Charter Schools Do Get Direct Local Funding. Sort of.

OK. This may be a little in the weeds, but I think it's important to point out as we consider charter school funding.

Contrary to the complaints of many, charter schools actually do receive direct local revenue.

Sort of.

Yes, there were eight charter schools that actually received local property tax revenues last year, to the tune of less than $500,000 total. And when charter proponents claim that charters get no local revenue except for a few, this is what they are discussing.

However, until 2012, there was another revenue stream that was considered "local revenue" by the state of Ohio that were not local property or income taxes. These payments (tuition, interest on money, fees, etc.) were considered "local revenue" when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled four different times that Ohio's school funding system was unconstitutional because it relied too much on local sources.

In 2012, in a move I criticized at the time for trying to artificially inflate Ohio's state commitment to education, the state removed these other local revenue streams form the "local funding" calculation and created a new one called "other non-tax". However, because these payments were considered local for the previous 20 years of data, to make state-local, apples-to-apples historic funding comparisons, you have to wrap the "other non-tax" revenue in with the "local revenue" funding stream.

Why am I re-living this intensely nerdy argument? Because this "other non-tax" revenue stream provides a significant chunk of change to Ohio's charter schools, and in a few cases even provides more funding to charters than the schools' state revenue stream.

In fact, last year, 87 percent of Ohio's charter schools received at least some "other non-tax" revenue streams, which until 5 years ago were considered "local revenue." The total was just short of $44 million spread across 328 charter schools. The average per pupil amount for the schools that got this funding was $435. That's not insignificant.

The iLead Spring Meadows and Global Ambassadors Language Academy charter schools both received more of this "other non-tax" revenue, which at one time was considered "local revenue", than they received state revenue. And 38 charters get more than $1,000 per pupil from "other non-tax" revenue sources. The major chunk of these payments come from fundraising or grants the schools receive.

So in addition to receiving far more per pupil state funding and more per pupil federal funding than the Ohio school districts with which charters compete, they also receive significant sums from what until 5 years ago was considered "local revenue".

So what does this mean? It means that charters do get locally raised money, though not from (for the most part) the largest pot of that locally raised money -- property taxes. But it's not entirely accurate to say charter schools don't get local revenue.

Because but for a name change made by bureaucrats five years ago, they actually do.

Sort of.

Are Ohio charter schools public schools? They sure don't act like it.

A recent story in the Columbus Dispatch revealed just how averse to public scrutiny the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow is. While I can't say I was shocked, this did strike me as odd, given how much public heat ECOT has been receiving lately. Surely they are savvy enough to be as open and forthright with the public and the media as possible during their time of great duress.

But no.

Instead, they held an ostensibly "public" meeting that it appears the security guard didn't even know was going on. They initially wouldn't allow a member of the media into the board's committee meeting. Then they went into an executive session during their full meeting -- an executive session I'm willing to bet didn't comply with the notice requirements (24-hour posting and inform the media) under Ohio's Open Meetings Law.

And when the meeting was over, the school's top official wasn't able to give the reporter a copy of the documents produced for the ostensibly "public" meeting. I remind you this is a virtual school. They probably have email.

Oh, but the school's "posh" headquarters (the Dispatch's description) had plenty of pictures of politicians up in the hallways, including Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O'Donnell, who is currently hearing a case against ECOT.

I often hear from Ohio charter school defenders that charter schools are "public schools". If so, why don't they act like it? Perhaps this is why the National Labor Relations Board -- the entity that works out labor disputes in the private sector has asserted jurisdiction over labor disputes in Ohio charter schools.

But lest you think this secrecy is restricted to ECOT, in 2014, the Akron Beacon Journal called 294 charter schools and asked them the following questions:

• Who runs the building?
• Who is that person’s supervisor?
• Who is the management company in charge?
• How does one contact the school board?
• When does the board meet?

Want to guess how many refused to give all the information? If you guessed 3 out of 4 charter schools, then you win a cookie.

That's right. Only 80 of 294 charter schools willingly gave all the requested information to the Beacon Journal. This information is pretty basic and minimal.

Again, this is not how public agencies are supposed to operate. 

I ask you another question: If any group of public entities -- schools, cities, townships, villages, counties -- were this poorly responsive to you, the taxpayers that pay their bills and salaries, would you stand for it? 

