Ohio Report Card: Urban Schools Face Bigger Challenges, Outperform Charters

In further analyzing the Ohio Report Card data released today, schools in Ohio's Big 8 urban centers (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) scored higher on their performance index score (the closest thing Ohio has to an overall performance assessment at this point) than Charter Schools, despite having substantially higher percentages of children who were economically disadvantaged. A staggering 51% of Big 8 urban buildings have more than 95% of their students designated as economically disadvantaged (the Ohio Department of Education only says buildings have ">95.0" if their economic disadvantaged number is higher than 95%).

So, despite having more than half their buildings with, for all intents and purposes, all their kids economically disadvantaged, Ohio's Big 8 urban buildings actually perform better, on average, than Ohio's Charter Schools, which were originally intended to "save" children from "failing" urban buildings.

I'm not saying I'm happy with the Big 8 results. What I am saying is the Big 8, despite their struggles, are doing better with more challenges than Ohio's Charter Schools. $914 million should buy us taxpayers more, I think.

Building Type	% Economically Disadvantaged Per Building	% of Schools >95% Economically Disadvantaged	Average Performance Index Score
Big 8	86.5%	51.0%	79.08
Charter	81.9%	38.2%	78.058