Ohio Goes After Charter Schools That Are Failing

COLUMBUS - Ohio became a test tube for the nation’s charter school movement during a decade of Republican rule here, when a wide-open authorization system and plenty of government seed money led to the schools’ explosive proliferation.

But their record has been spotty. This year, the state’s school report card gave more than half of Ohio’s 328 charter schools a D or an F.

Now its Democratic governor and attorney general, elected when Democrats won five of Ohio’s six top posts last November, are cracking down on the schools, which receive public money but are run by independent operators. And across the country, charter school advocates are watching nervously, fearful the backlash could spread.

Attorney General Marc Dann is suing to close three failing charter schools and says he is investigating dozens of others. It is the first effort by any attorney general to close low-performing charter schools.

Gov. Ted Strickland said he wanted to carry out his own crackdown.

“Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality,” he said. “But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”

Some 4,000 charter schools now operate across the nation, most advertising themselves as a smaller, safer alternative to the neighborhood school. Nationwide, the movement has gained traction among Democrats, partly because of the successes of a few quality nonprofit operators.

But some charters are mediocre, and Ohio has a far higher failure rate than most states. Fifty-seven percent of its charter schools, most of which are in cities, are in academic watch or emergency, compared with 43 percent of traditional public schools in Ohio’s big cities....

This from the New York Times.

Education in Ohio being scrutinized

COLUMBUS - Both charter and public schools in Ohio have been tossed around like footballs this fall, leaving parents to wonder whether any variety of education is actually working for their children.

First, Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann announced a legal assault on charter schools that are missing state academic and financial targets. He filed the latest in his expected string of suits Friday against the privately run, publicly funded operations.

Earlier in the week, public schools in Columbus were targeted in a lawsuit by attorney and mayoral candidate Bill Todd. He argued that schools are spending way more money on some students than others - and not just from one district to another, but from building to building in the same district.

Whether either man, one Democrat and one Republican, has a valid legal argument is yet to be seen. But the political motives of each is clear...

This from the Cincinnati Post.

Ohio Governor: Charter schools a failure

I remember, during the Patton administration, going to Frankfort to talk to former State Senator Ed Ford about starting Charter School legislation in Kentucky. I liked the idea of getting out from under certain regulations (or was it authorities) that we believed made it harder for us to meet our goals. Ford rejected the idea saying Kentucky was just "not ready" for charter schools. After all these years the results for states with charter schools appears to be very mixed.

The Cincinnati Post reports:

"Gov. Ted Strickland crossed the state Thursday to promote his $53 billion spending blueprint as anger flared among advocates of education choice over his plan to scrap the state voucher program outside Cleveland and cut off state funding to for-profit charter schools..."

"The charter school movement in Ohio has been a dismal failure," Strickland said during a Thursday stop in Cleveland.

"What I'm asking for in terms of charter schools is simply that they are held to the same standards of fiscal and educational accountability that we are expecting out of our public schools."

Ohio has the nation's largest voucher program, which was born as an experiment in Cleveland in 1995 and expanded by the state in 2005 to include other low-performing public districts.
David Zanotti, president of the conservative policy think tank that fought for years to protect vouchers, said backers are mobilizing parents to fight the plan. "It's a much more aggressive attack than we anticipated," said Zanotti, of the Ohio Roundtable.

"His opinions against vouchers were known, but to start throwing kids out of school is really a shock to everyone."

Public schools have complained for years about losing money to charter schools and private schools that students attend through the voucher program. Cutting the program for 2,829 students participating outside Cleveland would put $13 million a year back into public schools.