And would you let them get away with calling themselves "public"?

I don't think so.

American Enterprise Institute Sells Poor Kids Short

I've noticed recently that many have started the "let's get off the four-year degree obsession" and instead encourage kids to go for two-year certificates or Associate's degrees. The American Enterprise Institute is the latest pushing this theme. I agree that two-year degrees and certificates are better than nothing and are a sound decision for many kids, but I have a tough time just resigning our country to the premise that we should just accept fewer kids getting four-year degrees because of this chart from the U.S. Census Bureau:

An Associate's degree will get you a 33 percent higher unemployment rate and 30 percent less income. Not completing a degree hurts more, while stopping at college doubles the unemployment rate and almost cuts income in half.

Are there two-year degrees where recipients can earn more? Sure. Are there Bachelor's degrees where graduates earn less? Sure.

But the nature of public policy is to ensure the greatest opportunity for the most people. And making four-year degrees the expectation for as many kids as possible grants kids, literally, a $1 million opportunity over their lifetime.

But what really gets me is this: None of these studies are offering solutions to increase access to the four-year degree; it's simply lowering the bar and trying to rationalize why we should focus more on the two-year track.

A major reason kids go for two-year degrees over four-year degrees is cost. It's too hard for kids, especially those without a ton of means, to afford college. Especially if they don't have 4.0 GPAs. But kids with Bs and Cs in high school can succeed in a four-year program.

I see it every day when I teach freshman composition at the University of Akron.

Yet the scholarship opportunities for these students just aren't there. So we force them to go into massive debt, work several jobs, or lower their expectations and go for a two-year degree. Then we have places like the American Enterprise Institute try to make that sound like not just a good outcome, but one that represents good, sound policy.

But all we're doing is resigning less wealthy students to lesser opportunity when we should be affording them more opportunity by reducing the financial barriers to the four-year degree. Because as much as we want to argue that two-year degrees are just fine for families and kids who don't have the means to access a four-year degree, I'm looking at the chart to the left and find a strong correlation between a state's median household income and its educational attainment. And, in fact, the correlation coefficient of those two columns is 0.83 -- a strong correlation, though not perfect. This means the greater the percentage of Bachelor's degrees, the greater the income.

In short, getting more people into the middle class necessarily means a greater public policy commitment to increase access to the four-year degree. While two-year degrees and vocational training can help, I'm even concerned about the long-term viability of some vocational skills, given the rapid development of robotic alternatives. We should, though, stop merely talking about the importance of a four-year degree and instead actually fund those opportunities so every kid can access this million dollar dream.

For example, in 1975, Ohio spent more than 15.7 percent of its state budget on higher education. Today, it's about 1/3 the percentage. Ohio is not alone in its de-commitment to the four-year degree. But investing in our state's and nation's youth is as sound an economic development investment as there is.

Why we don't do it more than we do is beyond me.

I Strike a Nerve and Fordham Attacks

I guess I should have figured this was coming, but apparently my recent posts about how poorly charter schools do on performance index, college graduation, and closing achievement gaps relative to local school districts finally sent was too much for my friends at Fordham over the edge.

In what can best be described as a exasperated, indignant scream wide-ranging, personal attack, Fordham's Jamie Davies O'Leary -- with whom I've enjoyed a respectful dialogue in the past and hope to continue to do so -- finally lets loose and doesn't assail what I said really, or even deal with the fact that charters do perform worse than districts; she lashes out at attacks me for daring to compare charters with districts in the first place.

(Earlier posts included language that I thought accurately reported the tone of Jamie's piece. After thinking on it for the weekend, I agree with her that my choice of words could be seen to have carried with them an unfortunate gender stereotype. That was not my intent. However, out of respect for Jamie and all women, I have changed the language to be more neutral and am sorry for the unintended overtones.)

I have explained why this is a perfectly fair comparison many times, but given Jamie's diatribe, I suppose I have to re-cap this for everyone.

Again.

In Ohio, when a charter school receives a new student, the state sends the school $6,000 (plus more for categoricals, but that's a long story) from the pot of money the state was going to send to the district the student came from.

The problem is what if the student would have received only $3,000 from the state if she had remained in the district?

What happens is that the $3,000 in state revenue the state would have sent to the district for that child is shipped off to the charter, but, so is $3,000 meant for EVERY OTHER KID IN THE DISTRICT.

