Ohio Charter Schools Ruin District Finances: Steal State and Local Taxes, Leave Behind Stranded Costs
When we evaluate charter schools, I wonder why we rarely consider their fiscal impact on the public schools among which they are nested? I have never heard anybody in Ohio consider the overall impact of charter school expansion on access to education for the entire population of students across a particular community or across the state. Today in Ohio, people are talking about the value of charter schools because charter operators and sponsors—claiming the schools are broke—are asking for an extra $2,000 per pupil.
Usually arguments about the quality of public investment in charters are about whether charters do a good job as measured by test scores. Proponents of charter schools typically want the public to evaluate charter schools and traditional public schools by comparing their test scores—despite considerable research over the years demonstrating that the results are, at best, relatively comparable. Steve Dyer uses the test score yardstick in a recent blog post: “Not only have Ohio charter schools not gotten appreciably better on the report card since… 2015, but since the 2012-2013 school year, charter schools overall have received more Fs than all other grades combined on state report cards.” Dyer doesn’t think these schools are performing well enough to deserve additional tax support.
Then there are the arguments about about whether charters mismanage the tax dollars they receive. In a recent article about Ohio charter schools, three prominent professors of education policy and law examine self-dealing by charter management companies which lease buildings owned by the very same companies back to the Ohio charter schools they are hired to manage—at exorbitant, above-market rents. The authors of this critique report that, “just a few weeks ago, the National Alliance for Charter Schools was back in Ohio asking the state to increase funding for charter school facilities.”
Here is an example—this time from Sunday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer—of how reporting on charter school accountability and funding often goes. As he describes the request for more money from the legislature, reporter Patrick O’Donnell considers the academic record of Ohio CONTINUE READING: Ohio Charter Schools Ruin District Finances: Steal State and Local Taxes, Leave Behind Stranded Costs | janresseger
