Don't penalize us for failing schools, charter overseers say, if management is good
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Failing grades at charter schools shouldn't bring automatic penalties, Ohio's charter oversight organizations say, so long as schools have good oversight otherwise.
Leaders of Ohio's nationally-ridiculed charter school community continued a campaign to limit repercussions for the lagging academic performance of charters before a state Senate sub-committee last week.
The latest pushback deals with Ohio's controversial ratings of charter school oversight organizations known as "sponsors," or as "authorizers" in most other states.
The state hopes to push the schools to improve by evaluating the sponsors - school districts, county education agencies and non-profits - that help create and monitor charters, and giving them perks and penalties based on those ratings.
But Peggy Young, president of the Ohio Association of Charter School Authorizers, told a Senate Finance subcommittee that the ratings are giving the academic performance of schools too much weight. Young said the Ohio Department of Education has unfairly blocked sponsors with failing schools from having good ratings, even when they do other oversight tasks well.
State law says that the ratings should count three measures equally in those evaluations - academic performance of schools, how well sponsors use quality practices and how well the schools and sponsors followDon't penalize us for failing schools, charter overseers say, if management is good | cleveland.com: