Stephen Dyer, former legislator and currently a senior policy fellow at Innovation Ohio, writes here that Ohio charter schools spend about the same as public schools but get far worse results.
It doesn’t matter whether one looks at the median or the mean, charters are faring poorly in the state.
Just look at the state’s own school grades, which he display on this post. There are far more failing charters than F-rated public schools.
Now the law should be changed to say that if a charter is failing, its charter is revoked and the students are able to flee to a public school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once again, here’s the John Oliver piece on charters (soon to hit 9 million views), with some of the worst stories coming out of Ohio (i.e. Governor Kasich’s “pizza shops” defense of charter schools):
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The system of assigning school grades in OHIO is total gobbledegook. The State is still using “value added measures” and stack ratings in subcategories, then combining the sub-ratings in screwy ways to reach a single score. If you want to see the nonsense just look at pages 8 through 10 in the following document. Everything is designed to look “perfectly objective” when the whole system is a fraud. Even more ridiculous is what counts as “success.”
https://education.ohio.gov/getattachment/Topics/Data/Report-Card-Resources/Report-Card-Guide.pdf.aspx
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CRAZY. Thanks, Laura.
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What are “ stack ratings “? Are they rankings which means, of course, somebody is always at the bottom no matter how good they are ?
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Alice,
Yes. Used by Jack Welch of GE and Microsoft.
There is always a bottom 5-10% to fire.
Others can supply citations.
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YES. In the “competitive” educational model winners are made to look “best” so that the LOSERS can be there, carefully pointed out, carefully blamed, carefully maligned and denigrated, and carefully made ready for an endless profit-seeking invasion.
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“The system of assigning STUDENT grades in OHIO is total gobbledegook.”
No difference whatsoever in assigning grades to a student’s performance than in assigning grades to a teacher’s or the school’s.
Some day, oh some day we will understand this simple concept.
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What about Finland – do students earn grades an report cards there (I’ve read several pieces but can’t find the answer)?
“There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians. Every school has the same national goals and draws from the same pool of university-trained educators. The result is that a Finnish child has a good shot at getting the same quality education no matter whether he or she lives in a rural village or a university town. The differences between weakest and strongest students are the smallest in the world, according to the most recent survey by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). “Equality is the most important word in Finnish education. All political parties on the right and left agree on this,” said Olli Luukkainen, president of Finland’s powerful teachers union.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/
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It’s worse than that in Ohio. We were promised that charters would be funded at the state level. Instead, ed reformers in Ohio pull a share of every child’s funding who REMAINS in a public school to subsidize the charter system.
The state legislature is aware of the problem. They don’t care enough about the public school students to fix it.
Ohio hides the true cost of charters by taking a share of the state funding that is supposed to go to public school students. Kids who REMAIN in public school are the designated losers in this scheme.
Three systems- public, charter and private- cost more than one. Ed reformers won’t admit this, so they shuffle costs around and mislead the public.
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There’s some good news in Ohio, though. We have a state superintendent who actually bucks the charter/voucher lobbies and supports public schools.
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Chiara,
How did a non-charter educator become state superintendent?
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And when the morning light comes streaming in
I’ll get up and do it again…
Caught between the longing for love (respect)
And the struggle for the legal tender (funding)…
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We’ll get up and do it again…
Again, the better living through chemistry trap of “like disolves like”.
Attempting to disolve charter school bullshit with test score bullshit.
Just look at the state’s own school grades
Look at the for profit charter schools and the waste of money.
Ahem, the for profit testing complex wastes MORE money.
Wouldn’t a WILDCAT STRIKE on testing, target the greatest
waste of funding?
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. . . amen!
¡Sí señor!
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The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that standardized tests can’t even be graded accurately: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/04/computers_mis-grade_5300_state.html#incart_m-rpt-1
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Corporate charters actually spend less on teachers and in the classroom and a lot more on administration so these charters might be spending the same amount of money but they are not spending it the same way. They are also adding high paid administrative positions.
“Charter Schools Spend More On Administration, Less On Instruction Than Traditional Public Schools: Study
“Public schools are often criticized and scrutinized for perceived administrative bloat, tied to concerns that those sitting behind desks in district offices are diverting funds away from investment in students. Conversely, charter schools are touted for successes through their leaner administrative model, allowing for more resources to go directly to classrooms.
“But a new study by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education debunks this belief. By looking at charter and traditional public schools in Michigan, where both receive about the same operational funding, researchers found that charter schools actually spent more per-student on administration and less on instruction than non-charter public schools.
“Controlling for factors that determine school resource allocation like student enrollment and school location, Michigan State University’s David Arsen and the University of Utah’s Yongmei Ni found that charter schools spend on average $774 more per student on administration and $1,140 less on instruction than do traditional public schools.” …
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/charter-schools-spend-mor_n_1415995.html
On top of that, these corporate charters cherry pick students and do all they can to get rid of the most difficult students to teach.
And they are still losing out to community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, unionized, traditional public schools.
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