E-Shools in Ohio $224 million

The worm is turning

The Columbus Dispatch is finally getting on board.

Seems pretty reasonable.  It is the taxpayer’s money.  Campaign donors do not speak for the majority of taxpayers.  Despite the massive marketing please let the results (including the finances) speak for themselves.  Billions have been spent.  How much is enough?

“Ohio’s charter-school system has attracted national ridicule for its giant-sized accountability loopholes…

A significant gap, flagged by Yost, is that the bill fails to require school-operating companies to disclose how they spend the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of tax dollars they are paid to run the schools. Their status as private companies doesn’t change the fact that they are using public money to provide public education. Under current law, some operators refuse to show their books to the governing boards that hired them, let alone to the public.

This lack of accountability is unacceptable, and lawmakers should fix that before they sign off on H.B. 2.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2015/03/22/1-a-big-step-forward.html

10th Period: National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Wors...

10th Period: National Charter School Advocates: Ohio's the Wors...: For years now, I've been saying Ohio is unique among the 50 states for its crazy charter school system. And last week, many prominent ch...

Ohio Charters ridiculed. At least we are not Nevada

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/03/ohios_charter_schools_ridicule.html#incart_m-rpt-1

More analysis on charters from Minnesota

Students in most Minnesota charter schools are failing to hit learning targets and are not achieving adequate academic growth, according to a Star Tribune analysis of school performance data.

The analysis of 128 of the state’s 157 charter schools show that the gulf between the academic success of its white and minority students widened at nearly two-thirds of those schools last year. Slightly more than half of charter schools students were proficient in reading, dramatically worse than traditional public schools, where 72 percent were proficient.

Between 2011 and 2014, 20 charter schools failed every year to meet the state’s expectations for academic growth each year, signaling that some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students had stagnated academically.

A top official with the Minnesota Department of Education says she is troubled by the data, which runs counter to “the public narrative” that charter schools are generally superior to public schools.

More than half of schools analyzed from 2011 to 2014 were also failing to meet the department’s expectations for academic growth, the gains made from year to year in reading and math.

Of the 20 schools that failed to meet the state goals for improvement every year, Pillsbury United Communities is the authorizer for six of those schools: Dugsi Academy, LoveWorks Academy for Visual and Performing Arts, Connections Academy, Learning for Leadership Charter School, and the Minnesota Transitions Charter School’s elementary, Connections Academy and Virtual High School. Those schools also missed annual achievement gap targets.

Interesting article on Pearson

The company’s global adjusted operating profit for 2013 topped $1 billion — and 55 percent of it came from the North American education division.

“The line between profit and profiteering can seem pretty fuzzy,” said Cathy Davidson, director of the Futures Initiative and a professor at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. “If you have an exclusive contract with a massive educational system, is that really just earning a profit, or are you profiting at the public’s expense?” Davidson said. “That’s the line many people, including myself, find very troubling.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026_Page2.html#ixzz3SWpZPsoT

Chapter superintendents, not so super

From Denis Smith

Seriously?  No wonder the results are often horrible.  Only the best and brightest (or not)?

Set up your own board and get yourself elected superintendent.  Title sounds good and the pay is whatever you can convince the board to pay you.  Ohio has probably doubled the number of superintendent positions with the advent of charter schools.

"How then is it that when it comes to the subject of “public” charter schools, Kasich and his friends have different definitions and understandings for terms like educators and superintendents?

Under Ohio law, there are no education or professional requirements for an individual to serve as a public charter school superintendent or principal. None. As Woody Allen might have put it, if 80% of success in life is just showing up, you’ve got a good chance of becoming the top administrator of a charter school just by showing up, with a new start-up school proposal in hand, at the offices of a charter school sponsor.

And yes, governor, let’s say it again: there are absolutely no administrative licensure requirements in charterdom. You don’t even have to be an educator in order to open and become a superintendent of a “public” charter school."