Jan Resseger writes that ECOT—the $1 Billion black hole of Ohio charters—has collapsed, but charters continue to defund public schools that most children attend.
“Because of the way Ohio funds charter schools, not only the state but also the local school district loses money when a student leaves for a charter school. In Ohio the money follows the child to the charter right out of the general fund of the school district in which the child resides. Many districts lose more money to charters than they receive in state aid. As the Columbus Dispatch‘s Jim Siegel reports: “Ohio does not directly fund charter schools, instead subtracting the money from individual districts based on where a charter student lives. Traditional public school officials and advocates have complained for years that the system also diverts local tax revenue to charter schools along with state funding. Siegel quotes Columbus, Ohio school board member Dominic Paretti, who says ECOT gobbled up enough funds to have used up several local school property tax levies: “If you add up all that local share of dollars that has flowed to ECOT from Columbus schools’ taxpayers, it would erase the need for us to possibly ever have to go to those levies.”
“The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow remains in the news because it will take years to wind up its affairs. Also Ohio waits for a final decision by the Ohio Supreme Court on the matter of ECOT’s final legal appeal to stay in business. In the meantime, Innovation Ohio has now calculated the total amount ECOT sucked out of local school districts’ funds between 2012 and 2018. During the six year period, for example, Columbus lost $62,897,188 to ECOT; Cleveland lost $39,405,981; and Dayton lost $20,200,830. Over the six year period, ECOT drained a total of $590,954,999 from Ohio’s school districts.
“Many people push back with the argument that the money should follow the child; after all, the school district no longer has to pay expenses for that student. In a new report published by In the Public Interest, however, political economist Gordon Lafer dissects the stranded costs the child’s public school district must continue to cover: “To the casual observer, it may not be obvious why charter schools should create any net costs at all for their home districts. To grasp why they do, it is necessary to understand the structural differences between the challenge of operating a single school—or even a local chain of schools—and that of a district-wide system operating tens or hundreds of schools and charged with the legal responsibility to serve all students in the community. When a new charter school opens, it typically fills its classrooms by drawing students away from existing schools in the district.” “If, for instance, a given school loses five percent of its student body—and that loss is spread across multiple grade levels, the school may be unable to lay off even a single teacher… Plus, the costs of maintaining school buildings cannot be reduced…. Unless the enrollment falloff is so steep as to force school closures, the expense of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, maintaining digital and wireless technologies, and paving parking lots—all of this is unchanged by modest declines in enrollment. In addition, both individual schools and school districts bear significant administrative responsibilities that cannot be cut in response to falling enrollment. These include planning bus routes and operating transportation systems; developing and auditing budgets; managing teacher training and employee benefits; applying for grants and certifying compliance with federal and state regulations; and the everyday work of principals, librarians and guidance counselors.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Truly, the astonishing thing is that what Jan Resseger is saying is economics 101 and if the ed reformers’ arguments were applied to any other public good they’d be laughed out of academia. I guess having right wing billionaires establish faux “academic” centers at universities greedy for their money allows crackpot ideas to take hold without anyone pointing out the very obvious flaws in their claims.
Whenever you have a public system with the obligation to serve every single child, it will always be possible for a private company or organization to serve ONLY the children who are most profitable to serve. And each time that a child who costs less than the average is served by the private company, the average cost of the children who remain in the public system will rise. The more that children who cost less than average are picked off by private companies, the higher the average cost to the public system to serve the disproportionately more expensive to serve children left behind. Especially when that public system is ALSO subsidizing some of the costs for the students served by private companies or organizations!
The worst thing about the education reformers is that instead of acknowledge that basic fact, they use the fact that the public system now needs more money per child to demand that they, too, should get more, too, because they are doing a better job! Pure greed.
People understood this when it came to vouchers, which is why vouchers were never popular. The ed reform billionaires turned charters from what they were originally designed to be into a basic voucher system. And then using the absurd circular argument that these privately operated charters were different than private schools because they were funded by taxpayers!
