Charter schools facing state crackdown
Big changes could be coming to a charter school near you.
The Ohio Department of Education on Oct. 13 released report cards for the state-mandated sponsors that oversee academic results, legal compliance and overall quality of charter schools — and the results are not good.
More than 32 percent of sponsors in the state got “poor” grades and could lose their authority to sponsor charter schools in the state, while 60 percent of sponsors got an “ineffective” rating, precluding them from taking on any more charter schools. Just 7.7 percent of sponsors in the state received an effective rating, and none got the highest mark of “exemplary.”
All of the charter school sponsors in Marion County received “ineffective” evaluations. They are: Marion City Schools, Pleasant Local Schools, Ridgedale Local Schools and Tri-Rivers Schools.
The ratings are important because charter schools in Ohio aren’t allowed to operate without a sponsor, which typically is a public school district. That means charter schools under poorly rated sponsors that get shut down could be forced to be sponsored by the state, which has a track record of closing schools that have poor academic report cards.
Schools under “ineffective” sponsors aren’t out of the woods either. Such sponsors also face closure if an ineffective grade is received for three years in a row. That has led those sponsors to begin changes to conform to new requirements that many don’t agree with.
“This actually pulls us away from our mission to serve our students,” Zanesville City Schools Superintendent Doug Baker said. “Now we will be pulling people away from that direct contact with students to do paperwork.”
Sponsors rated “ineffective” also will be under more pressure to close or improve charter schools with poor academic marks in an effort to raise sponsor evaluation scores, said Ron Adler, president of the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, which advocates for the charter school industry in the state.
“The system set up really is a punishment system of intimidation or extortion,” Adler said. “They are telling sponsors that if you do not score high, even though we know we’re using faulty data to measure you, then you have to close your schools or we’ll close you.”
Tighter oversight of charter school sponsors began with House Bill 2, which went into effect in February and expanded the grading system and put new penalties in place for sponsors with subpar evaluations.
“The recent community school reform legislation and the work of our independent panel helped to create one of the most transparent and comprehensive processes for sponsor evaluations in the country,” Ohio schools superintendent Paolo DeMaria said in a media release. “This will ultimately lead to improved quality school options for Ohio’s students.”
Reforms of the charter school system in Ohio have been fraught with controversy, including a 2015 evaluation of school sponsors that was tossed out after it was found Charter schools facing state crackdown:
Big Education Ape: Ohio Fails to Move Forward to Oversee Charter School Sponsors | janresseger - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/02/ohio-fails-to-move-forward-to-oversee.html
