Archives for category: Ohio
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Ohio’s Richest Charter Operator, with Very Low-Performing School

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2014 //
16

Plunderbund writes here about the largest charter school in Ohio. Its revenues are staggering, its test scores and graduation rates are low, its political contributions to its allies top $1 million.

“The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) is the largest charter school in the state of Ohio. The online school is easily the largest charter school in Ohio, is larger than the vast majority of Ohio’s traditional school districts, and received over $88 million in state funding last school year. This year that amount is expected to jump to over $92 million.

“On the latest report cards released by the Ohio Department of Education, ECOT continues to rank below all of the 8 large urban schools that are often-criticized by legislators and in the media for their “sub-par” performance.

“For graduation rate, a key indicator for the long-term success of a school/district, ECOT’s 4-year graduation rate is a paltry 35.3%, while their 5-year graduation rate of 37.8%, which is only slightly higher, was still over 25 points worse than the lowest urban school district, Cleveland, which checked in at 63.3%. While we now see the legislature writing laws to specifically regulate Cleveland and Columbus more tightly, the charter school laws that apply to ECOT continue to be more lax.

“And while the data on performance for this school of 13,836 students (11th largest “district” in the Ohio) is bad enough, the financial games played by the school’s owner/operator are even worse. We wrote a comprehensive piece about ECOT back in 2011, but since then the school has continued to grow and continued to siphon ever larger sums of money away from higher-performing schools.

“On December 8, our post, Ohio’s Largest Taxpayer-Funded Charter School, ECOT, Receives Bonus Check, described how the school was up for approval of an additional $2.9 million dollar bonus from Governor Kasich’s Straight A Fund.

“On December 10, we posted a follow-up, ECOT Founder Living VERY Well Off Ohio’s School Funding Dollars, where we went into greater detail about the financial games being played and won by ECOT’s Founder, William Lager.

“Today, we have another update to the political donations and financial windfall experienced by Lager.”

Keep reading.

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio, On-Line Education

Ohio Parent on State’s Dual System of Publicly Funded Schools

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2013 //
69

Susie Kaeser lives in Cleveland Heights and is former director of Reaching Heights. She serves on the national board of Parents for Public Schools.

She writes:

I prefer to ignore charter schools. I know good people who work in them and use them. Charters don’t appear to have much to do with my school district. How much good can they do? How much harm?

Reports of fraud, profiteering and failure pushed me to learn more. Because charter schools are funded with public funds, I thought I would go to the heart of the matter and “follow the money.” I turned to Bill Phillis, a longtime advocate of reforming school funding in Ohio, for an explanation of the system that now uses state tax dollars to fund two different kinds of public schools. I am troubled by what I learned.

The Ohio Constitution requires the state to provide all children a thorough and efficient education. In carrying out that responsibility, the state legislature funds and regulates schools. In 1998 the legislature created “community schools,” its name for charters, and began a dual system of publicly funded schools with major differences in funding, regulation and oversight. Today there are more than 390 charters in Ohio, using close to $1 billion in state funding.

The funding mechanism is costly to traditional public schools. Public resources flow from schools that are governed by an elected school board-and expected to adhere to state regulations covering financial oversight, teacher qualification and accountability, and educational programs-to loosely governed and deregulated charter schools.

Each year the legislature determines the funding level for charter students and those in traditional public schools. According to a 2013 Department of Education report, the funding level for every charter student was set at $5,732. By contrast, state funding for traditional public school students is specific to the school district they attend, based on the property wealth of each district. Because I live in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights City School District, I thought I’d focus on its funding. According to CH-UH treasurer Scott Gainer, our per-pupil allocation in 2012-13 was $1,741, or just 30 percent of the amount promised to charter students.

Not only do charter students receive more state funds than their public school peers, but the difference comes out of the per-pupil contributions for public school students. This is how it works. The state creates a pot of money for each school district that will pay for both charter and traditional students who reside in that district. While the state promised $5,732 to charter students living in Cleveland Heights, it only put $1,741 in the pot for each of those students. This is the same amount that is added to the pot for each of the 5,787 public school students who live in the district.

