Ohio released its school report cards. Bill Phillis summarizes the results:
Charter schools report card grades dismal
If there is any value in the state report card scheme, it is that it reveals the failure of the charter experiment.
71 charters or 23% received F grades compared to only seven tenths of one percent of school districts. Six charters or .3% received A grades compared to 5% of school districts. 87 charters or 28% received a D grade compared to 122 districts or 20%. 60 charters or 19% received C grades compared to 281 or 46% of school districts. 158 charters or 51% received D or F grades compared to 126 or 20% for school districts.
The $11 billion Ohio charter experiment, that was established to show districts the way to improve student outcomes, is a dud.
It is time for state officials to admit failure and cancel the experiment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Watch the corporate charter school libertarian vampires ignore or attack this report and continue their greed-based, corrupt war to destroy the more efficient and successful public schools.
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Comparing school-level results for charters to district, multi-school results for traditional systems could be problematic. What do the school-level traditional school results look like in Ohio?
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Wealthy libertarians won’t be satisfied until the richest 0.1% own everything- the projection is for 33 yers from now (Fed. Reserve data extrapolated).
Income inequality kills- the wider the gap, the less healthy the people. Charles Koch will join David in hell.
All who are part of the Bluegrass Institute are miscreants like its funders.
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What part of hell?
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add to this the fact that a country’s populace is much more tolerant whey they feel prosperous and safe: the more money the 1% sucks out of the economy the more vulnerable nations become to vicious racial attitudes/attacks/violence
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“Dems investigate Chao (Mitch McConnell’s wife) over ethics questions”- Huffpo
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The more fundamental issue is with Ohio’s Report card system, especially the weighting of various components and belief that apples and potatos and seagulls and giraffes and being prepared for success can be added up and given a single grade.
This is a recent post from Bill Phillis, lightly edited.
Call for overhaul of state’s report card for schools
On September 12, State Senators Teresa Fedor and Tina Maharath, called for an overhaul of the state school report card.
Almost no one believes that the state report card actually reflects an accurate assessment of the quality of educational opportunities being offered and the effectiveness of the programs and services provided.
The Ohio Senate is on track to pass another HB 70-type state takeover bill (Substitute House Bill 154) that could put more districts into the state takeover status via low performance as measured by a seriously flawed report card scheme.
Go figure!
Fedor and Maharath Call for Overhaul of School Report Cards
COLUMBUS – State Sens. Teresa Fedor (D-Toledo) and Tina Maharath (D-Columbus) today cautioned the accuracy of the state’s school report cards, which were released Thursday, and called for the system’s overhaul.
“There are serious flaws in the way we calculate districts’ grades,” said Fedor, who serves as Ranking Member on the Senate Education Committee. “Report cards don’t reflect the quality of the education children receive nor the progress they make.
The current measures are not meaningful for the purpose of assessing the district contribution to learning. They penalize large and high-poverty districts, which they threaten with state takeovers. The State recognizes the report card is flawed and depicts a false narrative for our communities and school districts. The legislature has the power to fix these mistakes, and we need to do that immediately.”
Ohio’s school report cards were first implemented in 2013 to show the progress, preparedness and academic achievement of students in each Ohio school district. They include six components:
Achievement, which measures student proficiency on state tests;
Progress, which measures student growth based on their past performances;
Gap Closing, which measures performance expectations for vulnerable students;
Improving At-Risk K-3 Readers, which measures reading performance of students by third grade;
Graduation Rate, the percentage of students finishing high school in four or five years;
Prepared for Success, which measures how students are prepared for future opportunities.
The lawmakers believe that the Progress grade, which represents 20 percent of a district’s total grade, is particularly unfair because the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) uses a formula to adjust for the district’s size that penalizes the grade of large school districts. Furthermore, it is calculated by comparing Ohio’s school districts to each other, which measures mostly socio-economic factors. This means that if a district makes progress, but not as much as the average school district in the state, their grade will be low – not giving credit for actual percentage growth.
“It is vitally important for our children that the legislature addresses deficiencies with the school district report card process,” said Maharath, who serves as a member of the Senate Education Committee. “Many of the components used to determine school success and improvement disproportionately affect larger school districts. Instead we should be considering each district’s unique circumstances, challenges and their individual rates of improvement.”
The Prepared for Success grade is also problematic, because it gives points to students who demonstrate they are ready for college or careers in only a few ways, as determined by ODE. This excludes students who choose paths such as apprenticeships or certain college credits.
“We need report cards that are accurate, authentic and useful so they can be used as a performance management tool in our communities and school districts to address areas of concern,” said Fedor. “Without that, we cannot give schools credit for their successes or help them overcome their struggles.”
