Blog Entry – 98 Percent of Ohio Charter School Graduates are Less Prepared for Post-Graduate World Than Students in Youngstown City Schools

The third and final entry that that caught my attention from the blog 10th Period that I wanted to share was:

98 Percent of Ohio Charter School Graduates are Less Prepared for Post-Graduate World Than Students in Youngstown City Schools

Dayton is the lowest performing major urban district. Yet 2 out of 3 Ohio charter schools are less prepared than Dayton students.

Stephen Dyer

Sep 21

Ohio’s new report card has revealed something extremely troubling about Ohio’s Charter Schools. On a new measure called “Students in the 4-year Graduation Cohort who Completed a Pathway and are Prepared for College or Career Success”, only 9 percent of Ohio’s potential Charter School graduates met those qualifications. More than 36 percent of Ohio’s public school district students met those qualifications.

To continue reading, click https://10thperiod.substack.com/p/98-percent-of-ohio-charter-school

This one caught my attention because:

I’d also like to use some space to bring up the Ohio Virtual Academy (OHVA) — the ECOT-sized online school. OHVA was paid to educate 14,530 students last year — more students than ECOT ever was paid to educate.

Yet they are just as bad as ECOT at preparing their students for the post-graduate world. An astonishing 87 of 1,820 potential OHVA grads were considered college or career ready. That 4.8 percent rate is lower than all but one Ohio school district — New Miami Local in Butler County, which only had 1 of 44 potential graduates considered college or career ready.

Maybe it’s time to take a look under OHVA’s hood. They did receive $104 million last year to produce these anemic results, after all.

What was it I was just saying about being good stewards of the public purse and the promise of a quality public education?

Blog Entry – ECOT Easily State’s Biggest Ever Taxpayer Ripoff What does this mean for potential Voucher problems?

The second entry that that caught my attention from the blog 10th Period that I wanted to share was:

ECOT Easily State’s Biggest Ever Taxpayer Ripoff

What does this mean for potential Voucher problems?

Stephen Dyer

Jun 29

A new report came out yesterday from State Auditor Keith Faber’s office reaffirming that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — at one time run by the most powerful Republican donor in the state Bill Lager — owed the taxpayers of Ohio $117 million. The state said the school had to repay all the money it was sent for the 2017-2018 school year, as well as about 35% of the money it was sent in the 2016-2017 and 2015-2016 school years.

This wasn’t the first time the state caught Lager and ECOT cheating. Its very first year of operation, ECOT was forced to repay $1.7 million of the $8.7 million it had been paid by the state. And it was all for the same reason — ECOT couldn’t prove it was actually educating the kids the state was paying them to educate.

To continue reading, click https://10thperiod.substack.com/p/ecot-easily-states-biggest-ever-taxpayer

This one caught my attention simply because ECOT was an example of the kind of corporate greed that underscores so much of the neo-liberal cyber charter movement.  The kind of greed that many would have us believe can only happen with the biggest cyber charter in the state or cyber charters that aren’t part of a national network (at least that’s what one Pearson rep claimed during a public debate at a conference shortly after the ECOT example, and as the Indiana Virtual School incident was unfolding).

The reality is that smaller cyber charters often fly under the radar and with less scrutiny are able to get away with more, which is why the issues with cyber charters were able to go unnoticed by most for so many years – they were simply only a very small part of the larger school choice movement.  Similarly, those with national networks are able to leverage their substantial legal resources to make problems go away with payoffs, but without accepting responsibility.  I suspect that is more of the reason that the Pearson rep’s statement is true, and it has less to do with the fact that cyber charters that match that description are somehow better stewards of the public purse and the promise of a quality public education.

Blog Entry – Follow the Money…. How Ohio School Districts and Charter Schools spend money tells you what they care about

So recently I came across the blog 10th Period, and there were a couple of entries that caught my attention that I wanted to share.  The first was:

Follow the Money….

How Ohio School Districts and Charter Schools spend money tells you what they care about

Stephen Dyer

May 6

Yesterday, I tried to sound the alarm about how Ohio Charter Schools shouldn’t be ignored, despite culture and voucher war focus this election year.

