Ohio has done its very best to promote charters and vouchers. But it did a great disservice to charters by putting them in the state base. The data are there for all to see: with only a few exceptions, charter schools perform worse than public schools.
The latest release of data shows not only that graduates of public schools were more likely to graduate from college than graduates of charter schools, it also shows that achievement gaps grow wider in charter schools, in contrast to public schools.
Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio writes:
“Charter schools saw far greater performance gaps in reading and math than school districts. And, more troubling, a far greater percentage of gap growth compared with the previous school year.
“So achievement gaps are growing wider and quicker in Ohio charter schools than Ohio school districts…
“For example, more than 21 percent of charter school achievement gaps for African-American students grew larger in reading. That happened less than 10 percent of the time in school districts. Meanwhile, charter school reading achievement gaps for poor students grew at three times the rate of school districts. Overall, reading achievement gaps in Ohio charter schools grew bigger at more than 4 times the rate of their school district competitors.
“The same holds true for math scores. African-American achievement gaps grew at a 40 percent higher rate in Ohio charter schools and poor student gaps grew nearly 50 percent more. Overall, achievement gaps for all students grew larger at a 60 percent greater rate in Ohio charter schools than school districts.
“While it is true that more times than not Ohio’s charter schools shrank rather than grew the gaps, Ohio school districts were simply far better at shrinking their prior year’s gaps than their free market counterparts.
“What does this mean? It means that far from granting greater equity for disadvantaged students, as many choice advocates claim, with some even suggesting that access to charter schools is a civil right, Ohio charter schools actually exacerbate achievement gap issues, which is the exact opposite of the civil rights movement’s goal.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s gotten a little better in Ohio- it’s like the fever broke and lawmakers are returning to their senses.
Frankly, it’s local media- newspapers. There is a jarring difference between what you read about ed reform nationally and what you read in any Ohio newspaper. The disconnect is huge. The best example was the Obama charter grants. They plunked down millions of dollars for new charters JUST AS every state newspaper was reporting poor performance and an ed reform scandal at the OH Dept of ED- the SAME MONTH.
I don’t think they bothered to find out the first thing about Ohio charters- Duncan told them to expand charters so expand they did.
Charter enrollment has stalled for the last 3 years in this state and it’s not difficult to figure out why.
There’s an opinion writer for the Toledo Blade who once referred to charters as “the darlings” of politicians. That was true at the time she wrote it but it’s less true now. Now they try to avoid the subject completely.
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Chiara,
Charter enrollment in Ohio has declined in last couple of years
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Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
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Data shows charter school graduates have big gaps in reading and math achievement and are less likely to graduate from college.
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And of course no one measures the other side of this- the affect 20 years of “choice” mania had on the state’s existing public schools- the school 90% of kids attend.
You couldn’t pay them to support public schools while this was going on. They weren’t interested. They’d spend entire legislative sessions on vouchers which serve something like 1% of kids. Weeks. Months. The public schools could just go hang. No one cared.
No one will ever mention the opportunity cost of discarding the public system while they pursued this ideological dream. Public schools are pretty darn resilient. The whole team in Columbus did their best to eradicate them and they STILL serve the vast, vast majority of children of ALL income levels.
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The ideological “dream” has turned into a real nightmare. Young people deserve so much more than being turned into continuous guinea pigs. They deserve real professionals and a stable, legitimate, comprehensive curriculum. I have totally lost respect for the political process which seems to hinge on who has the most money.
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…and a political process which so DETERMINEDLY will not look into the fact that terms like “reform” and “personalized learning” and “student scholarships” (etc. and etc.) are not what they seem. What feels so simple to call out and expose for those of us in the know remains, year after year, somehow unfathomable to politician after politician.
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” Former Ohio legislators are now telling the Ohio Supreme Court that the state should pay schools for kids the schools says are there, even if they really aren’t.
The filing was made on behalf of five former Republican members of the Ohio General Assembly earlier this month in a case that could well determine the very existence of Ohio’s largest virtual school and the nation’s largest dropout factory.
In fact, the lead legislator on the filing is William Batchelder — one of the longest serving state legislators in history who was Brennan’s bag man on Ohio’s school voucher legislation in the mid-1990s. Batchelder left the legislature in 2014. Shortly after that, he fell into a new job — lobbying for Bill Lager. Makes sense. Lager had paid him $45,000 (not to mention the tens of thousands he paid to the Ohio House Republican Caucus during Batchelder’s time as Speaker of the House). Batchelder collected $67,000 from Brennan, and even more if you include Brennan’s wife, Ann.”
The next time an ed reformer scolds public school supporters for being “self interested” remember this ECOT saga.
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