Innovation Ohio Report: Ohio Budget Eases Oversight of Charter Schools and Provides Windfall for Ohio School Vouchers
In the 2020-2021 biennial Ohio budget signed into law in July, lawmakers quietly embedded the radical expansion of school privatization. Rewards for charter schools and tuition voucher expansion are written into the budget in a lots of little ways, however, which means that, during the budget debate, few noticed the overall significance of exploding state support for school privatization. A new report released last week by Innovation Ohio, however, connects the dots among several measures which together will undermine oversight of charter schools and at the same time radically expand tuition vouchers. The report includes an examination of the fiscal implications for local public school districts.
The former chair of the Ohio House Education Subcommittee of Finance and now Innovation Ohio’s education policy fellow, Steve Dyer authored the report, which ought to be essential reading for legislators and a broad range of citizens—from experts to people who have not previously tracked the issue. Dyer writes a basic primer and at the same time an analysis sophisticated enough to teach experts something new.
Dyer begins: “When Governor Mike DeWine signed HB166 into law, he approved a budget that lawmakers had packed full of little-noticed gifts to those who seek to erode support for traditional public schools through a proliferation of charter and private school options funded at taxpayer expense.” Dyer explains that the new Ohio budget:
- weakens Ohio’s 2015 charter school oversight law that mandated automatic closure for academic failure after two years;
- weakens standards for Ohio’s already deplorable sector of “dropout recovery” charter schools;
- weakens Ohio’s oversight of its many charter school authorizers; and
- increases the transfer of state and even local taxpayer dollars to private—mostly religious—schools.
STATE BUDGET WEAKENS OVERSIGHT OF CHARTER SCHOOLS
Although in 2015, the state cracked down on academically failing charter schools by mandating their closure after two years of failing test scores, the new budget awards these CONTINUE READING: Innovation Ohio Report: Ohio Budget Eases Oversight of Charter Schools and Provides Windfall for Ohio School Vouchers | janresseger