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?

New Data: $3 out of every $5 Ohio charters received last year came from equal or better performing districts

Since 2014, Know Your Charter -- a website developed between Innovation Ohio and the Ohio Education Association -- has provided a unique dataset that I developed for them. The set calculates how much money is transferred from a school district to a charter school that performs better, the same or worse on more report card measures. It is the only ongoing, statewide comparison of its kind in the country.

Every year, about $3 of every $5 sent to Ohio charters go to charters that do no better or worse than the district the child left.

This past 2016-2017 school year was no different, as I wrote in Know Your Charter's most recent report. Of $935 million transferred from school districts to charter schools last year, $553 million went to charters that did no better or worse on more state report card measures. That's just about 60 percent.

Even more remarkable is that $370 million went to charters that didn't receive a single penny from a district that performed worse on more state report card measures, accounting for about 1/2 of all Ohio charter schools. And a startling $167 million went to charters that took all their money from better performing schools, accounting for about 1/3 of all Ohio charter schools. These didn't even tie a single time.

Here's the thing, though. That $167 million easily could be $270 million if you include the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. However, a single $2,500 transfer of ECOT's $103 million came from a district that performed the same on the state's report card measures as ECOT. So I didn't include ECOT in the Know Your Charter calculation, even though 99.998 percent of that notorious school's money came from districts that outperformed it on more report card measures.

While the number of charters that take all their money from better performing districts is remarkable, equally remarkable is how few Ohio charter schools, conversely, take all their money from districts that perform worse.

Only 7 of 370 charter schools last year took all their money from worse performing districts. And 13 took all their money from districts that did the same or worse. Here's a list of the charters that took all their money from worse performing districts:

While there have been steps taken on the path toward respectability for Ohio's beleaguered charter school sector, the fact remains that far too often, significant sums of taxpayer dollars go from better performing districts to worse performing, privately run educational options.

I've said this many times, but it bears saying again: I'm not against school choice. However, I am against a school choice regime that funds options that do a worse job educating children while removing opportunities from children whose parents send their kids to local public school districts.

And that's another thing we've learned from this last school year: Ohio's charter schools, because they receive so much more per pupil state funding than local school districts, force those districts to fill in the lost state revenue with locally raised mostly property taxes -- a fact now acknowledged by legislators on both sides of the aisle. Last year that amount was $222.1 million.

Every year, I keep hoping state leaders wake up and realize that Ohio's school choice options too often provide worse options and have the compounding effect of making school districts have to rely even more on local property taxes to pay for these worse performing options. Last I checked, overreliance on property taxes -- before charters even existed -- was deemed unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court.

Let's try to create a system that rewards the charters that are serving kids. And let's do it at the expense of the charters that aren't.

I know. That makes too much sense.

But our kids deserve a better system than the one our state's adults have concocted.

Ohio's School Districts Outperforming Charter Schools at Historically High Rate on Performance Index Score

Under Ohio law,  the state's performance index score is the primary determinant of whether a charter school will open in your community. The score is a weighted measure of student standardized test scores -- scores notoriously linked to student demographics.

The state's scores have dropped overall during the last several years as new tests and standards have forced schools and students to adjust their learning. However, what is clear from an examination of Ohio's historic performance index results is that Ohio's public school districts have been much better at adjusting to the changes than Ohio's charter schools.

In fact, the last two school years -- while representing the two lowest median performance index scores for school districts -- represent the two largest relative score differentials between districts and charters ever recorded.

What's that mean? It means that while Ohio's school districts have dropped, charters have dropped more, making the score disparity between the two larger than ever. The 2015-2016 school year saw districts outperform charters by nearly 50 percent. Last year, it was closer to 45 percent.

For several years, the gap had been narrowing -- especially after the state effectively removed the 90 worst performing charters from qualifying for the performance index score after the 2011-2012 school year.

However, while Ohio's school districts saw a quick, two-year 13 percent drop in performance index scores, charters saw a 27 percent drop during that period -- more than double the relative dip.

Again, the reason I'm harping on performance index scores, though I agree with my charter school advocate friends that the scores are too closely tied to demographics, is because performance index scores are the primary reason charter schools can open in school districts. If school districts score in the bottom 5 percent of districts on performance index, charters can come to town.

However, it is abundantly clear that in the vast majority of cases, those charters will produce performance index scores that are often far worse than the districts whose scores are so troubling to lawmakers they allow competition to ostensibly improve the community's educational options.

If performance index is the measure by which we are determining this need for district competition, what does it say that the alleged competitors score so much worse?

Suffice it to say I get why charter school advocates are now trying to move away from proficiency based accountability regimes. Call me cynical if you wish, but I wonder how much of this move by charter advocates is about the fact that charters overall just perform more poorly than their district competition?

The Quiet Importance of Ohio's Performance Index Score

Many in the charter school advocacy community have been pushing to have the state only judge charter schools by their so-called "value-added" scores -- the amount of student growth shown during the year on the state's battery of standardized tests. Among the advantages these advocates stress is how the value added scores tend to be less influenced by demographics than straight proficiency scores.

Value added measures have real limitations as well, including many critics who claim value added scores are equally problematic for accountability purposes as proficiency scores.

However, proficiency scores continue to be among the most important single state report card indicators. Why? Because according to state law, if a school district scores in the bottom 5 percent of performance index scores, charter schools can come to town. Performance index is calculated by weighting scores depending on how high or low students score on state proficiency tests.