When it is time to pay for charter students, the state subtracts the guaranteed amount-$5,732-for each student and sends it to their charter school. Public school kids get what is left. The $4,000 shortfall for each charter student comes out of what was put in the pot for the public school students. In 2012-13, about $2.5 million was sent to pay for 371 Heights charter school students, even though they only brought 30 percent of that money into the pot. In effect, traditional public school students subsidize 70 percent of the cost of charter school students.

To add insult to injury, once the money passes out of public hands to the charter, there is no elected school board to be held accountable for how it is used.

The state legislature has been loath to increase resources for its public schools, but when it comes to charter schools they do not hold back, at a sizeable reduction to local school district budgets. How does that make public schools better?

As I see it, the legislature has created a dual system for delivering education. Those systems receive different levels of state support, operate with different expectations, and are governed by different rules. Charter schools-no matter their quality-operate without adequate safeguards to protect public funds and undermine authentic public schools by draining away resources and children. This is wrong.

Ohio’s charter schools are not harmless. The system encourages waste through inefficiency and slack oversight. Creating two systems that follow dramatically different rules makes no sense. It endangers public education, violates public trust and undermines education pursued as a common good.

Our elected officials need to end their reckless use of public resources and fulfill their obligation to create an effective system of common schools, the bedrock institution of our democracy.

I am glad I finally decided to learn more.

Susie Kaeser

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

Plunderbund: Most Ohio Legislators Are Not Affected by the Mandates They Impose on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2013 //
28

Plunderbund is a blogger in Ohio whose mission is to speak truth to power.

In this instance, he points out that Governor Kasich and the majority of the members of House Education Committee either have no children or send their children to non-public schools. Thus, they are quite willing to tie the public schools up in knots because it does not affect their own children.

“Currently, students in Ohio’s public schools are required to test a minimum of 20 times throughout their 13 years (K-12). Meanwhile, students in the private schools (including Catholic schools) are only required to take the Ohio Graduation Tests when they are in high school. The public schools have the burden of engaging children when they are 8 or 9 years old in third grade in the process of high-stakes testing when they take the 3rd grade reading test in October and again in April along with the math assessment. These children then take the reading and math tests again every year through 8th grade in addition to science tests in grades 5 and 8.

The results of these 15 standardized tests between grades 3 and 8 are used to grade and criticize the performance of the students, the schools, and the teachers in Ohio’s public schools while the private schools coast along unscathed by the watchful eye of the state and the media. In Ohio, there are currently over 440 nonpublic schools serving over 175,000 children that are completely exempt from Ohio’s rigid standardized testing program.

It’s not an accident — it’s precisely the way the laws are (and aren’t) being drawn up and passed by Ohio’s Republican majority.”

With the adoption of the Common Core, students in the public schools will take even more tests and the test scores will be even more consequential.

Categories Ohio, Testing

Charter Founder in Ohio Makes Large Political Contributions, Gets Rich

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2013 //
14

The blogger Plunderbund here documents the conditions in which certain major charter operators in Ohio become financially very successful.

In this instance, he tells the story of William Lager, founder of ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), who has generously donated $1.3 million to the Ohio Republican Party in the last decade.

His generosity has been amply repaid with generous state funding for his businesses.

Plunderbund writes:

“This weekend we posted about Ohio’s largest charter school, ECOT, being recommended to receive a “bonus” check of $2.9 million that would be quickly rerouted into ECOT owner William Lager’s other private businesses. This is not the first raise that ECOT has received this year. Through the Kasich budget passed this summer, ECOT received the largest increase in state funding for any charter school in Ohio at $4.8 million. This far surpassed the second largest increase of $1.35 million given to Ohio Virtual Academy.

“It’s good to buy friends in high places…

“Since 2004, Lager, the ECOT CEO, has been donating to Ohio political campaigns with staggering regularity and in staggering numbers for someone whose main livelihood is providing a “public” education to Ohio children…”

He supplies the facts and figures.

Let’s put it this way: Mr. Lager’s generosity has been repaid many times over by his benefactors, using tax dollars that were supposed to go to educate Ohio’s students.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio

Report: Charters in Columbus, Ohio, in Trouble

By dianeravitch
November 29, 2013 //
8

The Columbus Dispatch reported new charter school troubles. Ohio is known for its lack of oversight for charter schools, especially if they are owned or managed by donors to Republican campaigns.