In order to reinforce the urgency of this, I thought I’d dig into how Ohio’s public and charter schools spend money. What you’ll notice is while Ohio’s public schools spend their money on kids, far more — and by far more, I mean nearly double the commitment — is spent on the adults in charters who don’t actually teach kids¹.

To continue reading, visit https://10thperiod.substack.com/p/follow-the-money

The reason this one caught my attention was this bit:

Here’s the bottom line: If Ohio Charter Schools spent the same amount on administrative costs as Ohio’s public school districts, they would have at least an additional $142 million to spend on kids — roughly the total amount Parma City Schools spent last year.

As you can see, Ohio’s Charter Schools spend almost 1 in 4 of its dollars on non-instructional administrators². Ohio’s public school districts spend about 1 in 8 on these non-instructional folks.

It caught my attention because I’ve often commented about the executive salaries for the top officials at companies like K12, Inc./Stride, Inc. being considerably out of step with the leadership of other public school districts of similar size.  When I do that there are folks who argue with me, stating that singling out just the the top executives are unfair and if I were to look at the administrative bloat across the full district that the cyber charters would perform much better.

Well, this analysis in Ohio doesn’t include the corporations executives in their analysis – it only include the school/district leadership.  And that analysis concludes:

No Ohio school district spends as much on administrators as the average Ohio Charter School.

Diane Ravitch’s blog – Ohio: The Staggering Cost of Privatization of Public Money

These kinds of stories and news items never cease to surprise me.

Bill Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Advocacy, is a retired state superintendent in the state. He has focused like a laser on the importance of funding public education equitably and adequately. He writes here about the staggering cost of privatizing public money to pay for charters, virtual charters, and vouchers. This is money deducted from the public schools, which outperform both charters and vouchers and the failing virtual charter industry.

To continue reading, click https://dianeravitch.net/2020/10/24/ohio-the-staggering-cost-of-privatization-of-public-money/

Press Release: CREDO At Stanford University Finds Limited Improvement In Charter School Impact In Ohio

This is the second of three entries that was referenced about thirty minutes ago (see here).  If you haven’t looked at that first entry, I would STRONGLY encourage that you do for a brief primer on some of the methodological issues.

CREDO at Stanford University Finds Limited Improvement In Charter School Impact In Ohio

CREDO releases a new report examining the impact of Ohio Charter Schools from 2013-2017

STANFORD, Calif. – Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO), found that the typical charter school student in Ohio makes similar progress in reading and weaker growth in math compared to their traditional public school peer (TPS).

“The performance in Ohio charter schools has been consistent since our initial investigation in 2009. We intend to continue to study the impact of the bipartisan legislation HB2 and other policies,” said Margaret Raymond, Director of CREDO at Stanford University. “We continue to be grateful for our long-term partnership with the Ohio Department of Education to provide impartial analysis.”

Key Findings

• This report provides evidence for charter students’ performance in Ohio over four years, beginning with the 2013-2014 school year and ending in 2016-2017.
• In Ohio, there are both online and brick-and-mortar charters. Our investigation revealed remarkably weaker growth in both reading and math among online charter students relative to the average TPS students or brick-and-mortar charter students. In fact, as CREDO has found in other states, it is the poor performance of online charter schools that drags down the overall charter impact on student academic growth.
• Greater academic progress is found for charter black students, including black students in poverty for reading, but not among other subgroups.
• At the school level, around 34 percent of Ohio charter schools outpace their local TPS peers in learning in reading and 29 percent in math. Still, 14 percent of charter schools have results that are significantly worse than TPS peers for reading and 32 percent of charter schools are underperforming in math relative to their local TPS peers.

To download a copy of the full report, visit: http://credo.stanford.edu

About CREDO at Stanford University CREDO at Stanford University produces rigorous, non-partisan research and evaluation to enhance the body of empirical evidence, driving education policy decisions toward improved education outcomes for all students.

Note the portions I have highlighted in red that would be of interest to readers of this space.

The direct link to the report is available at:

http://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/OH_state_report_2019.pdf

Again, another result that confirms findings in a report released in the past two weeks by the National Education Policy Center (of which I am a co-author).