So despite charter school advocates' admission that what testing critics have said for years -- that proficiency scores are closely tied to demographics -- and their insistence that value-added scores be the primary determinant of a school or district's success, these advocates have been silent on this fundamental provision of state law that determines whether a school district will have publicly funded, privately run schools competing for students and dollars.

Here's one reason why they may remain silent on this issue: Charter schools, which are meant to provide options to parents in districts with poor proficiency scores, have even worse performance index scores than the bottom 5 percent of districts.

According to the current list of "challenged school districts" put out by the Ohio Department of Education (the list was frozen after the 2013-2014 school year as Ohio transitions to its A-F report card), there are 24 districts that qualified then for charter schools under the performance index performance criterion. There are an additional 15 that qualify because they were part of the original pilot program (Lucas County schools) or are a big 8 urban district (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown).

The median performance index score for those 24 "challenged school districts" was 83.058 (out of 120 possible) in 2013-2014. Do you know how many charter schools outperformed that score on the last report card? If you guessed 23, you'd be right.

That's 23 out of 265 charters that had performance index scores recorded by the state -- a staggeringly low 9 percent of Ohio charter schools. That does not include the 90 or so dropout recovery schools, which do not receive performance index scores, but that routinely rated as the worst performing schools in the state prior to receiving their far more lenient report card. For example, in the last year dropout schools received performance index scores (2010-2011), they scored 10 points lower than their non-dropout recovery counterparts.

The amazing thing is there are fewer charters that currently outperform Ohio's lowest performing school districts than there are currently "challenged school districts" due to their poor proficiency scores!

More than 94 percent of money being spent on Ohio charter schools with performance index scores goes to charters currently with worse performance index scores than the school districts whose scores were so bad state lawmakers called them "challenged" enough to allow charter schools to come in to offer "better" options ...
6 percent of the time!

What do you suppose will be state lawmakers' response to this conundrum -- the alleged solution is even worse performing than the problem it was meant to solve? If you guessed nothing, you're cynical. But you're probably right.

This is also why I continue to compare district performance with charter school performance.

Sorry guys.

School districts' performance on the very measures charter advocates criticize the state for using to judge their favorite schools' performance is being used by the state to determine if charters should open in certain communities.

Yet that same state metric would designate more than 9 of 10 Ohio charter schools a "challenged school district" in desperate need of competition.

For those of you who would charge this comparison is unfair because performance index scores are overall lower today than they were in 2013-2014, applying the same performance index standard for a "challenged school district" today would result in nearly 6 in 10 charters scoring worse.

Again, the designation of a "challenged school district" remains how that school scored in 2013-2014.
But regardless of which criterion you use, charters overall just don't pass muster.

Ohio Urban Buildings Face Greater Challenges, Perform Same as (likely better than) Ohio Charters

I know that some have criticized me and others for comparing the woeful performance of Ohio's charter schools with the performance of all of Ohio's school districts. They claim it's unfair to compare the two (even though just about 1/2 of all the students and money going to charter schools in the 2016-2017 school year came from districts outside Ohio's 8 major urban districts -- Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown), even boldly saying that taking outside students into account is "preposterous".

And while I've stated for a long time that under Ohio law, charters are considered districts for funding, accountability and federal grant making purposes, and that many of the highest performing charters in the state take significant portions of their kids from outside the urban district in which they reside, I don't wish to litigate this battle.

So, as an exercise, let's grant the advocates their point for a moment and look at urban district buildings, shall we?

Here's what we find:

Ohio's urban buildings perform just about the same as Ohio's charter schools.

Here's the issue though:

• Ohio's urban buildings typically (my short hand for median) have a 26 percent higher rate of disabled children and a 23 percent higher rate of minority children than charter schools. 
• A remarkable 94 percent of all major urban buildings have more than 95 percent of their students classified as economically disadvantaged. Meanwhile, 65 percent of charters fit that bill.

Yet despite these greater challenges, Ohio's major urban buildings typically have nearly identical attendance rates, slightly less chronic absenteeism and just about equal report card performance, looking at percentages of A, B, C, D, and F grades. Charters have slightly higher percentages of As, Bs and Cs, and lower percentages of Ds and Fs, but the difference is statistically insignificant.

So despite the fact charters have fewer demographic barriers to success on our test-based report card and about half of their kids don't even come from the urban districts, charters are still unable to perform significantly better than their major urban counterparts -- the most challenged group of schools in the traditional public school system.

Only about 260 of Ohio's 370 charters are included in this comparison. It's clear that the other 90 -- mostly dropout recovery schools located in urban districts -- are among the worst-performing schools in the entire country. So the percentage of poor charter grades is likely far higher than the comparison I'm currently making. 

But I digress.

The bottom line is this: Ohio charter advocates want to only compare charter school performance with major urban district buildings.

Though I disagree with that approach, even if you grant the advocates the benefit of the doubt and do that comparison, Ohio's major urban buildings (who struggle far too mightily and should greatly concern us) still hold their own with their "free market" competitors, despite the 90 worst performing competitors not even being included in the competitors' ratings. Imagine, if you will, how much better Ohio's major urban district buildings would perform overall if the state would not count the bottom 24.3 percent of performers, as they currently exclude for charters. Yet urban district buildings do this while typically facing a more challenged student population.

Oh, and one more thing: Children in Ohio's urban districts are nearly twice as likely to be in a building that's classified by the state as "high performing" than children in charter schools.

So, about those major urban district buildings.

Greater challenges. Same (likely better) performance. Better chance of being in a high quality building.

How, exactly, is Ohio's charter school sector providing the meaningful, quality urban education reform we'd all like to see and were promised would come 20 years ago?