HB 2 Amendments One More Positive Step. Heavy Lift Remains

The House Education Committee yesterday adopted an omnibus amendment to its charter reform legislation (House Bill 2). Most of the amendments were the charter reform provisions introduced in the Budget Bill (House Bill 64), but there were some meaningful and significant tweaks. I will talk more in depth in a separate post about the omnibus' "high performing charter" definition -- the first we've seen in this recent spate of charter reforms.

For now, though, let's start with the better stuff:

1. Operator Oversight
1. The amendments include one that will post all school-operator contracts at the Ohio Department of Education website. This is a huge step forward. When I was chairman of the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee of the House Finance Committee, I was stunned that ODE didn't have these contracts because the law didn't require them to have the contracts, even though some operators get as much as 97% of the state revenue to educate kids at charters. This is so basic, yet so important for strong oversight and accountability. 
2. The amendments include one that would have operator report cards listed in the charter school annual report, which is a good tweak of the HB 2 original language. Now we'll know how all three charter entities -- sponsors, schools and operators -- perform. Great for transparency.
3. The amendments require that the schools have independent counsel to negotiate the contracts they sign with operators and sponsors -- a very positive step to safeguard taxpayer dollars. However, the charter legal world is a very tight knit group. Will this essentially serve as the Jamie Callendar Permanent Employment Act? Or will it allow some independence from his dominance in this area? We'll see.
4. Financial and enrollment reports have to be sent to the operator too, not just sponsor and school. I am still perplexed why they wouldn't be sent to ODE since it's public money we're talking about here. 
2. Transparency
1. In addition to the posting of operator contracts, the amendments say that all charter governing board members shall be listed on school websites, with their addresses and contact information sent to ODE and sponsors. This is another step forward. Again, though, for 16 years they haven't been required to do this. Amazing.
2. ODE approves financial plans for schools and has contracts with all sponsors, even previously grandfathered entities. Again, keeping all this information in the public's warehouse is a nice step forward.
3. The amendments require annual training for all charter employees and sponsors on public records requirements. This should avoid the embarrassment of charters not telling reporters basic information, like who's on the board and when they meet, like they did last year.
3. Accountability
1. Adds more requirements for the sponsor contracts with schools, which would help bring more sunshine in on that.
2. Allows the state Board of Education to establish additional requirements for new sponsors and allows the Cleveland Transformation Alliance more of a voice on new Cleveland charters. While this isn't meeting the original intent of the Alliance --namely having local communities control which schools can open in them -- it does give them a little more say on which charters can open in Cleveland. And that's a good step. Giving the mostly elected board some additional oversight authority is also a nice step.
3. Requires that the sponsor, not its agent, has to work with the Auditor of State on audits and other procedures. This is a response to Auditor David Yost's recommendations and is a nice step.
4. Has ODE approve all financial plans of charters. Again, solid provision.

As you can see, the vast majority of the provisions are improvements. Do they go as far as they need to? No. But we're definitely on a solid reform path that will help the public be better informed about the sector. And that's important. However, there remains a major blind spot in this bill: the schools themselves.

(Read more at 10th Period)

Charter school revamp underway in legislature

A bill to improve Ohio’s charter school laws got 20 amendments this morning, including new requirements that charter school operator contracts and school board member names be posted online for public view.

Though there was some concern from Democrats on a provision that would weaken a proposed requirement that a school treasurer be employed by the board, not the charter operator, the revisions got largely favorable reactions.

“I think the changes the House made strengthen the bill,” said Chad Aldis of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a strong charter-school supporter that has been critical of Ohio’s lax oversight. “These reforms are strong enough and have a real chance to change the environment in Ohio.”

House Bill 2 seeks to improve oversight, accountability and transparency of a charter school system that has endured sharp criticism in recent months both in Ohio and nationally, even from groups that are strong supporters of school choice. Ohio, which is spending about $1 billion a year on charters, has been called the “wild, wild west” of charter schools.

State Auditor Dave Yost recently called Ohio’s charter school oversight a “broken system of governance.”

The House Education Committee is likely to vote on House Bill 2 next week. It will reconvene this afternoon, where minority Democrats are expected to propose a host of amendments.

(read more at the Dispatch)

Two closed charter schools’ records unauditable

The two Talented Tenth Leadership Academies in Columbus have been shut down, their founder has been indicted on criminal theft charges, and now the former charter schools have been placed on Ohio Auditor Dave Yost’s “unauditable” list.

Yost said financial records for the academies — one for boys and one for girls — were either missing or such a mess that he was unable to review them to determine whether tax dollars were accounted for.

Problems for the two academies started shortly after they opened in 2013. Within months, Ohio school Superintendent Richard A. Ross ordered them closed for health and safety reasons.

State officials said the schools were inadequately staffed, there were numerous student fights, and meals weren’t being served or consisted of fast-food carryout. The schools were sponsored by the North Central Ohio Education Center.

(Read more at the Dispatch)

One weird trick to fix Ohio charter schools

Charter school proponents recently agreed that Ohio’s charter schools are among the worst in the nation. As reported in Akron’s local newspaper, panelists at a conference on charter schools and choice hosted by the Education Writers Association in Denver, Colorado agreed that Ohio hosts an outsized number of charter school operators that run failing schools.