Charters USED to be different from private schools because they were part of the public system. But now that they have insisted that the public should have no oversight, they are private schools students can use public vouchers to attend. Which probably explains why a growing number of pro-charter folks like Eva Moskowitz seem so pleased with Betsy DeVos and her pro-voucher views.
Likewise, the US Post Office has quietly undergone its own privatization, although it still delivers all over the US. In many remote areas for profit Fedex hires the US Post Office to make the delivery. Amazon also hires the US Post Office to make its Sunday delivery. This is the same relationship that charters want to have with public schools. They want the public schools to clean up their messes and deal with the tough, expensive cases.
Two words: SICK O-SIGH-O.
In a large system like Detroit that experienced a vast amount of charter drain to fund less efficient parallel systems, the costs are not the only thing stranded. Charter drain results in stranded public schools that can no longer provide the needed services to those remaining in the schools. The public schools also have to shoulder the burden of all the rejected students from charters and the funding lost by waste and fraud caused by reckless charter providers. The public schools must take in students from charters when they abruptly shut down or close without notice often without receiving funding for the additional students. Depleted, dilapidated public schools become the schools of last resort.
and the public gets inundated with how “bad” the low-income public schools have become as they ultimately take in all students — students who are then tested inside the public schools so that their scores might be used to call the school “bad”
It’s because the Ohio legislature and governor’s office are wholly captured by the charter lobby.
They take public school families for granted- the assumption is we’re all such dopes we won’t know no one in Columbus lifts a finger on behalf of 90% of schools in the state.
Not one of them is an effective advocate for public school families. They do a lousy job.
Charter lobbyists are demanding facilities funding in addition to the funds they take from public school students, so it will get worse for the 90% of families who use public schools in this state unless voters do some housekeeping and throw the bums out.
Vote against the incumbents. We need a clean sweep.
This should ne a press release to every taxpayer in the country:
“To the casual observer, it may not be obvious why charter schools should create any net costs at all for their home districts. To grasp why they do, it is necessary to understand the structural differences between the challenge of operating a single school—or even a local chain of schools—and that of a district-wide system operating tens or hundreds of schools and charged with the legal responsibility to serve all students in the community. When a new charter school opens, it typically fills its classrooms by drawing students away from existing schools in the district.” “If, for instance, a given school loses five percent of its student body—and that loss is spread across multiple grade levels, the school may be unable to lay off even a single teacher… Plus, the costs of maintaining school buildings cannot be reduced…. Unless the enrollment falloff is so steep as to force school closures, the expense of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, maintaining digital and wireless technologies, and paving parking lots—all of this is unchanged by modest declines in enrollment. In addition, both individual schools and school districts bear significant administrative responsibilities that cannot be cut in response to falling enrollment. These include planning bus routes and operating transportation systems; developing and auditing budgets; managing teacher training and employee benefits; applying for grants and certifying compliance with federal and state regulations; and the everyday work of principals, librarians and guidance counselors.”
This, as NYCPSP says above, is Economics 101.
“School Choice” needs to have a big old asterisk appended wherever mentioned, with the footnote appended, “+___%.”
In NYC, charter school students are free riders for the costs of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, marinating digital and wireless technologies, paving parking lots, planning bus routes, operating transportation systems, crossing guards, etc. etc. etc.
Every time another student gets lured away by the promises of charters, the remaining students in public schools must cover that students’ share of all these costs. Lure away 100,000 students, and the remaining 900,000 now pay far more to cover those 100,000 charter school students’ free transportation and buildings. The more students leave for charters, the more the remaining students must be charged since that student is now covering the charter students’ transportation too. Free riders in a system that thrives because of liars and greedy folks whose behavior is very similar to Donald Trump. Charter folks, like Trump, will say and do anything to get their way. And then they convince themselves they are lying and misleading “for the kids”. Which is just as true as Trump’s lies actually being for those left out Americans instead of being for the benefit of himself.