The state department of education asked authorizers to provide better oversight, so certain charters are at risk of losing their charter (none belong to the two men who have made millions from their charter and online operations in Ohio).

One charter never opened, so it may be closed. The other serves students learning English, and it received a stern warning from its authorizer. Among its problems: a lack of licensed teachers; a failure to pay its bills; dirty bathrooms and classrooms.

It is heartening to see some effort to impose accountability on this sector, which has drained more than a billion dollars from the public sector, which gets better academic results than the charter sector.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Ohio

Fordham Institute: Ohio Charters Fare Poorly on NAEP

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2013 //
20

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a conservative think tank based jointly in DC and Dayton, Ohio. I was a founding board member and served on its board for many years until 2009, when I decided I could no longer support its central focus on school choice and testing. I had tried to resign earlier, but was persuaded by personal friendships to remain as an internal dissident. One of the qualities I admired about TBF was its candor in recognizing the shortcomings of its ideas and projects. In fact, when people ask me why I abandoned the rightwing crusade for choice, I often refer back to the blunt self-criticisms of TBF’s charter schools. I opposed the idea that TBF should become a charter authorizer but was outvoted. Then, over the next few years, my own illusions about charters were dashed as many of the charters we sponsored became failures.

The latest report from TBF, written by Aaron Churchill, continues the tradition of candor.

Churchill reviews the NAEP results for Ohio and acknowledges that traditional public schools significantly outperformed charter schools.

Churchill compares the performance of students eligible for free and reduced price lunch in both sectors and concludes:

“The results from this snapshot in time are not favorable to charter schools. In all four grade-subject combinations, charter school NAEP scores fall short of the non-charter school scores. And in all cases, I would consider the margin fairly wide—more so in 4th than 8th grade. In 4th grade reading, for example, non-charter students’ average score was 211, while charter students’ average score was 191, a 20 point difference.

“The difference, however, narrows in 8th grade. Charter school scores are only 5 points lower in reading and 6 in math. The standard error bars nearly overlap in 8th grade, but not quite—if the standard error bars had overlapped, the difference in scores would not have been meaningful.

It was findings like these that convinced me that the proliferation of charter schools was no panacea; that most charter schools were no better and possibly weaker than traditional public schools; and that an increase in charters–especially in a state like Ohio, where the charter sector is politically powerful and seldom (if ever) held accountable–would harm children and weaken American education.

And one aside about this post: I object to the idea, recently popular, that NAEP “proficient” should be treated as a reasonable goal for most children, and that anything less is disappointing. New York, which is probably not alone, has aligned its Common Core testing to produce results aligned with NAEP “proficient,” so that anything less is considered failing. This is absurd. NAEP “proficient” represents superior achievement, not pass-fail. The only state in the nation that has reached the 50% mark is Massachusetts. Why set impossible and unrealistic goals? Did we learn nothing from the disaster of NCLB?

Categories Charter Schools, NAEP, Ohio

Ohio Charter Schools: Are They Accountable?

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2013 //
16

The invaluable blogger Plunderbund in Ohio posted a description of the 150 state education laws from which charter schools are exempt. Are charter schools more accountable than public schools? Well, that depends on how you defend “accountable,” and how you define “public.”

The question remains for Ohio’s leaders: If exemption from state laws and regulations and mandates is such a good thing, why don’t they get rid of unnecessary laws that apply to public schools?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Ohio, Privatization

Ohio: The Biggest Problem in Education Today Is….Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2013 //
33

Charter schools were supposed to be creative sources of innovation. They were supposed to show what could be accomplished when government got out of the way. The newcomers would give lessons to the professionals, who couldn’t be trusted.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. In Ohio, charter schools are some of the worst schools in the state. 83 of the lowest performing 84 schools in the state are charters.

Guido H. Stempel III, a distinguished professor emeritus in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, says that the people of Ohio have been cheated.

Stempl says the driving force behind charters is greed.