The participants on the panel included Micheal Pettrelli, the president of the Thomas Fordham Foundation which advocates for charters, vouchers and other market-based education reforms, and Todd Ziebarth who oversees state advocacy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Both men have dedicated their professional lives to charter schools, but because they believe in the mission of such schools, they are willing to call out those that are failing students.

The story puts into perspective the well-documented problems with Ohio’s charter schools. Whatever inherent challenges charter schools pose, Ohio appears to wrestle with outsized problems compared to other states.

Those problems can be traced to many factors, but one deserves special attention. In 2006, during the lame duck session after the election of Ted Strickland, the General Assembly quietly passed one of the strangest laws I have ever come across. The law states that when a charter school board attempts either to terminate or decline to renew the contract of a charter school operator, the operator can seek to have the board dismissed.

A charter school operator is a person or organization that provides services to a school. Generally in Ohio for-profit corporations have stepped into the role. The typical operator takes in the state money, spends it as it sees fit on staff, materials, equipment and books, and keeps some portion as its management fee. In short, it is a vendor selling management services to a school, so Ohio’s legislature passed a law that empowers a company to punish a customer for declining to continue purchasing its wares.

One reason this law has persisted for eight years is that in order to understand its awfulness a person needs to understand the gallery of entities that make up the parallel charter school universe and the terms of art used to name them. “Operator” sounds like an official entity created by state law as opposed to a profit-making company enabled by it.

Technically a charter school is a not-for-profit corporation organized under the auspices of another organization known as a sponsor. The sponsor is charged with maintaining oversight over the board which runs the day-to-day activities of the school. An operator seeking to fire a governing board appeals to the sponsor. By law the sponsor is to consider whether the operator followed state law and fulfilled the terms of the contract. In other words, an operator performing to the bare minimum requirements of the statute and contract can get its customer fired. Weird.

The law renders charter school boards nearly powerless and operators supreme. Boards that have complained that they are unable to regulate or even learn how the operator spends the school’s state allocation have been successfully removed.

As weird as this all sounds, it is that much weirder when considered against the theory behind charter schools. Charter schools are supposed to benefit from fewer of the regulations a traditional public school is subject to, while they expose public education to the rigors of free markets, forcing all schools to be more innovative and effective. Charter proponents pressed their point with the mantra that they would break the public school monopoly.

But Ohio imposes a regulation that creates as effective monopoly in the market for providing services to a particular school. A charter school board that finds an operator who delivers better services for the money cannot switch to that vendor. The law shields operators from the market competition that in theory might make charter schools work, if they ever do.

Like any other promise to solve a vexing problem with “one weird trick,” the headline above exaggerates the prospects for a total solution. Partly that is because charter proponents originally sold the idea as one weird trick: impose a little market discipline and all of our education challenges would work themselves out. Subsequent experience indicates that market competition alone provides no panacea – the system must include some regulation and oversight. Indeed, one reason sponsors acquiesce to the appeals from operators to fire boards is that there is insufficient oversight upon sponsors.

Ohio’s charter system needs more than one reform, but this one would go a long way toward correcting one of a fundamental imbalance. And make it less weird.

(Read more that the Akron Legal News)

ECOT Charter School: Ohio’s Dropout Factory

The Kasich Administration and GOP-controlled Ohio General Assembly has been all about “education reform” over the last 5 years, with an alleged focus on improving student achievement — especially decreasing the dropout rate. Recent legislation has focused on getting Ohio’s students to graduate from high school with not only a high school diploma, but for those not interested in college, some sort of industry credential.

The Third Grade Reading Guarantee, for example, has been continually touted as a step toward decreasing Ohio’s dropout rate (we strongly disagree with this assertion) and the legislature has held firm on this law even while passing House Bill 7 that protects all other students (at least for the 14-15 school year) from experiencing negative ramifications from all other state standardized tests.

Additionally, Governor Kasich in his recent State of the State speech touted the need for charter schools in the state, saying:

“But I also want to say to you that just because a charter school is not producing great results in grades, it doesn’t mean they’re failing. Some of these charter schools have kids that if they weren’t in that charter school, they’d be out on the streets.”

Hmm.

Charter schools as a means of keeping kids in school? Fascinating.

(Read more at Plunderbund)

Ohio bill to regulate charter schools will get more work

House Republicans are slowing down action on a charter school oversight bill that was supposed to get significant revisions on Monday.

Work on the bill will continue for at least another week, as leaders weigh numerous amendments to House Bill 2, said Rep. Bill Hayes, R-Granville, chairman of the House Education Committee.

Even more suggestions came in Monday from groups including the Ohio Newspaper Association, which urged lawmakers to improve transparency among charter schools that are spending $1 billion a year in taxpayer money.

“There is no complaint we hear more often from Ohio journalists than the inability to report meaningfully on the activities of community schools,” said Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Newspaper Association. “There remains only minimal ability for the public to know how those dollars are being spent in many cases.”

The bill seeks to upgrade transparency, accountability and conflict-of-interest provisions in Ohio’s charter school law, which has endured criticism and ridicule in Ohio and nationally for lax oversight that, critics argue, wastes taxpayer money and allows too many bad charter schools to operate.

(Read more at the Dispatch)