Ohio’s $1 Billion charter school system was the butt of jokes at a conference for reporters on school choice in Denver late last week, as well as the target of sharp criticism of charter school failures across the state.
The shots came from expected critics like teachers unions, but also from pro-charter voices, as the state considers ways to improve how it handles charters.
Ohio has about 123,000 kids attending nearly 400 charter schools – public schools that receive state tax money, but which are privately run.
One after another, panelists at the conference organized by the national Education Writers Association targeted Ohio’s poor charter school performance statewide, Ohio’s for-profit charter operators and how many organizations we hand over charter oversight keys to as the sponsors, or authorizers, of schools.
“Be very glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst,” Stanford University researcher Margaret “Macke” Raymond said of Ohio.
Places like Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., she told reporters from across the country, have high standards for charter school performance.
“Then you have folks at the low end, of which Ohio is a strong case,” said Raymond, who released a report on Ohio’s charter performance in December.
Stanford’s Center for Research of Educational Outcomes (CREDO), found that students learn less in Ohio’s charter schools than in traditional districts – the equivalent of 36 days of learning in math and 14 days in reading.
The National Education Association’s David Welker, a member of NEA’s charter policy team, said Ohio’s system has been taken over by “grifters” and “cheats” – the for-profit companies that run many Ohio schools.
He was suspect about Ohio’s attempts to rein them in, saying, “the horse has left the barn.”
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a major national organization supporting the charter school movement, didn’t disagree.
“There are some operators who are exploiting things,” said Todd Ziebarth, a vice president of the Alliance.
He specifically named K12 Inc. and White Hat Management as major offenders. K12 is the nation’s largest provider of online charter schools and runs Ohio Virtual Academy, while White Hat is an Akron-based operator of many low-scoring charter schools that has regularly been a large donor to Republicans in Ohio.
As Ziebarth started naming White Hat and K12, panelist Michael Petrilli of the Fordham Institute jumped in to add The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) to the list. That online school is run by William Lager, another major donor to Ohio Republicans.
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