State report cards determine whether a school is subject to state takeover. Three school districts were forced into state control through the Academic Distress Commission over the past four years. The recently passed state budget suspends state takeovers for a year. It also abolishes a bicameral, bipartisan education oversight committee, which was studying improvements to the report card. A new study commission is to begin studying the report card when the legislature reconvenes.
The lawmakers say they look forward to working with the commission, school districts, practitioners and community stakeholders to address the flawed components and to reform Ohio’s report card system.
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Ed reform lobbyists are actually pushing for another ECOT:
“Now, a new legislative committee is studying models and reporting recommendations on funding online schools that move past using screen time proxies for participation measures. While a committee created in House Bill 216 was meant to issue a report last November, the new budget has language for a new, but similar provision.”
It never ends. They don’t have time to do anything for the public school students in this state. They spend every day in Columbus either funding vouchers and charters, expanding vouchers and charters, deregulating charters and vouchers, or re-regulating vouchers and charters.
The whole state has been captured by this lobby. ECOT was the single biggest scandal in Ohio state history. Nothing changed. No one got fired, no one was held accountable, and the whole state education discussion has once again been hijacked by this lobby.
https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2019/09/16/ohio-what-has-changed-for-online-schools-since-ecot-scandal/stories/20190802123
90% of schools and students in the state have been deemed unworthy of attention or investment. Instead we’re all going to chase charters and vouchers for another decade.
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If you’re a public school family don’t move to Ohio. The state government exists to fund and run the experiments of the ed reform lobby. All public school students come second to that goal.
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Don’t move to the Ohio colony. Democracy was killed with gerrymandering.The state government is a pawn of wealthy Republicans. The chair of the senate education committee, a GOP’er who never met a common good she liked even said vouchers make no sense. They make sense to the Catholic schools/parishes which get most of the voucher money.
Tim Busch, Leonard Leo and ALEC, founded by the conservative Catholic, Paul Weyrich, and funded by the Koch’s, are the 3 branches of U.S./state government.
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I guess this also means we’re never getting any of the ECOT money back. Where did it land, I wonder? Someone did very, very well as a result of this fraud. Kind of amazing the State of Ohio can’t seem to collect any of the money that was transferred to ECOT coffers, never to be seen again.
Does it remain with the Brennan family? Seems like a state could somehow find a way to collect it. I guess not. We know they didn’t use it on students and they sure didn’t spend it on teachers, so where is it? In someone’s bank account?
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Diane Here is another article from Non-Profit Quarterly re: Charter Schools
“Turning a Profit through Nonprofit Charter Schools: Communities Get a Bad Deal
Rob Meiksins/September 13, 2019
“September 8, 2019; Salon/Writing for Salon in an article produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute, Sarah Lahm makes the case that Democratic Party candidates for president should adopt anti-charter policies. In fact, according to a Washington Post article she references, most if not all of the candidates have already come out with negative comments.
“Lahm’s argument here raises once again **the kinds of tortured financial relationships that can arise in these hybrids, as backers try to make a buck in a field where little extra money is available for the basics.”” We at NPQ have been following these stories for a decade or more—see here and here.
“This story is about the Twin Cities German Immersion School (TCGIS), a nonprofit academy in St. Paul, Minnesota. According to Lahm, nonprofit charter schools are not allowed to own property directly, but they were involved in the purchase of the St. Andrews Catholic Church site, which included a church built in 1927, a rectory, and a small two-story school building. This took place in 2013; the school took out a loan to refurbish the facility, and in the end were on the hook for $8 million in construction costs. . . . ”
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/turning-a-profit-through-nonprofit-charter-schools-communities-get-a-bad-deal/?utm_source=NPQ+Newsletters&utm_campaign=315a1de3f1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_11_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_94063a1d17-315a1de3f1-12886885&mc_cid=315a1de3f1&mc_eid=cc73fe1cff
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We tried to tell them that union teachers tend to be better teachers, that experience is an upside, that paying teachers more is better not worse for the quality of education, that class size matters, that computerized isn’t personalized, that teachers need much more than five weeks’ training, that de facto segregation doesn’t have to be an accepted given, that democracy works… Did they listen to us? Noooo. They just smelled the money and threw their minds away in pursuit of the profits. Well, chickens come home to roost.
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In Ohio, taxpayers exist for one reason, their pockets fund grifting allies of the Republican Party. Shout out to the politicians and to those who steer policy, like Fordham and Bill Gates.
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$11 billion is a staggering amount of money. $11 billion could pay the salary of all hundred thousand OH public school teachers for two years.
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