Stephen Dyer, a former state legislator, has been watching the performance of charter schools in Ohio for many years. Ohio has one of the worst charter sectors of any state in the country. Not only do the charters do worse than public schools, but they have been embroiled in scandals, especially the online charters.

Why does the Ohio legislature keep funding poorly performing charters? The majority of legislators are Republicans who love school choice, regardless of results. Some take money from the charter sector. Some, like Andrew Brenner, chair of the House Education committee, hate public schools.

Dyer reviews here the sorry record of Ohio’s charter school sector.

He begins:

Nearly 1/2 of all failing Ohio Report Card grades handed out since 2005 have been given to Ohio Charter Schools, even though more than 3 times as many grades have been given to Ohio Public Schools

After about 30 years of looking at Ohio Charter Schools, I kind of use a shorthand when describing them — notoriously poor performing. And I assume everyone understands what that means. 

However, I have come to realize that perhaps a portion of my readers may not be familiar with the Ohio Charter School Wars waged between 1999 and 2017. Since 2017, Ohio’s school choice warriors have focused primarily on exploding the amount of state taxpayer money being used to unconstitutionally subsidize wealthy parents’ private school tuitions.

But Ohio’s Charter Schools have continued receiving huge taxpayer investments — $1.56 billion this year alone, which dwarfs even Ohio’s $1 billion unconstitutional private school tuition subsidy. We now give more state money to Ohio Charter Schools than we give to all 8 of Ohio’s major urban school districts.

Yet Ohio’s Charter Schools aren’t getting all that money because they’re killing it academically. In fact, the state’s current report card reveals pretty much what it always has revealed — Ohio’s Charter Schools perform far worse than Ohio’s public school districts. 

Charter advocates have always hated having their schools’ performance compared with Ohio Public School Districts. They have insisted that their schools’ performance should be compared solely with the performance of a handful of the most struggling public schools in Ohio’s urban core, despite the fact that Ohio Charter Schools take students from nearly every Ohio public school district — including Charter Schools in Ohio’s urban core. 

For example, Breakthrough Charter Schools in Cleveland (which at one time was the best-performing Charter School chain in the state) take about 75% of their kids from Cleveland Municipal School District. The rest come from surrounding suburban districts.

Charter schools don’t get to cherry pick their students, take funding from all Ohio public school students, be considered a “district” for federal funding purposes, then have their performance compared with a handful of the most struggling urban school buildings. 

Sorry. 

If you take $1.56 billion from every public school kid and 126,000 students from nearly every Ohio public school district, your performance will be compared with every Ohio public school district. 

You’re big boys now. Your students get more state funding than 97% of Ohio’s public school students. You’ve been around since 1998. You’re no longer the experiment; you’re the status quo. And, I’m sorry, but you guys are sucking something awful.

To read the abysmal facts about Ohio’s charter schools, open the link.