Stephen Dyer writes about a new report from the White House, detailing state achievement gaps.
“Recently, the White House put out a report outlining the country’s student achievement gap, and the news wasn’t great for Ohio.
“We had the nation’s ninth largest reading gap between our highest and lowest performing schools, the second-largest math achievement gap, and the fourth largest graduation gap. While much of this difference can be explained by the high performance of our highest performing schools, the gap is and should be a serious concern for Ohio’s educators, parents and policy makers.
“What the data show, however, is that far from being a solution to the achievement gap issue here, Ohio’s charter schools are part of the problem.”
He writes:
“Here are what the data tell us:
“Despite making up 8% of all Ohio school buildings, charters represent 13% of the worst-performing math buildings, 31% of the worst-performing reading buildings, and 78% of the buildings with the worst graduation rates.
“Ohio’s achievement gap is 6% bigger in math, 8% bigger in reading and a whopping 23% bigger in graduation rates than they would be if the analysis included just local public schools.
“And while the state’s achievement gap is still too large, in all three cases, eliminating charters from the calculation drops Ohio’s achievement gap ranking. Math drops from second to fourth greatest. Reading falls from ninth to 11th greatest. And the state’s graduation rate gap tumbles from fourth to 14th highest.
“The achievement gap is greater in charter schools for math than it is in the local public schools.”
Dyer warns:
“Folks in Youngstown and other places should take note of this federal data: Relying on charter schools to close achievement gaps in Ohio has not worked. In fact, it has led to greater gaps in student achievement overall. So before the new CEO in Youngstown decides to turn all of that city’s schools into charters or something, here’s hoping he or she looks at the evidence first and carefully considers district options.”
The post includes specific data and is worth a read.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ohio is, as far as I can tell, the first state where people are just not buying stuff like this anymore:
“State school board members accused the Ohio Department of Education Tuesday of breaking state law by throwing F grades for online schools out of a key charter school evaluation this year.
Members of the state school board and state Sen. Peggy Lehner said David Hansen, ODE’s school choice director, was required by state law to include online schools and dropout recovery schools in evaluations of charter school oversight agencies.
But after questioning Hansen Tuesday, Lehner and the board confirmed a June 14 Plain Dealer report that he had left failing grades for those schools out of the evaluations.
That deliberate omission boosted the rating of two oversight agencies, who could now be eligible for new state perks.”
“If Hansen’s name rings a bell, it could be because he’s married to Beth Hansen, Kasich’s chief-of-staff who served as Kasich’s campaign manager in ’10 and who was recently announced as his presidential campaign manager. He was also the former head of the conservative Buckeye Institute”
I think it’s because we’ve had this version of ed reform for 17 years, so longer than many states. The slogans are no longer enough. I’m curious how it will play when the Presidential candidates roll thru here touting the wonders of ed reform. There’s a real disconnect between the national narrative and the state reality.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/state_didnt_follow_the_law_in.html
It’s somewhat heartening that State School Board members, both Republican and Democratic, wanted to grill Hansen and State Superintendent Ross, over the issue.
Ohio’s proposed charter school law does not include financial transparency on the sponsors. What is the possible justification for that? Shouldn’t we know what the sponsors do to earn the millions of dollars they’re taking out of student funding? How many people work there? What are they paid? What do they do?
“The key beneficiary of the exclusion – so far – was the Ohio Council of Community Schools, a non-profit agency which collects about $1.5 million in sponsor fees a year from the more than 14,000 students attending Ohio Virtual Academy and OHDELA, the online school run by White Hat Management.
Those schools received F grades on state report cards, which would have likely blocked the agency from receiving the state’s top oversight rating.
The Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, another charter school sponsor, has much smaller online schools under its wing, but was still affected by the exclusion.”
There are three contracts involved in Ohio charter schools- the state to sponsor contract (the charter), the school to sponsor contract and the school to management company company contract. Why are we permitted to see only one of those? It’s 100% public money.
Obviously, the state response will to approve more charter schools an shift funding from the public to the private sector. This behavior would reasonable? Well, of course. Right.
Reblogged this on rjknudsen.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.