He writes:

“There are 27 organizations, and 25 of those are for-profit. One of those, with 17 schools, is run by an Islamic minister.
We have a double standard. There are 200 state laws that apply to public schools and not to charter schools Qualifications of teachers are not checked as they are for public school teachers. Auditing of finances does not occur as often.
The names of public school board members are public and listed in a state directory. There is no record of who the members of school boards for charter schools are or how they are chosen. Public school boards must have a regular meeting schedule, and if they schedule additional meetings they must notify local media. The public does not know when charter school boards meet.
There is, in short, a lack of oversight.”

When the state ordered the state’s largest charter operator, David Brennan, to close two of his low-performing schools, “One reopened in the same place with a new name and the same staff. The other was the same story except that they replaced 30 percent of the staff.

“The charter schools are getting almost a billion dollars from the state. This year charter schools got bigger increases in state funding that the public schools did. Money was taken from appropriations for districts. More that a million dollars was taken from the five districts in Athens County.

Why do the legislature and governor protect charters from accountability?

Simple.

Charter school owners contribute generously to political candidates.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Ohio

Aaron Churchill Challenges Negative Assessment of Ohio Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2013 //
31

Aaron Churchill of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, takes issue with Bill Phillis’s negative view of Ohio charter schools. He says that critics like Phillis compare charter schools to districts instead of to schools.

Fordham is a charter authorizer in a ohio.

Churchill writes:

“Charter school naysayers are quick with their “what’s wrong with” quips, and the criticism is at times deserved. Many of Ohio’s charter schools must be made “righter,” to help more students—especially our neediest kids—succeed in school. But by focusing–gleefully, it would seem–on only low-performing charter schools (and making a poor comparison, to boot), critics are blind to the shining examples of charter schools that provide a great education for students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or arrive at their school grade levels behind. And worse yet, they ignore the rot in their own backyards.

“Rather than wallowing in the dregs of charter and district schools, wouldn’t our time and energy be better used learning from exemplar schools, quickly rooting out the dismal ones, and pushing for constructive change in K-12 education, so that all Ohio’s kids have the knowledge and skills to face a different world than generations past?”

Categories Charter Schools, Ohio

The Failure of Charter Schools in Ohio, $7 Billion Later

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2013 //
20

This is an important summary of the failure of the charter school movement in Ohio, from the Ohio Coalition for Education and Adequacy:

A “noble” experiment to force the improvement of the public common school: Fifteen years and $7 billion dollars later the charter school gamble has not made the grade.

9/24/2013

The Department of Education’s ranking of schools and districts reveals that 83 out of the bottom 84 schools are charter schools. Of course, the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools cautions against placing too much importance on the DOE ranking. The reality is that, on the average, charter schools preform less well on the state’s accountability criteria than traditional public schools.

Persons who were involved in public education in the late 1990s will recall the rhetoric from charter school advocates. The charter schools, they said, being free of many state regulations and school district bureaucracies, would advance innovation and creativity which would produce exemplary results. These schools would then inform the traditional public schools on how to improve education programs and services.

Later the charter school rhetoric changed to platitudes about the efficacy of competition, choice and market forces. But none of these threadbare reform notions produced, except in very rare cases, charter school results that outperform traditional public schools. Hence, traditional public schools are drained of much needed funds, and students in charter schools suffer from less favorable educational opportunities.

One of the reasons that the charter school movement has played out this way is that management companies have hijacked this endeavor. Ohio is considered a great “cash cow” environment by the folks who view education as a money making enterprise. No doubt, at this moment in time, there are entrepreneurial groups plotting how to profit from Ohio taxes set aside for public education.

27 management companies operate charter schools in Ohio. Of those 27, 19 are for-profit companies. Of the 19 for-profit companies, half of them are out-of-state corporations; hence, they take a Brink’s truckload of school district money out of Ohio in the form of profits each year.

Charter schools, on the average, have higher pupil-teacher ratios and pay teachers about half as much as traditional public schools. This most likely has a negative impact on the retirement systems.

Many in the public education community believe nothing can be done to stop this non-transparent, non-accountable movement. If the citizens of Ohio had the facts about charter school operations and results, politicians would have to make them more accountable and transparent or they would be voted out of office. It is imperative that the public school community make the facts about charter schools available to school patrons and the general public.

William Phillis
Ohio E & A

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Ohio
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »