Charter school performance crisis

The Ohio Department of education finally released their complete set of school ratings data, so we can once again take a look at the performance of traditional public schools and Ohio's charter schools. Keep in mind as you look at these results that charter schools in Ohio cost $54 more per pupil than traditional public schools, and that 90% of the money going to charter schools that are rated in Ohio go from better performing school districts to poorer performing charter schools on the Performance Index.

So, with that in mind, how do these schools stack up against each other?

The answer is, that charters do not stack up well against traditional public schools at all. Less than 10% of Ohio's charter schools rate excellent or better, compared to 54% of Ohio's traditional public schools. Worse still, at the bottom end, almost 40% of Ohio's charter schools are in academic emergency or academic watch, compared with just over 11% of Ohio's traditional public schools.

These results make it very difficult to justify diverting over $820 million from traditional schools delivering a quality education to charter schools delivering failure.

Standards are now so low in some Ohio charter schools that an investigative report by State Impact has found

Can’t pass the Ohio Graduation Tests? No problem, some charter schools say. You can still graduate.

At some Ohio charter schools, if a student can’t pass Ohio’s five graduation exams — in reading, writing, math, science and social studies — the schools enroll them in a series of correspondence courses through an Illinois-based school. The student then earns a high school diploma from the state of Illinois. Illinois does not require students to pass a state test to graduate.

If there's an education crisis in Ohio, it's with Ohio's charter schools first, and most.

Illinois' New Teacher Law: Model for Other States, or Outlier?

A good article on the collaboration that led to a near unanimous acceptance of sweeping education reforms in Illinois

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn today signed into law a sweeping measure that has the potential to significantly reshape the teaching profession in his state by linking educators' tenure, hiring, and job security to performance, rather than to seniority.

Educators and advocates have spent months debating the importance of Senate Bill 7. Does it go far enough? Will it drive improvements in teacher quality and classroom instruction?

This much is clear: The process used to approve the measure in Illinois, a state dominated by Democrats, stands in sharp contrast to the harder-edged approach taken in Republican-dominated states, such as Wisconsin, Ohio, and Idaho by leaders who have waged public battles with teachers' unions.

That contrast could prove a defining issue in coming state and national elections. Democrats—most notably two Illinois natives, President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—have called for cooperation between unions and policymakers. Republicans like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have battled labor groups in supporting laws they argued were necessary to bring down costs for school districts and taxpayers.

Which approach will prove more successful? We may not know for some time. Several aspects of Illinois' new law, and a separate teacher-evaluation measure approved by the state last year, will prove tricky to implement.

In Wisconsin, a measure approved by Gov. Walker and GOP lawmakers, which restricts the collective bargaining rights of teachers and many other public workers, is now being challenged in court.

In Ohio, Gov. Kasich and fellow Republicans backed a law that curbed collective bargaining powers of teachers and changed how they are paid, drawing a hostile reaction from unions. Opponents of Ohio's measure are now pushing to overturn that law through a referendum. And let's not forget Idaho, where a package of laws that phase out tenure and restrict bargaining powers also face a ballot challenge.

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