The way to know if someone is out for themselves or has altruistic motives is whether they lie or not. If you are actually doing something worthwhile, you don’t have to lie and mislead about it. You would simply tell the truth knowing that people would judge you on that truth. It’s why I don’t trust Eva Moskowitz at all. If she had altruistic motives, she would be honest and not work so very hard to deceive.
Whenever there is a down-sizing, there are costs incurred in the system which loses the students and the funding. There are always fixed costs. When a public school system loses students/funding, there must be adjustments. It costs the same to heat a classroom with 29 or 30 students. Janitorial staff still must be paid. Utility and overhead costs, do not drop (appreciably) when there is a modest decline in student population.
In fact there may be some temporary increases. When a public school system loses students/funding, there may be layoff and staff reductions. These reductions may involve severance pay, and outplacement costs. Unoccupied classrooms/buildings may have to be sold, or leased to other entities.
The solution to this problem is for states/municipalities which bring in school choice policies, is to provide public school systems, with contingency funding, to assist the systems with the costs of declining enrollment. That is why some states, like Arizona, limit the value of the ESA to 90% of per-pupil expenditure. The losing school systems get 10% of PPE, for NOT providing educational service to students. School systems should use this 10% rebate, to meet the costs of down-sizing.
Using the “tail wagging the dog” argument, to oppose school choice/vouchers, is not going to work.
You can’t pull a number like “10% of PPE” for students and pretend that is anything near the cost.
Charter school students and voucher students are free riders. Period. Unless and until we have a system where you make an irreversible decision BEFORE your child is born whether he will be part of the public school system or not (and if not, you get your voucher and not one penny more, period), no parent should be able to “opt out” because it so happens their child will cost far less to educate than other children.
I do not follow your reasoning.
In Arizona, the ESA is equivalent to 90% of what the state/municipality would have spent to educate the child in a publicly-operated school. The state keeps the 10%. Whether that 10% will meet the “fixed” costs of down-sizing is debatable. We can agree, that there are costs associated with down-sizing. Some are immediate, like personnel costs. Some are going to be spread out over a longer period, like disposing of unoccupied classrooms, and warehouses, and school book depositories, etc. Some costs, like food service, can be met immediately. Just cut down on the amount of food that the cafeteria serves.
States/municipalities will need to be provisioned with additional funds to meet the inevitable costs of down-sizing, no dispute.
What do you mean that charter students/voucher students are “free riders”? Parents/citizens pay school taxes to the government. The government then spends the money on public school operations or on vouchers/charters. Money spent on education is government money spent, regardless of the final recipient of the funds. Most state constitutions specifically mandate that children will be provided with a “free” education. Are children in publicly operated schools “free riders”, too?
No one should have to make an “irreversible” decision, on whether he/she will be a “part” of the public school system, prior to birth. Families transfer to different school systems (often). I started public school in North Carolina, and then transferred to Lexington KY, then to Bowling Green KY. I attended seven(7) different public schools, in three different school systems, before I was 14 years old. I was born in Louisville KY, and never attended a public school there. My parents had no way of knowing where I would go to public school. Enrolling children in public schools, prior to birth is beyond ludicrous. How can a military family, with frequent transfers, know where their children will attend school?
You say: Q no parent should be able to “opt out” because it so happens their child will cost far less to educate than other children. END Q
Is this a misprint? I would think that it would be desirable for a family to remove their child from a public school system, if it would cost far less to meet the educational costs in a non-public school.
No, Charles, the 10% does not remain with the state. It is an administrative fee for the program.
Parents abuse the ESA, which is a debit card. They buy education stuff, return it for credit, and spend the tuition money on TVs, clothing, whatever. And the kids get no education. I bet you like that.
One parent used the ESA for an abortion. Isn’t that great!
