This is an important summary of the failure of the charter school movement in Ohio, from the Ohio Coalition for Education and Adequacy:
A “noble” experiment to force the improvement of the public common school: Fifteen years and $7 billion dollars later the charter school gamble has not made the grade.
9/24/2013
The Department of Education’s ranking of schools and districts reveals that 83 out of the bottom 84 schools are charter schools. Of course, the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools cautions against placing too much importance on the DOE ranking. The reality is that, on the average, charter schools preform less well on the state’s accountability criteria than traditional public schools.
Persons who were involved in public education in the late 1990s will recall the rhetoric from charter school advocates. The charter schools, they said, being free of many state regulations and school district bureaucracies, would advance innovation and creativity which would produce exemplary results. These schools would then inform the traditional public schools on how to improve education programs and services.
Later the charter school rhetoric changed to platitudes about the efficacy of competition, choice and market forces. But none of these threadbare reform notions produced, except in very rare cases, charter school results that outperform traditional public schools. Hence, traditional public schools are drained of much needed funds, and students in charter schools suffer from less favorable educational opportunities.
One of the reasons that the charter school movement has played out this way is that management companies have hijacked this endeavor. Ohio is considered a great “cash cow” environment by the folks who view education as a money making enterprise. No doubt, at this moment in time, there are entrepreneurial groups plotting how to profit from Ohio taxes set aside for public education.
27 management companies operate charter schools in Ohio. Of those 27, 19 are for-profit companies. Of the 19 for-profit companies, half of them are out-of-state corporations; hence, they take a Brink’s truckload of school district money out of Ohio in the form of profits each year.
Charter schools, on the average, have higher pupil-teacher ratios and pay teachers about half as much as traditional public schools. This most likely has a negative impact on the retirement systems.
Many in the public education community believe nothing can be done to stop this non-transparent, non-accountable movement. If the citizens of Ohio had the facts about charter school operations and results, politicians would have to make them more accountable and transparent or they would be voted out of office. It is imperative that the public school community make the facts about charter schools available to school patrons and the general public.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
The collective recipients of that $7,000,000,000 will of course argue that the experiment was a $ma$hing $uck¢e$$. And they will spend — or have already spent — a goodly portion of that $7,000,000,000 buying the media and the politicians who are there to prostitute for their ad copy.
Meanwhile, in Columbus despite MASSIVE public outcry, the State passes law (HB167) to force joint levy for Columbus City Schools and Charter schools. http://ow.ly/p7qF5 **Brilliant!!** #ItsOKAYtoVoteNO
Diane,
Idaho needs your help! How can we get you here to speak for the people of Idaho? Terry Ryan from the Fordham Institute has been given a new position in Idaho as President of the Idaho Charter School Network.
Quoted from the article ““Albertson’s’ vision is very compelling,” Ryan said. “I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help make Idaho a leader and a model in education.'”
http://www.idahoednews.org/news/ryan-plans-to-speak-out-for-charters/
Also introduced in Idaho Ed News (funded by the JA & K Albertson’s Foundation) is a “non profit” group that will help Idaho fund charter schools. Joe S. Bruno is the leader of this group. Incidentally, 2 days after this posting, an education group that I belong to, was sent a message from a Matthew Bruno to give out loans. Coincidence?
http://www.idahoednews.org/news/non-profit-moves-to-boise-to-build-charters/
The Albertson’s Foundation is supporting a new group called ROCI, Rural Opportunities Consortium of Idaho. You will see national education reformers involved in this group, including but not limited to Terry Ryan, Andrew J. Rotherham, and Marguerita Roza.
http://www.idahoednews.org/news/experts-to-exam-rural-idaho-schools/
Diane, what can we do to get you here in Idaho to help us? They are banking on us not doing anything. I would like to have opposition before they even get started!
I can’t get there but please make sure that key policy makers read my book Reign of Error. And send them the post this morning about Ohio (where Terry Ryan worked to promote charters). The post summarizes what is on the state website: of the 84 worst performing schools in the state, 83 are charters. $7 billion wasted. Ohio has a very vigorous, well-funded charter sector with some of the worst charters in the US, siphoning off millions from taxpayers to deliver bad education to innocent kids.
http://enjoy.ohio.com/failing-charter-schools-often-close-reopen-with-little-change-1.426798
It’s hard to believe that this is allowed to happen.
Thanks Diane!
I wish we could have booked you during your west coast tour! We have lots of voices. There is an education rally going on this Saturday throughout Idaho. But, I would love to have a big crowd of people uniting, and I think you could do that. If we organize, do you think you would be willing to come to Boise in the future?
It’s done real damage to the public schools in the state. The entire debate is about how public schools are “failing” and how we can re-direct efforts to charter schools.
The only governmental advocates public school children have in this state are on local school boards, and they have to cut deals with “reform” proponents to even preserve our public schools, forget about improving them. National reformers and media like to complain about teachers unions, but without teachers unions lobbying the statehouse, millions of public school students wouldn’t have an advocate to compete at all. Are teachers unions self-interested? I don’t know, but they’re pulling on the same side as public school parents, so I don’t care.
After 16 years of “reform” I can say unequivocally that my local district has received absolutely no benefit, and we’ve been harmed. They’ve done a real disservice to the vast majority of kids in this state, those who attend traditional public schools. They’ve been abandoned.
Student success has more to do with parents and poverty than anything else. Charter schools are not the “silver bullet” in education. Besides, the formula is backwards. We shouldn’t be encouraging good students to leave their “failing” public schools. It should be the opposite.
They fail by their own metrics.
An oft-told tale.
Time to move the goal posts again?
🙂
Jared Polis has his thumbs in his ears, is wiggling his fingers and saying “Blah blah blah I’m not listening to you blah blah.”
