional districts on state math and ELA exams. As the figure below indicates, Black and Hispanic children make significant academic gains when attending these schools. Combining results in math and reading, the gains for Black charter students are equivalent to moving from the twenty-fifth percentile at the beginning of fourth grade to the fortieth percentile by the end of eighth grade.

A lot to digest here. These data points are supposed to suggest that charters do a better job of growing 4th and 8th grade Black students’ reading and math scores at greater rates than comparable school districts.

As a result, Fordham immediately jumps to this remarkable claim:

“ Despite these strong results, charters have been underfunded, constraining their ability to grow and educate more students.

Let’s break down their claim.

Do charters do a better job of educating Black students?

No. But that’s what Fordham wants you to think. The study they’re referring to with that graphic is one they funded from a couple years ago. In it, the study’s author analyzed 4th and 8th grade reading and math scores over three years in brick and mortar charter schools that contain 4th and 8th grade students.

Want to guess what percentage of Ohio charter school students attend Ohio charter schools that meet that definition?

Less than half.

That’s right.

Fordham claims that Ohio charter schools have had “strong results” because of how Black students did on 2 of 24 snapshot assessments in buildings that house less than half of the students attending charter schools.

So let’s give all Ohio charter schools another $150 million.

See how this works?

Find a morsel, feed an army.

And let’s look at that performance assessment anyway. Beyond the obtuseness of the statistical analysis, the key underlying assumption — that the students in these charters are comparable to students in the community — is wrong. Why? Because while nearly every student attending a local public school is from that community, about 20 percent of the students attending the schools Fordham examined actually live outside the community in which the charter resides.

Is it fair to compare, for example, Cleveland Municipal Schools’ student performance with that of Menlo Park Academy when only 22 percent of Menlo’s students come from Cleveland? Or compare Lakeshore Intergenerational with Cleveland when less than half of Lakeshore’s students come from Cleveland?

Yet for Fordham’s analytical purposes, those schools’ performance will only be compared with Cleveland.

Are there schools Fordham examined that take nearly all their students from their comparison districts? Sure. But, on average, the schools they looked at — brick and mortar charters with 4th through 8th grades — only took 79 percent of their students from the communities in which the charter resided during the 2017-2018 school year (latest year I had handy).

And, of course, Fordham conveniently ignored that the analysis they paid for that served as the undergirding for their $150 million ask looked at more scores than just those Black students’ reading and math scores in 4th and 8th grades.

Wanna guess what those results showed? Because Fordham didn’t talk about those results, burying them in the report’s appendices.

Look, you can run all the sophisticated tests you want, but let’s look at reality. Ohio received $71 million from the feds in 2015 to grow and develop high quality charter schools. Seven years later, that money has seeded 14 new schools and the state has spent barely 10 percent of the award.

If Ohio’s charter sector was truly brimming with “strong results”, as Fordham insinuates, don’t you think we’d have spent a little more than 10 percent of the money and opened more than 2 schools a year?

Ohio has 323 charter schools, by the way.

Here are the facts: more than half of all charter students leave districts that outperform charters over the 15 graded components schools and districts receive — and have so consistently during the period Fordham examined. Since the A-F report card system was adopted, Ohio charter schools have received more F grades than As, Bs and Cs combined.

Finally, more than half of all Ohio charter school students do not attend the schools Fordham uses to claim wondrous success.

About 35,000 students attend online charter schools like ECOT. Another 15,000 or so attend dropout recovery schools that can’t even graduate 10 percent of their students in 6 years.

More maddening still? The schools Fordham sites as locations of “strong success” receive, on average $10,269 per pupil in state aid — more than what kids in 95 percent of Ohio school districts receive.

And as I’ve mentioned in my previous posts on the topic, the average Ohio charter school now spends more per pupil than the average Ohio school district, even though charters don’t get local revenue. And charters could spend about $1,000 more than districts per student in the classroom if they would simply stop spending double the rate on administrators that school districts do.

Yet Fordham has the gall to suggest that somehow Ohio charter schools have earned another $150 million. An industry that has been rife with embarrassing scandal, including the largest taxpayer ripoff in state history.

Oh yeah, I forgot. In 2015, the Akron Beacon Journal found that Ohio charter schools accounted for at least 70 percent of all misused tax dollars between 2013 and 2015.

So let’s pour another $150 million into these schools because Black students attending charters that educate less than half of all the students in the sector may have done a little better on 2 of 24 state tests.

That’s Fordham’s argument.

I.

Swear.

To.

God.