Report on Ohio Charter Schools...

Same 'ol story of charter schools not measuring up to public schools. There are always exceptions, but the preponderance of evidence is suggesting that this model of reform as a panacea for underachievement is quite limited. There's a bill in the Ohio legislature that is calling for a moratorium on -Angela

Wednesday, June 29, 2005
High Promises, Lagging Results
Most charter schools doing worse than urban publics

By Jennifer Mrozowski / Cincinnati Enquirer

There are two types of charter schools in Ohio: schools that have converted from public schools and new, start-up schools. The state currently has a cap restricting the number of new, start-up schools not operated by public school districts at 225. There are now 205 start-up schools operating statewide. Current legislation calls for that cap to expire Thursday. The pending two-year budget bill would allow 60 new charter schools in the next two years, 30 sponsored by public districts and 30 by other agencies. The bill also creates a one-year moratorium on new
Internet or computer-based schools.

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Ohio's charter schools began as an innovative alternative to low-performing public schools: Give kids longer school days, year-round instruction or specialized education, and they might thrive where otherwise they would not.

But seven years later, the system is faltering.

More than half of 112 charter schools rated by the state for student achievement are labeled in "academic emergency" or "academic watch" - the lowest rankings possible.

Charter teachers are some of the least qualified in Ohio, with almost half lacking full certification in their teaching areas.

The schools as a whole are performing worse than urban districts, while siphoning money and students from school districts statewide.

Ohio taxpayers are spending more than $424 million on charter schools this year.

With a cap on the number of charters set to expire Thursday, the debate on whether the system works has grown more contentious than ever.

Some legislators want a ban on any new charter schools. But Ohio's new, two-year budget, expected to be signed by Gov. Bob Taft on Thursday, would allow at least 60 more charters to open in the next two years.

Dozens of new charter schools are expected to open in the fall, including at least six in Cincinnati.

"My concern is that many of these charter schools are not living up to the promise of what charter schools had to offer," says state Sen. J. Kirk Schuring, a Republican from Canton. "In fact, there are many that are really getting some bad results."

Advocates, however, say it's too soon to judge the schools, and they say parents of 63,000 students who choose charters can't all be wrong.

"I recognize there are pluses and minuses to everything, but as parents, we should have choices," says North Avondale resident Winni Johnson, who moved six of her 11 children out of Cincinnati Public Schools and into W.E.B. DuBois Academy, a charter school in Over-the-Rhine, four years ago.

Johnson likes the attention that her children get at DuBois, where students attend school 10 to 12 hours a day. The school is one of the state's highest-performing charter schools.

"There's no one that knows our children better than we do," she says. "I like options."

Opened in 1998

The charter movement gained in popularity in the 1990s as parents grew increasingly dissatisfied with public schools and clamored for more options.

The Buckeye state passed its charter school law in 1997, and the first 15 schools opened the next year. Ohio now has 249 charters, including 45 virtual schools, where students take most of their courses over the Internet.

Now, Ohio is the sixth-largest charter school state in the nation, according to the Washington D.C.-based Center for Education Reform. Greater Cincinnati has 31 charters, most of them in the city. More than 6,000 local students attend charter schools in grades K-12.

Charters are tuition-free, public schools run by parents, teachers, for-profit groups and other agencies. The schools operate under a contract, or a charter, which describes their goals. Ohio's charters have more autonomy and are free to experiment with curriculum, but their students take the same state tests and are expected to meet the same academic requirements as traditional public schools. Charter teachers have to be licensed, but unlike traditional schools, they don't have to teach in the subject area or grade level in which they are certified.

Despite the growing interest, most of the schools have not been the panacea that advocates envisioned.

Ohio allows a two-year delay before giving new charter schools state report cards and academic ratings. But of those that were rated in 2003-04, 54 percent were considered substandard - compared with 10 percent of traditional public schools.

Supporters say comparing charters to traditional public schools is unfair, particularly because state law requires charter schools to open only in the lowest-performing school districts.

"By and large, the comparisons that the opposition is trying to make can't be made," says Stephen J. Ramsey, president of the Ohio Charter School Association. "Of our charter schools open right now ... over a third of them are serving kids who exclusively are dropouts or wards of agencies like juvenile court."

