Posted: 6:00 p.m.Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2014

Reports pan charter schools, call for change

State senator aims for fullrewrite of Ohiocharter school laws.

By Jeremy P. Kelley and Rick McCrabb

Staff Writer

MIDDDLETOWN — 

Anational education group called for comprehensive changes to Ohio’scharter school laws on Tuesday, just one week after a multiyear study fromanother agency described Ohiocharters’ academic performance as “grim.”

BellwetherEducation Partners said Ohio’s charter school law too often “protects powerfulvested interests, smothers schools with red tape … and tolerates academicmediocrity,” rather than protecting students’ best interests.

Bellwether’sreport recommended multiple changes. Among them were prohibiting schoolsponsors from selling services to schools they oversee, creating strongerconflict-of-interest provisions for charter school board members, andincreasing funding to charter schools by allowing all state and localfunding to follow the student if they go to a charter school.

“FixingOhio’scharter law is no easy task,” Bellwether’s report said. “The law itself isroughly 40,000 words and has … many peculiar exceptions, loopholes, andrestrictions.”

StateSen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, agreed, adding that she’s had a working groupof educators, industry experts and state leaders examining potential changes tothe law for months. Lehner, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said most,if not all of Bellwether’s recommendations on school sponsors are issues hergroup has discussed.

“We’renot looking at just tweaking current law. That’s happened 19 times in 17 yearsand as a result, we have a lot of provisions that don’t align or thatcontradict each other. So we’re going to be drafting it fresh,” Lehner said,adding that the process could take a year or two. “This is not going to be aneasy lift. There are high stakes for so many people in the charter world, or inopposition to the charter world.”

OhioDepartment of Education officials say they’ve already been taking some of thesteps Bellwether suggests during the last year – mostly via tighter controlsaimed at keeping subpar sponsors from opening new schools.

“We’rewell aware of the shortcomings of (charter) schools in Ohio and we’re trying to improve that,” saidODE spokesman John Charlton. “We’ve improved the regulations and hope that willhelp improve the performance.”

Report on academics

Stanford University’sCenter for Research on Education Outcomes reported last week that Ohio charter schoolstudents, as a whole, perform worse on state reading and math tests thancomparable students at traditional public schools that share the same studentbase.

DomWilliams, president of the Middletown Teachers Association, addressed the boardof education at its meeting this week. He said Middletown area charter schools areperforming “worse” than the public schools and spending at least $2,000 moreper student.

“Ourteachers are doing an outstanding job,” Williams told the board.

Accordingto the Ohio Charter School Accountability Project, Middletown City Schoolsreceived a C on its performance index while spending $3,960 per student.

Williamsand board members said they were concerned that $6.8 million of taxpayers’money is transferred to charter schools.

TheMiddletown Prep and Fitness Academy scored a C on itsperformance index, while spending $6,814 per student, according to the report.The academy receives $1.6 million in funds from the district. But Myrrha Satow,performance academies president, contends MPFA outperformed the local publicdistrict and said the numbers reported were inaccurate.

Shesaid her school performed better than Middletownwith key demographics, including African-American students and students withspecial needs. Her school, she said, provides “a great education” for Middletown families andis “a consistent performer and has the best middle school in the area.”

Shesaid MPFA achieves this despite receiving 29 percent less funding per pupilthan the public option.

At Marshall High School, the performance indexwasn’t available, and the charter school spends $8,090 per student and receives$1.2 million from the district, the report said.

ChuckHall, Marshall’sprincipal, said the school isn’t competing with public schools. Instead, hesaid, Marshallprovides another option for students, who for various reasons, didn’t fit inpublic schools.

Marshall held its thirdgraduation ceremony Wednesday night and Hall said 21 students received theirdiplomas.

Summit Academy Community School for AlternativeLearners of Middletown received a D for its performance index. The schoolspends $14,232 per student with the financial support of $735,000.

Boththe Bellwether and Stanford reports had ties to the Fordham Institute, a groupthat sponsors charter schools itself, and advocates for better oversight ofcharters.

TheStanford study measured charter schools’ lower performance in terms of how manyfewer days of academic gain students made, based on a 180-day school year. Thestudy reported a statewide average that Ohio charter students had 14 fewer daysof learning in reading and 36 fewer days in math compared to similartraditional public schools. A multiyear 2009 Stanford study found similar results.

RonAdler, president of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, a charter schooladvocacy group, questioned whether the study sufficiently accounts for howoften students in urban settings switch schools. The Stanford study does showthat students who are in their first year at a charter school score much worsethan those who stay with that charter school for multiple years.

“Ourfeeling is that it is impossible to measure those results without taking intoaccount student mobility,” Adler said. “When a student has been to sixdifferent schools, it changes the whole dynamic.”

The money factor

DavidTaylor, principal of the high-performing Dayton Early College Academy charterschool, said some charters’ struggles have to do with their focus.

“Someare built to be profitable, and to appeal to parents in nonacademic ways, likethat it’s safe, and personalized to our community,” Taylor said. “Butacademically they’re failing the kids. … With our structure here, everything isabout how we move students forward.”

Oneof the biggest controversies in Bellwether’s report is their call for all stateand local per-pupil funds to follow the student if he or she goes to a charterschool. Currently, a voucher of about $5,800 follows the student, regardless ofwhether the home school district gets more or less than that in per-pupil statefunding.

Taylorargued that it can be hard for a charter school to educate a child forthousands less than the surrounding public district gets, asking why it’s fairfor two students who are neighbors to have different funding rules. But othergroups such as Innovation Ohio and the Ohio Education Association argue thatsome districts get far less than $5,800 per pupil from the state, meaning theyhave to cover the difference with locally generated funds.

“Idon’t think anyone votes for a school levy with the intent that that money isgoing to go somewhere other than their specific local school district,” saidDamon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School BoardsAssociation.

Lehnersaid she took one clear positive from the Bellwether study — that charterschools are “knocking it out of the park” in urban areas of some states.

“Ifit said charter schools were failing everywhere, that would be different,” shesaid. “But other states with better or different policies are doing very well,while Ohio seems to be really lagging. Our students aren’t different, but ourpolicies are, and that’s what we have control over, so that’s the first place Iwould look.”