It doesn't take long for that disparity to add up to real dollars -- dollars that local taxpayers (many of whom do NOT have kids in the schools) have to fill in to keep pace.

This is not some hare-brained, left wing fantasy. This is what both the Republican Chairman of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee and the Republican Chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee say.

Because this is what the state data say.

According to the final state payment made to school districts from June, there were 1.7 million students in Ohio set to receive $7.95 billion in total state aid. That's works out to $4,657 (I'm rounding here) for every student in local public school districts.

Then come charter schools.

According to the report, $898 million left school districts last year for charters (a district-by-district breakdown I received from the Ohio Department of Education puts that tally at $935 million, so there's that). Leaving with that funding were 113,613 students.

So, after losing the funding and students to charter schools, the remaining 1.59 million children in Ohio school districts were set to receive $7.05 billion in state revenue, or $4,425 each.

That means that the charter deduction costs every kid in Ohio school districts, on average, $231.51.

This is why I compare charter school performance with school district performance. Because charter schools affect every kid in a school district. Profoundly. How profoundly? Let's look at Columbus.

Prior to the charter school deduction, every kid in Columbus City Schools is set to receive $4,559 in state funding. However, once the $145.65 million and 18,541 students are transferred to charter schools, the remaining 53,532 students who attend Columbus City School buildings receive $3,418 per pupil. That is a difference of $1,141.62. So charter schools cost students who are in Columbus City Schools about 1/4 of their state revenue. That's every student in Columbus, regardless of wealth, race, or disability, Jamie.

Every.

Single.

Student.

So if this profound a change in state funding is going to happen for the 75 percent of children who remain in Columbus City Schools, or the 93 percent of children who remain in Ohio's local public school districts, we'd better be damn sure it's worth it. Is it worth removing $1,141.62 from kids in the best performing school in Columbus so thousands of kids can go to ECOT, for example (ECOT is the largest recipient of charter school transfer funding from Columbus)?

I would say that's a big, "No."

Now my friends at Fordham often complain that charters don't get local revenue. And while that's true, I fail to see how that justifies removing millions of state dollars from kids in local school districts. If the legislature believes in school choice so strongly, then set aside $260 million or so to make up for the lack of local revenue.

Stop taking it from the 1.59 million kids who aren't in charters.

Anyway, this funding problem is the primary reason why I use charter-district comparisons.

But there are many others, such as how charters are considered Local Education Agencies, just like districts. Or how they are required to have treasurers and superintendents, just like districts. Or how they are funded just like districts. Or how they are slated to be opened in a community based on how the district performs on the performance index score. That's how every building in the district performs, not just the worst ones.

I could go on. But suffice it to say if you're funded like a district. If you're considered a district for federal grant making purposes. If your funding comes from every student in every building in a district. If kids in 608 of 613 districts lose state funding to charters. Then, dammit, you don't get to have your performance judged only with the worst performing buildings in the worst performing districts.

Sorry.

Nor do you get to only count certain report card measures, especially when you were the greatest champion for an A-F report card that Fordham claimed would help parents "discern quality". Unless, apparently, those grades are bad in most measures and those schools are charters.

I also take serious issue with O'Leary's main premise -- that I'm somehow standing up for districts while she is standing up for kids. It's in the title of her piece "Schools were meant for kids, not the other way around". This is a common argument made by pro-charter school advocates: those who dare question charter efficacy clearly are just trying to protect bureaucrats while charter school advocates are White Knights charging to children's defense.

This saccharine, sanctimonious appeal is so much hogwash that it would sweep the hogs upstream.

In Ohio, 93 percent of children attend school districts. The state's charter school funding system means $231.51 fewer state dollars, on average, for that 93 percent of students. How is standing up for the rights of the 93 percent of kids in Ohio's school districts to not have their funding cut by school choice programs anti-student or anti-parent again?

Seems to me that standing up for the rights of 7 percent of the kids and parents to the detriment of 93 percent of kids and parents is far more anti-student and anti-parent. Especially when the performance of those buildings to which the 7 percent move is, for the most part, so comparatively dreadful.

As I've said a million times before (though it appears some just won't listen), I am not anti-school choice. But if we are going to have school choice, we must create a regime that encourages quality school options for students while funding it in a way that doesn't hurt the 93 percent of students who are not in charters.