Glenda Brown, superintendent of Phoenix Community Learning Center in Bond Hill, says students come to her charter school two and three years below grade level.

The school is making gains, she says. In the 2001-02 school year, just 2.4 percent of fourth-graders passed the reading test. That climbed to 69 percent by 2003-04.

But Phoenix students still struggled in math. Just of a fourth of them passed that test.

"Sometimes, you're taking years of deficits and trying to turn that around," Brown says.

Certification an issue

Cincinnati Public Schools recently launched a campaign to draw charter students back and is touting the results.

"I'm not opposed to choice, but I want the choices to be viable, quality choices," Cincinnati school superintendent Rosa Blackwell says. "Based on the data, our schools are out-performing the charter schools."

On average, passing rates for the state's urban districts are better than the rates for charters. For instance, 52 percent of fourth-graders in the state's eight, big-city school districts passed reading, which is 18 percentage points higher than in charter schools.

"There is no body of evidence that says that charter schools do better than traditional public schools," says Gary Miron, chief of staff at the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, which has studied charter schools nationally.

Some critics say charters' poor results stem from using unqualified teachers.

In charter schools, 45 percent of teachers lack full certification in their content area, compared with 7 percent in all Ohio schools, according to the state Department of Education.

"That would indicate to me they don't have the necessary background content and skills knowledge to provide the best education that the children deserve," says Sue Taylor, president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers, a union that represents almost 3,000 teachers. "The state is wasting hard-earned taxpayer dollars to fund education that is far inferior to what the traditional public schools are providing."

Darleen Opfer, director of the Ohio Collaborative, a research and policy institute, says the state should improve oversight of charters.

"There's really no one whose job it is to say to the charter schools in Ohio that you must perform in this way, and if you don't perform, these things will happen," she says.

Since 1998, 17 charter schools in Ohio have closed, none for academic failure, according to the state Department of Education. Under the new budget bill, however, charters that don't meet academic progress goals after three years would be required to close.

School districts pay

Still, parents are increasingly sending their children to charter schools.

That worries cash-strapped public districts, which are losing more revenue to charters each year. With the advent of e-schools that offer courses over the Internet, students are being recruited even from high-achieving suburban districts.

Ohio charters receive at least $5,169 for every student enrolled. Some of that comes directly from the state, some from the local district where the student resides.

Fairfield is losing $779,352. Oak Hills and Mason each are handing over more than $200,000 this year. Lakota is paying out $677,171 this year to charter schools, an amount school officials say is unfair. Under a complicated funding formula, Lakota receives about $2,800 from the state for each student but pays out about $6,900 for each student it loses to a charter school.

"I'm not anti-charter school," Lakota district treasurer Alan Hutchinson says. "If they are a public educational entity and the students are going there, then how the state funds them is their business. But don't deduct it from us."

Some return to public

Cincinnati Public Schools lost 1,800 students last year, many of them to charters. Of area districts, Cincinnati paid the most to charters this year - $42.7 million.

A district analysis shows that some charter students eventually return to traditional school, where many struggle. In 2002-03, the most recent year analyzed, more than 4,500 Cincinnati public school students were enrolled in charters. By the next year, 20 percent had returned to the district.

Clifton resident Edwina Warner says she took her daughter, 10-year-old Kieara, out of International College Preparatory Academy in Mount Auburn after one year at the charter. Initially, she was attracted by the foreign language offerings and what she knew of the school's college-preparatory program. But she grew disappointed.

"I didn't like that my daughter didn't have homework every day," Warner says. "I didn't see how she would be able to retain all this information without having to do it the traditional way, where you learn it at school and then do homework at home."

This year, Kieara returned to Carthage Paideia, a Cincinnati Public school.

Some lawmakers say changes and more oversight are necessary for charter schools to thrive.

"The state of Ohio is spending over $400 million on charter schools," says Rep. W. Scott Oelslager, a Republican from Canton. "There has to be a greater degree of accountability to be responsible to the taxpayers."

E-mail jmrozowski@enquirer.com
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