When Ohio first opened charter schools, advocates claimed they could “save poor kids from failing schools,” while costing less. They would be so effective that at-risk students would learn more, even close the achievement gap. And they would be so efficient that the state would pay less for education.
Of course, it hasn’t worked out this way. A new analysis by a public policy think tank in Ohio reveals that charters cost more than public schools, and with rare exceptions, get worse results.
Meanwhile, the charters siphon money away from more effective public schools.
“Innovation Ohio has analyzed data from the Ohio Department of Education that demonstrates that the way charter schools are funded in this state has a profoundly negative impact on the resources that remain for the 1.6 million kids in Ohio’s traditional public schools.
“In the vast majority of cases — even in many urban school districts — the state is transferring money to charter schools that perform substantially worse than the public schools from which the students supposedly “escaped.”
Key Findings:
“Because of the $774 million deducted from traditional public schools in FY 2012 to fund charters, children in traditional public schools received, on average, $235 (or 6.5%) less state aid than the state itself said they needed.
“More than 90% of the money sent to rated charter schools in the 2011-2012 school year went to charters that on average score significantly lower on the Performance Index Score than the public schools students had left.
“Over 40% of state funding for charters in 2011-2012 ($326 million) was transferred from traditional public districts that performed better on both the State Report Card and Performance Index.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And the latest from our legislators is a voucher plan to transfer more money to private and religious schools. Separation of church and state? Our state government has been thumbing it’s nose at the courts since they ruled the funding formula here is unlawful, and that’s been 25 (give or take) years. As long as folks here keep putting Republicans in office (and I don’t think that much of the other side) this will be the natural outcome. They have an agenda, they grind at it and right now, they’re destroying a public institution to pay off their contributors.
I am currently tutoring at a charter in my urban district. While I am not a proponent of charters and worked in the public sector for 33 years, I thought id take the job and see what creative new ideas they offered and how it compared to my years in public education. I see nothing different. In fact, I see a lot of people with job titles I am unfamiliar with walking around,and observing teachers. I don’t see any visible differences in student performance, discipline, or teacher satisfaction. They have a huge room dedicated to in-house detention with a full time paid staff member that is a waste of space and money. The librarian is on her own teaching classes and doing all the rest of the librarians duties. I guess what bugs me the most is the number of people I see that are being paid and seem to have nothing to do.
Ohio should be the poster child for school reform failure. The state went bigger into it than other states, and sooner. The results are in, after 15 years. The charter school system has been completely captured by for-profit operators and their lobbyists. This is a state where the parents who founded a charter school hired a for-profit operator and then had to sue to see his books. This is a state where failing charter schools are closed, and then immediately re-open under “different management”, but it’s the same management, they’ve simply changed the names on the letterhead and re-organized. The change is a legal fiction. It’s the same people.
I understand Florida is also a leader in school privatization, and Michigan is coming up fast, but I think I’d still bet money on Ohio as best example of what happens when one deregulates and then privatizes education. An absolute feeding frenzy for for-profits and their lobbyists, and they’re burrowed in tight. We’ll never get rid of them.
From an Ohio public school parent, I’d just like to thank national school reformers for giving us this whole new and exciting spectrum of corruption and for-profit capture of public funds.
The problem is that the money-muscle behind school reform in this country doesn’t care about studies unless they are in line with its real, selfish goals. Facts don’t matter — they have piles of money that can trump any and all fact-based studies. Money that can turn otherwise intelligent people into “true believers” in their faith-based religion of testing, “accountability”, and privatization.
So go ahead — spin your wheels, researchers. Waste your time on meticulous research and writing. It won’t matter one whit. What matters is who has the money.
As we have seen in many States, it takes several years to determine failing Charters and shut them down. As funding is decreased in Public schools, the level of Education also decreases. This does not happen overnight, eventually the Public schools students will reach the level of the “poorer” Charters. The level of Education, based on tests, from the “poorer” Charters will increase due to creaming of students and the level of Publics will decrease due to the creaming in Charters and decrease in funding. At this time, the powers to be may shut down some Charters and some Publics. The Charters will move into areas where the Publics are shuttered and the cycle continues.
There will be no increase in the Educational level of the Students throughout the State, only an increase in the number of Charters.