Stephen Dyer has some amazing news in his excellent blog. I recently reposted his analysis of charter school performance in Ohio, which is mostly dismal. Nearly half the charters in the state earned a grade of F on their state report card.
Now he reports the following:
“StudentsFirst Ohio’s Executive Director Greg Harris has made some pretty important statements. Last year, he said in the Akron Beacon Journal that “a lot of times it has to do not with how well your school is performing, but how well your lobbyist is paid.”
“To hear a pro-charter organization say we need to get politics out of the argument and implore the legislature to stop pouring more money into bad charters was unheard of before last year.
“Harris was at it again this morning in the Columbus Dispatch. Here’s what he said:
“But the group will also warn parents against the slick advertising campaigns of bad charter operators.
“We think a lot of them (charters) need to be closed, because they’re not doing a good job,” Harris said. “We think charters have a role in the education base, but we also think most of the charters in Ohio stink…..”
“To hear that Ohio’s charters have serious quality issues is unheard of from Ohio’s charter school advocacy community, until now.
“I know Harris a bit, having worked with him while he was at Knowledge Works and since. He’s a good, sincere person who really does not like bad charters because he really believes in good ones. And while we differ on some major topics, on this we agree: Ohio’s Charters mostly stink, and the bad ones need to be shut down.”
This is good news. Will the Legislature and Governor Kasich listen?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The conundrum is this:
Closing charters would mean accountability measures.
Charters have typically shirked accountability claiming they would close easier in exchange for more laxness in things like how they spend their money.
If you want to change that, how do you give them accountability, while they don’t turn it around and the argument turns into “we were fine and dandy but this accountability is making us fail” – and further – what will the difference in accountability be between a charter and a public school. If they’re the same, why subsidize duel systems?
Chiara & Donna – you are acting like StudentsFirst is a Johnny-come-lately on charter accountability. The first article Dyer mentions is from 15 months ago when Student First Ohio’s CEO didn’t mince words in calling out bad charter sponsors. He basically says many exist through their political influence, and not because they do a good job educating children.
I don’t think it’s good news. I don’t know how StudentsFirst became the self-appointed voice of the public in Ohio, and I don’t know why the state is allowing them to manage a campaign to “reform” Columbus public schools.
I shouldn’t have to rely on good intentions or a personal endorsement. That’s why we elect lawmakers and pay the employees of the Ohio Department of Education. They’re supposed to manage issues around public schools, not outsource them to a lobbying group.
I’d also like the state to release the communications between the lobbying group and the state. Were StudentsFirst the only organization considered for this job? Are there email communications? Was it a competitive process? Who funds StudentsFirst? Are there any conflicts between their funders and any of the contracts that will be handed out when these schools are privatized? Did anyone bother to look for conflicts, or are we relying on the fact that someone knows someone else?
Chiara, I agree. I’m not ready to trust StudentsFirst as a “neutral” outside party. They have their agenda. But the good news is that their rhetoric is changing. Another indication that the tide is turning.
They were questioned on why they’re running what’s supposed to be a state process and they made an “admission” on something everyone in the state knows. The Columbus Dispatch obediently printed it, with absolutely no analysis.
This isn’t “news” in Ohio, Every major newspaper has printed a blistering critique of charter schools. Nothing happens. The same groups line up and lobby our legislature, and it gets worse every year.
No one will monitor this process, Diane, and a “trigger” process is an election. It’s a referendum. They can call it whatever they want, but it’s an election. A lobbying group will be the sole information source prior to what is an election.
Charter schools underperform urban districts in Ohio. That’s fact. So can I assume StudentsFirst won’t be promoting more charter schools in this state? Because this experiment the lobbyists are running isn’t without cost. They’re harming existing public schools. There’s damage. There’s a downside.
http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2014/09/ohio-urban-districts-perform-better.html
So we’re already to the point where they’ll be telling parents WHICH charter operator to choose?
We flew right by the “neutral third party” advice on maybe retaining a public school?
It’s now a choice between “good charter/bad charter”? These are public schools now. That’s off the table already? I can see this all very neutral and agnostic! Yes, sir!
What’s the state’s role? Will they be weighing in at all, or are they just relinquishing this completely?
