Ohio Charter Schools Still Struggle
More than $17 billion spent over 25 years gives us only 23 high performing charters that perform about the same as an average urban public school
Here’s what I wrote in 2015 about Ohio’s historic House Bill 2, which was supposed to start improving our historically ridiculed charter school sector,
“And while we should all celebrate its passage and acknowledge the enormous strides the bill represents for additional accountability and transparency of Ohio’s charter schools, we must now keep a careful eye on what happens next.”
Since I wrote that piece, Ohio has spent nearly $9 billion on charter schools. And what has resulted? The same sad performance Ohio’s charter schools have given us for the last 25 years.
Need proof?
Let’s look at the list of “high performing” charter schools the state put out this year. First thing first: There are 23 schools on the list. Out of 269 non-dropout recovery charter schools. That’s 8.5% — about the same as it’s always been.
Here’s the kicker: The “high performing” charter schools perform about the same on test score data1 as the average Ohio urban public school district. And Riverside Academy’s Performance Index Score of 48.8 is worse than the 50.8 of Dayton, which is Ohio’s worst-performing Ohio Major Urban school district.
Again, this is from one of Ohio’s 23 “high performing” charter schools!
That’s right. After nearly $17 billion spent on Charter Schools since 1998, Ohio has 23 “high performing” ones that score about the same as the typical urban public school district. And the typical non-high performer scores about the same as Columbus City Schools and worse than Canton, Akron, Cincinnati and Toledo while Ohio’s non-urban districts (all but a handful of Ohio Public School districts lose at least some students to charter schools) perform about twice as high on the measure.
So while I agree with the Fordham Institute that Ohio should stop chipping away at charter school sponsor accountability (private, non-profit charter school sponsors are who are supposed to oversee Ohio’s $1 billion a year charter school sector, not the state), I’m not entirely certain that sponsors are doing their job.
Maybe it’s time to do what other states do — leave charter school accountability up to publicly accountable school districts or state departments of education rather than the private non-profits who use public charter school funding to supplement their overall non-profit mission (how else do you explain the largest charter school sponsor in Ohio being an orphanage?).
Just sayin’.