Q No, Charles, the 10% does not remain with the state. It is an administrative fee for the program.
Parents abuse the ESA, which is a debit card. They buy education stuff, return it for credit, and spend the tuition money on TVs, clothing, whatever. And the kids get no education. I bet you like that.
One parent used the ESA for an abortion. Isn’t that great! END Q
OK, The 10% that is not part of the ESA is spent by the state for administrative costs. It costs money to administer the program, but even so, 10% seems like a lot of money, just to issue a debit card to a family. Seems like a typical government program, inefficient and wasteful. Nevertheless, there are always administrative costs, inherent in any program. And only the families who choose to participate in the ESA program are contributing to the administrative costs for the program.
In any program there is potential for waste, fraud and abuse. I will concede that there are at least some parents, who are abusing the program. If violations of the program are occurring, then the violators should be prosecuted. I do not like abuse or criminal behavior.
If a parent is misusing the ESA funding in any way, then the individual should be held accountable.
There is a proposition on the Arizona ballot, which will determine if nearly every family in the state, will be eligible to participate. If the program is so terrible, as you seem to indicate, then we can trust the people of Arizona, to vote down the expansion.
Charles,
“Free riders” are those whose benefit financially from a system because other people pay for the part of the system that they refuse to pay for but benefit from.
In America, schools educate ALL students. They may be severely disabled, have special needs, are newly arrived immigrants who speak no English, or they may be living in extreme poverty without much family supports. Some students may need to care for younger siblings from 3 – midnight each day so doing homework is not an option. And finally, some may be middle class or even lower income students whose parents have said “I will do anything it takes to support my child’s education.”
Now there is a charter system that says “we’ll teach who we want and throw the rest back to you and when they don’t want to leave because their parents “chose” us, we’ll treat their children exactly as they need to be treated to get them to leave.”
Now there is a public system that says “we’ll model ourselves after charters and teach whoever we want and treat the others exactly in the manner we need to treat them in order for them to leave.”
On right, that is NOT what the public system does. They do not just throw children whose voucher does’t make them profitable anymore on the street to rot.
Instead the public system subsidizes the education of those students from the vouchers of all the kids who “choose” public.
The voucher system depends on the big lie that the “average” cost of education means every child costs exactly the same. They don’t.
The voucher system INCENTIVIZES privates and charters to dump the children whose costs are more than that average. And the more they are above, the most likely they will be dumped.
And the only reason they can dump them is because they are free riders on the public system that must take them.
@NewYork public parent: I do not get your reasoning. Q “Free riders” are those whose benefit financially from a system because other people pay for the part of the system that they refuse to pay for but benefit from. END Q
All children who attend any school with taxpayer support, are then “free riders”. Ten year old children do not pay taxes. People who are in prison, are “free riders” because the taxpayers pay the costs for their incarceration.
OK, publicly operated school systems education all of the students who are in their systems, fine. But not every (public) school takes all students. In my birth state of Kentucky, there is a publicly operated school for the blind. Only blind students attend. There is a publicly operated school for the deaf, in Danville KY. Only deaf students attend. In Illinois, there is the Illinois Math and Science academy, a highly selected residence preparatory school, publicly operated/financed. Admission is highly selective, and only a fraction of applicants are permitted to attend. Are these gifted/talented children “free riders”?
No one disputes that the costs of educating all children is exactly the same. It costs more to educate a gifted/talented student. Currently only two cents of every hundred dollars spent by the federal department of education, is allocated for the brightest kids in our nation. That is a disgrace, an affront to our future scientists and engineers. Typical government (expletive deleted).
It costs even more to educate a child raised in poverty, who has been exposed daily to hunger, bad health, and insecurity.
There are many things that we agree on, and this is one of them. Children in families with lower income, are often undernourished, and have other serious impediments to learning. I believe sincerely, that if more resources were applied to these children at the beginning of their lives, there would be less chance of them winding up on welfare, or in prison.