Some inferior charter schools use loopholes to stay open
There is a rule about bad charter schools in Ohio: They can’t stay open if they don’t improve.
There’s also a confusing truth: Sometimes charters don’t get better and they don’t close.
Some schools have avoided the state’s charter-closing laws after enrolling more students with disabilities, which exempted them. Others were closed by their sponsors for poor performance only to find a new sponsor. And recently, one charter operator whose school was shut down for bleak academic performance updated the building, staff and school board, and opened another school in the same spot under a new name.
Just as they do with traditional public schools, the new state report cards highlight the serious struggles of many of the charter schools statewide and in Franklin County. More than 1 in 4 charters statewide received mostly F grades. In Franklin County, about 23 percent of graded charter schools got mostly F’s.
A few of the long-struggling schools were “nonrenewed” over the summer