In general, Charter Schools in Ohio are not living up to expectations. The data from the Ohio DOE can be found here:
http://education.ohio.gov/Miscellaneous/Search-Results?q=ranking%20of%20Charter%20schools
This data shows that indeed Charter Schools collectively are scoring poorly by almost any metric.
I would urge caution however in interpreting these results in the way suggested by the post. The unit of analysis in the post suggests that the unit of analysis is a school. However, the data is primarily for school districts. Charter schools tend to be single schools.
The same data indicates that 6% or 83,872 students attend charters in Ohio out of a total of 1,373,099 students attending k-12. Of the 83,872 attending charter schools 63,014 or roughly 75% are in schools that are rated as needing improvement (Local Ratings of Academic Emergency, Academic Watch or Continuous Improvement), 301,667 students or 23% were in Public School Districts that fell into this same category.
One other note, it is true but misleading to use the number of $7 billion spent on Charter Schools over 15 years without referencing the total Education Spend by Ohio over the same period. In 2012 roughly $774 million went to Charter Schools out of a total spend in 2011 of $19,580 million. II have not checked to see whether this is strictly an apples to apples comparison. Somebody else may have better numbers.)
I was reading Common Dreams earlier today that included a link to this article from the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/12/01/us/government-incentives.html?_r=0 Here’s one interesting takeaway: Five of the states who cut school funds because they “had revenue problems” (TX,MI, OH, FLA and PA) gave tax incentives to corporations worth $37,810,000,000— with TX leading the way with $19,100,000,000 in subsidies for business while cutting school funding by $5,000,000,000. Ohio “only” gave $3,240,000,000 to corporations. You don’t need an advanced degree in mathematics, economics, or ethics to see that this is unfair and unjust.
wgerson:
I am not sure I see where the Ohio Education Budget has been cut. At the aggregate level there appears to be a nearly 5% increase in 2014 over 2013.
Department of Education
FY 2012 $ 11,280,775,954
FY 2013 $ 10,986,200,844 (Estimate)
FY 2014 $ 11,520,765,322 Increase 4.87% (Appropriated)
FY 2015 $ 12,013,518,929 Increase 4.28% (Appropriated)
Click to access hb59_Main-Operating-Budget-14-15.pdf
What’s been remarkable to watch has been Michigan. Ohio reform is an unmitigated disaster, yet reformers moved right into Michigan and instituted the same set of policies.
There’s no comparison or analysis of what works and what doesn’t, even in neighboring states. The reform template is simply imposed on the next state, with absolutely no regard for the SIXTEEN YEARS of bad experiences in the state that was prior in “reform.”
Michigan may actually be worse than Ohio, because Ohio doesn’t (yet!) have whole districts that have been privatized and made for-profit, and Michigan does.
It makes it hard to believe that national reformers are well-intentioned, because they travel from state to state. Rhee pushes the same policy in Michigan that she pushed in Ohio. But she KNOWS it hasn’t worked in Ohio. She has more than a decade of failure to look at. For goodness sakes, Ohio media are finally picking it up, and the cheerled reform longer than anyone. All she has to do is pick up a newspaper.
Bernie, nice spin. Chiara, Michigan’s reform movement has created “cash cows” too. The state cut education money and yet lifted the cap on charters. They claimed there wasn’t enough money yet have allowed money to be wasted buying and building charters. All the money goes out of state or to a private company that isn’t even within the regular school district boundaries. Most of the schools are inferior with high staff turnover. The legislators are so corrupt they have allowed this rip-off to spread.
Dee Dee:
What spin do you see? wgerson’s comment suggests $5 billion in cuts to education though his syntax leaves exactly where unclear. I asked a question and presented budget data for Ohio. My earlier comment explicitly acknowledged the poor relative performance of charter schools and provided the data source. I am not spinning anything.
Bernie, why is this happening?
http://enjoy.ohio.com/failing-charter-schools-often-close-reopen-with-little-change-1.426798
How much of Ohio’s tax dollars are being wasted by for-profit education companies?
Dee Dee:
Why do you think that I would be any less perturbed by waste and potential corruption than you are?
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/02/01/ohio-media-ignore-financial-link-between-failin/192486
I guess this is where the money is going-private hands while the public gets ripped off.
Ohio’s loose charter regulations and financial oversight can be attributed to the political deep pockets of a few for-profit owners.
White Hat schools are owned by Ohio resident David Brennan. He and his wife Ann are two of the most active political donors in the state — they are among the top individual donors to current Senate President Keith Faber, Speaker of the House Bill Batchelder, and Governor John Kasich.
Other big donors to President Faber? The Waltons out of Arkansas and William Lager, the founder of ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), the dismally-performing online school that continues to rake in taxpayer dollars for failing programs.
Senate President Faber donations: http://data.influenceexplorer.com/contributions/#cmVjaXBpZW50X2Z0PUtlaXRoJTIwRmFiZXImZ2VuZXJhbF90cmFuc2FjdGlvbl90eXBlPXN0YW5kYXJk
Speaker Bill Batchelder donations: http://data.influenceexplorer.com/contributions/#cmVjaXBpZW50X2Z0PVdpbGxpYW0lMjBCYXRjaGVsZGVyJmdlbmVyYWxfdHJhbnNhY3Rpb25fdHlwZT1zdGFuZGFyZA==
Governor John Kasich donations: http://data.influenceexplorer.com/contributions/#Y29udHJpYnV0b3JfZnQ9QnJlbm5hbiZyZWNpcGllbnRfZnQ9Sm9obiUyMEthc2ljaCZnZW5lcmFsX3RyYW5zYWN0aW9uX3R5cGU9c3RhbmRhcmQ=