Until this state wakes up and addresses these two fundamental flaws, I will oppose what we're doing. And, yes, Jamie, I will compare charter school performance with school districts'.

I wish my friends at Fordham would take the same pledge, but their dogmatic adherence to the sanctity of parental choice has blinded them. Not all school choice advocates are so blinded, though. Some have looked at the last 20 years of results and said ,"I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state."

My friends are Fordham are simply trying to hail a cab that is blocks away, headed in the wrong direction. And that's a shame.

Ohio GOP Legislators: Pay schools even if kids aren't there

Well it's come to this: Former Ohio legislators are now telling the Ohio Supreme Court that the state should pay schools for kids the schools says are there, even if they really aren't.

The filing was made on behalf of five former Republican members of the Ohio General Assembly earlier this month in a case that could well determine the very existence of Ohio's largest virtual school and the nation's largest dropout factory.

Does it surprise you that these legislators (according to Follow the Money) have received more than $50,000 in campaign contributions from Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow founder William Lager, and nearly $135,000 total from Lager and David Brennan -- Ohio's charter school Godfather?

In fact, the lead legislator on the filing is William Batchelder -- one of the longest serving state legislators in history who was Brennan's bag man on Ohio's school voucher legislation in the mid-1990s. Batchelder left the legislature in 2014. Shortly after that, he fell into a new job -- lobbying for Bill Lager. Makes sense. Lager had paid him $45,000 (not to mention the tens of thousands he paid to the Ohio House Republican Caucus during Batchelder's time as Speaker of the House). Batchelder collected $67,000 from Brennan, and even more if you include Brennan's wife, Ann.

The second legislator named is Chuck Calvert, who left the legislature the year I was elected, so I never really knew him. But he was the powerful chairman of the House Finance Committee for years. He collected $6,000 each from Lager and Brennan.

Then there's Mike Gilb -- a lawmaker from Northwest Ohio who took $4,000 from Brennan.

Jim Trakas is next, who collected $5,000 from Brennan and is now running dropout recovery schools in Cleveland that graduated 26 of 142 possible students last year.

Finally, Bryan Williams, who is now the Summit County Republican Party Chairman, replacing longtime Chairman Alex Arshinkoff. Here's a profile of Williams on the 3rd Rail Politics website, which has deep connections with ECOT and its officials. Williams took money from Brennan during his time in the legislature, which ended in 2004.

But this isn't the only issue here. What these legislators are saying is when they developed the state's nationally ridiculed charter school funding and accountability system, they didn't mean for the Ohio Department of Education to check whether the kids charter schools were claiming to educate were actually being educated. All that mattered was whether the schools claimed that the students were there.

I kid you not. These former legislators are all arguing that they meant for ECOT to get their money regardless of whether the student was even participating in an educational program at ECOT.

What an indictment of our state's charter school regime.

Oh, did I mention that four of the seven Ohio Supreme Court Justices hearing the ECOT case have taken money from Lager (Justices O'Connor, O'Donnell, French and DeWine)?

Is it any wonder why Ohio's charter school funding system feels so rigged against taxpayers? And why schools like ECOT, which perform so poorly yet are paid so richly, are such a subject of national scorn?

One more interesting and telling thing about the filing: No current legislators signed onto it.

State Report Card: Disadvantaged students' performance gaps grew more in charters than school districts

In the new state report cards there's something called "AMO". AMO stands for Annual Measurable Objective. I know. What the hell does that mean?

In short, really nothing. What AMO does is measure the proficiency score performance gaps between races and socioeconomic groups. So AMO will tell you how much better or worse a group of students perform when compared with students as a whole.

Generally, we've all heard about the so-called "achievement gap" between minorities and Whites. But AMO also measures disparities between poor students, disabled students and non-English speaking students.

Why do I spend all this time explaining this obscure metric? Because it's one of the more important measurements the Ohio Department of Education puts together. It holds schools and districts accountable for ensuring all kids succeed, not just the ones who have all the advantages. In many ways, AMO is a testament to the Civil Rights movement and its call for equal opportunity.

Now there are serious issues with AMO, not the least of which is it measures performance almost solely based on state tests (it also includes attendance and graduation). It does not measure educational opportunities afforded different groups of students that provide just as stiff a barrier to equity as tests, such as whether there are gaps in access to advanced courses, arts programs, or other opportunities advantaged students have.

