Ohio's charter school performance is "grim" and needs state attention, Stanford researcher tells the City Club

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Ohio's longstanding and "grim" problem with underperforming charter schools is improving, a Stanford researcher said at the City Club today, but the state needs to increase its quality control efforts.

Macke Raymond, director of Stanford's Center for Research of Educational Outcomes (CREDO), presented details from CREDO's just-released report on charter schools in Ohio to a lunchtime crowd, while also discussing policy changes that can improve charters.

Most of all, Raymond stressed, Ohio has an "expanded need for attention to quality" of charter schools to reduce the large amount -- about half -- whose students show both low ability and low improvement in reading and math.

"Year over year over year, (the students) are actually falling further behind," Raymond said, with chances of ever reading well or having basic math skills "virtually nil."

As we reported yesterday, and as Raymond told the City Club crowd today, CREDO found that students learn less in charter schools than in traditional districts – the equivalent of 36 days of learning in math and 14 days in reading.

The results for Cleveland are very different from the rest of the state, with charter schools here outperforming district schools by 14 days of learning in both subjects.

(Read more at Cleveland.com)

Do charters take money from Cincinnati Public kids?

COLUMBUS – Charter schools take away money intended to pay for the education of students who stay in the Cincinnati Public Schools system, according to a report by a group critical of Ohio's charter school system.

Ohio has delegated $3,600 in state taxpayer money to pay for the education of each student who lives in the Cincinnati Public district. If a student attends a charter school instead, the district must contribute at least $5,800 to the charter school – much more than the per-student amount it received from the state.

That puts a strain on school systems' ability to educate the children who are left in the district, said Stephen Dyer, a former Democratic state representative who now works at left-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio, which co-authored the study. Schools may have to cut programs, or they may have to ask voters to approve property or income tax hikes to help make up for the difference, he said.

"We need to find a way to fund charters that doesn't hurt kids who aren't in charters – which is the vast majority of students in Ohio," Dyer said Tuesday. Dyer's group authored the study with the Ohio Education Association, a longtime opponent of charter schools.

Democrats and teacher union groups – and, increasingly, Republicans – have called for increased oversight of the state's often low-performing charter schools, which are run by independent groups but paid for with taxpayer money.

Some of Southwest Ohio's three dozen charter schools are high-performing and well-run, but many have closed after financial problems or poor academic marks. Other charters have been marred by criminal charges and even investigations by the FBI. The links between some charter schools and powerful, GOP-leaning donors have increased the controversy surrounding the schools.

(Read more at Cincinnati.com)

Ohio CREDO study: Charters' Generally Negative Impact

The quadrennial CREDO study from Stanford has become a sort of gold standard for charter-public school comparisons. They use sophisticated statistical techniques to draw helpful comparisons between the two education sectors. And while they are only looking at reading and math test scores (which brings inherent limitations), the analysis is as clear-eyed as you'll get on this contentious issue.

Well, the Fordham Institute paid to have CREDO look at Ohio's charter school sector. And in its report released today, CREDO says about Ohio's charter sector what it's generally said during its quadrennial look -- it ain't good. Kudos must be given to Fordham for paying to have CREDO come into town. While we have differed on policy over the years, I do find Fordham to be among the more credible and sane voices on this issue in Ohio from the pro-charter side. They know there's a problem and want to fix it. And for that, they deserve credit.

Back to the study. Overall, kids in charters lose 36 days of math and 14 days of reading to their traditional public school counterparts. Of the 68 statistically significant differences CREDO found between charters and public schools, 56 showed a negative charter school impact, and 12 showed a positive one.

Here are a few quotes:

• "... the better the student at the start of the year, the worse they are served in charter schools compared to what they would have learned" in a traditional public school. "... recent efforts across Ohio to improve the quality of charter school performance are only dimly discernible in the analysis. Overall performance trends are marginally positive, but the gains that Ohio charter school students receive even in the most recent periods studied still lag the progress of their (Traditional Public School) peers. More work is needed to ensure that charter schools are serving their students well."
• "Despite exemplars of strong results, over 40 percent of Ohio charter schools are in urgent need of improvement: they both post smaller student academic gains each year and their overall achievement levels are below the average for the state. If their current performance is permitted to continue, the students enrolled in these schools will fall even further behind over time. The long-term prospects for their students dim with every year they remain in these schools."

Read more at 10th Period.com

Bill Seeks More Charter School Transparency And Accountability

Senate Bill 329, introduced in April by Senator Joe Schiavoni, is finally getting a hearing by the Senate Education Committee this week. The bill is striking in its simplicity — it seeks to hold charter school owners & operators accountable for how they spend public dollars. The simplicity of this bill also reveals just how lax Ohio’s oversight of charter school spending has been for the last decade and a half.

Here’s the one-sentence addition to Ohio Revised Code in SB 329 that could have a drastic change in exposing how charter schools are spending public tax dollars:

Sec. 3314.031. Each nonpublic operator of a community school and each nonpublic entity that sponsors a community school shall comply with section 149.43 of the Revised Code as if it were a public office with respect to all records pertaining to the management or sponsorship of the school.

(Read more at Plunderbund)

More Money for Low-Performing Charter Schools

Brennan strikes again: More money proposed for the drop-out recovery schools

The billion dollar charter school operator, David Brennan, is about to get a huge early Christmas gift. His charter school empire includes dropout recovery charter schools. One of his dropout recovery charter schools graduated 2 out of 155 students in four years. A provision in HB 343, which is currently sailing through the House, will allow drop-out recovery charter schools to enroll students up to 29 years old for GED or diploma programs at a cost of $5,000 per student.

This provision in HB 343 exacerbates the transfer of tax money to private hands. For decades, Ohio public schools have provided adult basic education programs with remarkable results. The Johnny-come-lately state officials may be unaware of this.

Read more at Diane Ravitch's blog

Ohio’s For-Profit Charter Schools Drag State Into Group Of Nation’s Worst Performers

The paper found that:
• Charter schools that hired no company, as a group, performed the best academically; those managed by nonprofits showed the best student academic growth; and those managed by for-profits scored lowest in both categories.

• Of the 16 lowest performing networks, 14 were managed by for-profit companies.
• The online charter schools Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and Ohio Virtual Academy, which account for a quarter of all charter enrollment, averaged the lowest student growth in the state.

• Of the 12 highest-performing charter school networks, eight hired nonprofit management organizations.

• $503 million of $920 million in public funding went to charter schools managed by for-profit companies. A little over half of the $920 million went to out-of-state companies.
• Out-of-state and for-profit companies enrolled 74,458 of the 119,271 Ohio charter school students.

• The 10 highest performing companies managed schools with above-average revenue, many propped up by private philanthropists who invest in successful academic models. Others got a boost from Cleveland voters, who approved additional local aid (about $1,000 more per pupil) for high-performing charter schools. A similar local levy failed in Columbus. The state offers no financial incentive for top-performers.

(Read more at the ABJ)