Here’s a twist. The city of Cleveland wants to upgrade the quality of its charter schools by blocking a very poorly regarded charter authorized but the Ohio State Superintendent turned Cleveland down.
Bottom line: it is easy to close a public school, but very difficult to close down a low performing charter or authorizer.
“The first real test of whether city leaders can force higher standards for charter schools in the city – a power they fought for in the state legislature five years ago – has failed.
“Though Cleveland has some of the strongest charter schools in Ohio, it also has some of the weakest. So Mayor Frank Jackson and other city leaders have wanted to force some of the weakest operators and oversight organizations for the privately-run, tax-funded public schools to do a better job.
“Making that happen has been a challenge.
“Jackson won limited power from Gov. John Kasich and the legislature in 2012 to let his school quality panel, the Transformation Alliance, recommend to the state who can create and oversee new charter schools in the city.
“That hard fought power was much less than what Jackson had initially sought – an ability for city leaders to approve or deny each new school directly.
“But when the panel tried to use that already-reduced power this year for the first time – asking the state to block controversial charter sponsor St. Aloysius Orphanage from starting new schools here – the Ohio Department of Education did not agree.
“Piet van Lier, executive director of the Alliance, shared this week a recent letter from State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria affirming that he will not grant the Alliance’s request and will let St. Aloysius add new schools here.
“DeMaria is instead forcing St. Aloysius to better communicate with the city over its educational goals.
“We are very disappointed by ODE’s decision,” van Lier said.”We reviewed St. Aloysius’s application thoroughly and found no evidence that the sponsor is focused on providing a quality education for all Cleveland children.”
“Dave Cash, head of Charter School Specialists, the for-profit company that oversees schools for the orphanage, did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment this week.”
Mr. Cash is the appropriately named head of The for-profit company that runs the low-performing authorized.
“Members of the Alliance – Cleveland school district, union, charter school, higher education, business and philanthropic leaders – believe that the Cincinnati orphanage, which now oversees 12 charter schools in Cleveland, creates mediocre or poor schools across the state, just to offer school choices for the sake of choice, not quality.
“Alliance members also question whether the orphanage and the for-profit company that creates schools for it are mainly trying to make money.”
The authorizer gets a cut of the funding no matter how poorly the school performs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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“The authorizer gets a cut of the funding no matter how poorly the school performs.”
Correcct. Ohio education policy has been paid for by deep pockets who are making profits from the charter industry.
Apparently the state has run Cleveland schools since 1995. Which explains why the locals haven’t enough clout even to ding med/poor charters foisted on them by the state. So I turned to the Cleveland Metro Schools Budget (’17)– expecting to see there something like the justification for NJ running Newark schools [altho Newark in the process of grabbing back some local clout], where state aid provides 80% of sch budget revenue (compared to local 14%, fed 1.7%, other 3.3%).
But no! In Cleveland, state provides 49% & local provides 36% [fed 10%, other 5%].
What the heck? Of that state/ local lion’s share of 85% school funding, Cleveland locals provide 42%. How does this not support locals having a stronger say over what quality charter they will accept?
ALEC says no local control. Period.
And there we have it. Ugh! American voters, asleep at the wheel.
American Republican voters, I mean. John Q Republican still thinks his party is all about local control.
Mr. Cash?
Is his wife’s name “June Charter Cash” by any chance?
“asking the state to block controversial charter sponsor St. Aloysius Orphanage from starting new schools here – the Ohio Department of Education did not agree.”
This is what I don’t get- Ohio has city newspapers (still). They cover charter schools- in the beginning it was lock-step cheerleading but eventually reality intruded and they did real investigatory reporting on charter schools.
But NOTHING on the sponsors. What IS “St. Aloysius Orphanage”, exactly? Who works there? What do they do all day? How much are they paid?
The SPONSORS in Ohio are still completely opaque.
So, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch, Toledo Blade- investigate the sponsors. Find out something about these organizations. They’re publicly funded. Why doesn’t the public know anything about them?
This is from their website:
Outpatient Counseling
Community Psychiatric Support Services
Pharmacologic Management
Psychological Testing
School & Home–Based Services
Partial Hospitalization
Services for the Dually Diagnosed
Trauma Informed and Trauma Focused Care
Education Services
Charter School Sponsorship
Professional Training
Early Childhood Mental Health
Why did the state of Ohio give them “public schools”? What exactly do they do for the schools?
Ohio charter schools are technically non-profits. This was HEAVILY sold to the public when the law went it- they were supposed to be nonprofits by law.
“Dave Cash, head of Charter School Specialists, the for-profit company that oversees schools for the orphanage, did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment this week.”
But it’s a joke. Anyone can get around it and everyone does. Still, ask an Ohio ed reform lawmaker about profits and charter schools and they will insist the law says charters must be nonprofits. They know the management companies are for-profits but they still mislead the public.
The Obama Ed Department heavily promoted Cleveland charter schools for 8 years.
They did absolutely nothing for Cleveland PUBLIC schools, of course, but that’s standard practice in ed reform.
Urban charters in Ohio don’t do any better, overall, than urban public schools but they either don’t know that in DC or they don’t care.
The data experts. The people who supposedly spend all day collecting data and making “evidence based decisions”. None of that applied in Ohio. If any of them were looking at “data” it sure didn’t inform any decisions.
While preparing my remarks for my speech at NPE, I came up with a new phrase: Data-driven drivel.
Drivel is perfect! Data driven DRIVEL
As if those politicians know about math. The only math they do is counting their money to make sure they got their payola. And probably their accountants tell them when they get payola infusions.
Do politicians zip their own pants?
What kind of place still calls themselves an “orphanage”? Orphanages were phased out decades ago. If kids don’t have parents, or if the parents are unable to care for their kids, the kids are in foster care, not in some “orphanage”. There are still residential treatment centers, of course, but those are for kids who are so badly traumatized that they can’t manage the foster care system (or, rather, the foster care system can’t manage them).