Yet despite AMO's limited scope, I still like the idea of holding even the wealthiest districts and schools in the state to account for how their least advantaged students fare. It means that wealthy areas can't just ignore these kids without consequence. For example, if Upper Arlington's C in AMO forces them to divert more resources to their few disadvantaged kids, that's a good thing.

Again though, I would prefer more measures of opportunity be included beyond just limited test scores.

Be that as it may, looking at AMO results for Ohio charter schools and Ohio school districts, charter schools saw far greater performance gaps in reading and math than school districts. And, more troubling, a far greater percentage of gap growth compared with the previous school year.

So achievement gaps are growing wider and quicker in Ohio charter schools than Ohio school districts.

For example, more than 21 percent of charter school achievement gaps for African-American students grew larger in reading. That happened less than 10 percent of the time in school districts. Meanwhile, charter school reading achievement gaps for poor students grew at three times the rate of school districts. Overall, reading achievement gaps in Ohio charter schools grew bigger at more than 4 times the rate of their school district competitors.

The same holds true for math scores. African-American achievement gaps grew at a 40 percent higher rate in Ohio charter schools and poor student gaps grew nearly 50 percent more. Overall, achievement gaps for all students grew larger at a 60 percent greater rate in Ohio charter schools than school districts.

While it is true that more times than not Ohio's charter schools shrank rather than grew the gaps, Ohio school districts were simply far better at shrinking their prior year's gaps than their free market counterparts.

What does this mean? It means that far from granting greater equity for disadvantaged students, as many choice advocates claim, with some even suggesting that access to charter schools is a civil right, Ohio charter schools actually exacerbate achievement gap issues, which is the exact opposite of the civil rights movement's goal.

I find it difficult to argue it's a civil right for disadvantaged kids to access a system that is more likely to make their achievement disparity with their advantaged colleagues worse.

As I've said many times before -- after 20 years and $11 billion, is this the best our state's charter schools can offer?

State Data: Ohio Charter School Graduates Far Less Likely to Earn College Degrees than even Urban District Graduates

One of the more interesting -- and telling -- datasets now available with the state report card is how kids who graduate from Ohio's schools perform after they graduate. For example, we now know the percentage of graduates who have a college degree within 6 years, as well as how many graduates have enrolled in college within 2 years of graduation.

Looking at these two metrics, it's remarkable how bad charter school perform. Overall, Ohio school districts have 5 times the rate of students with college degrees that charters have. And Big 8 urban districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati. Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) have twice the rate.

Meanwhile, of the 31 Ohio charter schools that have graduates counted for this metric, 7 (23 percent) had zero graduates with college degrees within six years of graduation.

And the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow? That's right.

Only 109 of 3,794 ECOT graduates from 2010 have a college degree today. That's an amazing 2.9 percent. Cleveland -- which had about 100 fewer 2010 graduates as ECOT (not to mention far greater rates of poverty, special education, and minority students) -- had about 3.5 times as many graduates with college degrees as ECOT.

There is only one Ohio charter school with a higher percentage of college graduates than the average Ohio school district -- The Dayton Early College Academy at 42.4 percent -- a remarkably good rate given that Dayton City overall had a 13.6 percent rate. DECA's rate is about the same as suburban districts like Gahanna-Jefferson and North Olmsted, which, considering that about 98 percent of their students come from Dayton, is a great achievement.

But remember that DECA is the exception, not the rule.

Not surprisingly, the number of charter graduates who have been enrolled in college within two years of their high school graduation is also far lower in charters overall than school districts.

Barely 1 in 5 Ohio charter school graduates are enrolled in college within 2 years of graduating high school. More than 3 in 5 school district graduates are, while 2 in 5 urban school district graduates are.

Ultimately, education is about preparing children for lifelong success, not just test scores. Earning a college degree substantially increases lifetime earnings and decreases the likelihood of citizens needing to access the social safety net, as well as running into trouble.

According to this data from the state report card, Ohio charter schools, overall, hurt their students' ability to achieve the million dollar promise of a college education and instead contribute to their students' ability to access the social safety net over their lifetimes.

After $11 billion spent on charters since 1998, is this really the best we can do?