Now that we’ve gotten the HUGE concession that there are bad charter schools in Ohio, which everyone who isn’t bought or blind already knew, we’re okay with a lobbying group running a process to privatize public schools?
I’m not.
Are the communications between the lobbyists and the state subject to public records laws? If not, will StudentsFirst and the state release any negotiations or communications voluntarily? They can print them in the same newspapers who are helping them run this PR campaign.
The fox is guarding the henhouse. I don’t trust it. Tigers don’t change their stripes. Certainly, Students First has more harm to do, wherever it visits or lives.
It’s really interesting that StudentsFirst saw what has been right in front of their eyes for 15 years the moment the state contracted with them to run a privatization campaign.
What happened? All of a sudden they need credibility, pre-campaign, so we get this decades-late “admission” of what has been blatantly obvious for years?
Just so we’re clear, this lobbyist group won’t just be determining the direction of the charter schools they promote.
StudentsFirst’s actions will be affecting every public school student in the area:
“As a result of this loophole in state law that allows charter school operators to determine their own enrollment boundaries, 610 out of the 614 school districts in Ohio directly lost students and state funding to one or more charter schools last year. That means that while charters are theoretically supposed to be providing an educational option to those students in the state’s lowest scoring schools, they are actually pulling children and resources from over 99% of Ohio’s school districts, including the highest-graded districts from across the state.”
Do they have anything to say about the decision to put a lobbying group in charge of this? Do they have any rights to representation and advocacy? Schools are systems. They don’t operate in isolation. Who will be advocating on behalf of the children who attend public schools in the “trigger” area, those schools that AREN’T privatized? Where are their advocates?
It’s a divide and conquer strategy. You don’t need to pull all of a public school’s students to make it fail, just enough of them to make it struggle and flop over dead.
The part that no one talks about is how this “public v charter” comparison on scores isn’t even apples/apples.
They can pull from any student population they want, within the practical realities of geography/distance. They should be doing MUCH BETTER than urban public schools, not worse. They don’t have the same constraints as public schools.
The saddest part of the whole thing is how public schools get absolutely no credit. It has to be incredibly dispiriting to attend or work in one of these schools. They are just punching bags, and it doesn’t matter what they do. They are the designated losers in this competition.
Lots of investigations going on in Ohio on charters, thieving charters, failing charters, FBI-involved investigation of charters – and lo and behold who is there to save the day for the public by counseling them on the parent trigger? Students First. I feel so warm inside knowing Students First is impartial and unbiased and even admitting some charters are disasters. Hmmmm. I’m feeling all warm and melty.
I don’t think Studentsfirst is suddenly turning on charters. I think they’re turning on the charters who don’t supply them with funding, or the charters who aren’t backed by the already mega rich. Indeed they’ll turn on the thieves and hooligans – they’re not corporate – they’re not going to share the wealth, and they’re not part of “the club”.
Studentsfirst is still fighting for who they always fought for, they’re just fighting the people who are both competition and giving charters a bad name and aren’t in the corporate boys club one way or another.
M.
I agree. The hedge funds want to cull the herd. In southwest Ohio, they lost opportunity for about 700 students, just this year.
Floating a reason for why the legislature hasn’t jumped aboard the latest PR wagon… yet. It exposes the rich guy charter and on-line schools. It’s easier to hide campaign funding influence, if there are people of color, on the periphery.
Although as they say, in loose translation, about legislatures, don’t assume deviousness when it’s likely to be stupidity. My Ohio rep. thinks ALEC is a “federal agency”.
Will the legislature and Kasich listen? No. They don’t have to, the republicans are poised to continue control of OH and to continue to rake money in from rich charter owners. I don’t know who to blame: inept democrats, low information voters, money, corruption or perhaps all of these working together.
Isn’t this just an opening for, “Their charters stink; fund ours instead”? I don’t find that
hopeful.
It doesn’t appear that StudentsFirst’s CEO is a Johny-come-lately on the issue of charter accountability. The first story Dyer cites, for example, is from 15 months ago. Our side loses credibility when we don’t give credit where credit is due, and franly, I find it refreshing that he says ‘most stink, need to be closed,’ and even says the bad ones are only still open because their political connections.