Former Ohio Charter Overseer Pleads to Slow Charter Growth

Last week, Denis Smith, a former consultant with the Ohio Department of Education on Charter Schools gave some of the most powerful testimony to date about the state of Ohio's Charter Schools. In short, it's bad. And it's so bad for Mr. Smith that he asked the legislature to put a moratorium on new Charter Schools until major reforms of their governance and oversight are fixed.

His suggestions include not allowing non-profits to sponsor Charters (only two other states allow that), as well as requiring administrators to be professionally licensed and eliminating the predominance of for-profit operations to run Charter Schools in Ohio.

I have posted a link to Mr. Smith's compelling testimony here.

Mr. Smith did not get into the serious funding problems Ohio has with Charter Schools, which allow for every kid not in a Charter to receive 6.5% less state revenue than the state says they need to succeed. Nor does he really get into Charter Schools' abject performance failure in much detail.

His concern is pretty basic: Ohio's system allows really bad Charters to thrive far more easily than it should. Some of his most compelling testimony was laid out here:

• A community school with only 175 students enrolled was led by a school director who hand-picked her governing board, which then employed her at a salary of $156,000 per year plus benefits. The governing board also employed the school director's sister at an inflated salary.
• Another community school leased space from the building's owner, who also happened to be president of the school's governing authority. In a recent audit, the state auditor revealed a pattern of overpayments above the stated contract for the school's lease and shell companies that were created to function as school vendors. Nearly $2,000,000 in questionable payments have been identified by the state auditor and 10 people associated with the school, including administrators and board members, have been indicted as a result. Three of the 10 indicted were family members who originally established the school. In spite of all of these misdeeds, the school can't be padlocked because it is held to a different operating standard due to the nature of the students served.
• Several years ago, a school established by a member of a vocal group was opened, and thousands of dollars of start-up funds were spent to build a state-of-the art audio recording and production studio on the school premises. Reports at the time indicated that the students were denied access to the recording studio and that adults were the primary beneficiaries of public funds spent on its construction. The school closed in less than two years.
• One group of schools, part of a national chain and established and operated by an organization with international ties, has a tendency to populate its schools with governing board members, almost exclusively male, who are not representative of the clientele of the schools. The New York Times reported extensively on this school management group nearly two years ago.
• During the course of several years at the Ohio Department of Education, I received dozens of phone calls from the public who had grievances against a number of community schools but were unable to find out the names of governing board members and contact information for them, their supposed representatives and overseers for public charter schools. 

Let us hope that Ohio's Legislators take heed of this professional's opinion and at least slow the growth of the Charter Schools over the next few years. If not, we're looking at $1 billion going out to schools that overall perform far less well than the traditional public schools while serving some of our most at-need youth.

And the state is spending far more per pupil to get those poor results. Imagine, for a moment, if 40% of traditional public schools rated D or F on the state's report card? How fast would the state be ripping money from them? 

Ohio Charters Spend Far More on Administration Than Publics

Since today is Charter Day in the Ohio Senate -- the day when Charter Schools testify about the state's biennial budget -- I figured now would be as good a time as any to look at how efficiently Charter Schools are spending the now $828 million Ohio taxpayers are sending them, according to their April payment report.

Looking at the Ohio Department of Education's Power User reports, I was able to get a breakdown of all expenditures for the 2010-2011 school year for Charters and Traditional Public Schools, located here and here, respectively.

The average Charter School (including brick-and-mortar and virtual schools) spends four times as much per pupil on administrative costs as the average public school building, and about twice as much as the average district.

As a result of these much larger percentage expenditures being spent on administration, Charter Schools spend a lower percentage of their money than Traditional Public Schools on instructional services, staff and pupil support, as well as building operations. Charters spend a much lower percentage of their money on pupil support (4.4% vs. about 10% in the Traditional Public Schools) and operations (about 9% vs. about 19% for Traditional Public Schools).

And overall, once again, Ohio's brick and mortar Charter Schools spend $54 more per pupil than the average public school, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

If Charters were performing better, perhaps you could overlook some of this. However, when every child in Ohio is receiving, on average, 6.5% less state revenue because of how Charters are funded, all while 3 out of 4 Charters are slated to receive Fs on the new state report card, and 40% of the money sent to rated Charters last year went to Charters that rated worse on both of the state's major performance measures than the districts from whence they received their money and kids, well, there needs to be serious revision of this program.

I don't imagine much of this was discussed at the Charter Day in Columbus. Here's hoping it will be discussed at some point.

Kasich Ed Plan Increases Charter Funding 4.5%

After many weeks of anticipation, the Legislative Service Commission has made preliminary estimates on the cost of Gov. John Kasich's education plan for Charter Schools. The bottom line is Charters will get a 4.5% increase under the plan.

For the last week or so there was real concern that the plan would lead to Charter School cuts. Instead, it represents an increase. At first glance of the LSC projections, 75 Charter Schools would receive less funding, which is about 20% of all Charters. About 60% of traditional schools would get cut under Kasich's Plan, but for a pot of guaranteed money that Kasich has indicated would go away soon.

Some of those Charters that get cut, though, are high-performing Charters, like the Intergenerational School in Cleveland, which would lose $20,000.

Now the challenge is this: Last week it seemed that Charters and Traditional Public Schools were starting to coalesce around the idea of raising the per pupil foundation aid in Kasich's Plan from the really low $5,000 per pupil (the lowest in two decades, in constant dollars) to a more robust number around $6,000 per pupil.

Will these Charter runs be enough to convince Charters to back off that demand? And will the Charter-Traditional School War be perpetuated with the results of these Charter School projections that show Charters doing a bunch better than Traditional Schools?

I hope the answer to both questions is an emphatic "No."

Ohio Charter Schools Confirm Kasich Ed Plan Insufficient

Today's testimony before the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee was quite revealing about Charter Schools' concerns with Gov. John Kasich's new education funding plan. Namely, this reliably Republican constituency was clear about one thing: Kasich's plan will hurt them.

When a group that's been as solidly in your corner politically as Charter Schools remains publicly neutral on your signature Education Reform plan, you have problems.

This is important as the debate moves forward because if even Charter Schools are saying the funding plan is inadequate, then perhaps changing the plan becomes more feasible. As I blogged about last week, there was plenty for Charter Schools to be worried about in Kasich's education plan. The per pupil foundation amount was being dropped from $5,700 per pupil to $5,000 per pupil, Charters weren't given a guarantee that their funding wouldn't dip below previous years' levels, and the economically disadvantaged weighted funding was low.

And it appears that Charter School advocates agreed with that assessment.

According to testimony from Stephanie Klupinski, of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools,

"The per pupil amount for Ohio’s charter schools is currently not enough, and we are concerned that HB 59 will make things even more difficult by reducing funding for many public charter schools and widening the gap.

Although we do not have spreadsheets for charter schools, we have done preliminary estimates.  Schools that will be particularly devastated by the proposed change include e-schools and some of the highest performing charters—schools that attract students from many different districts.  Many charters are helping blur district lines by enrolling a cross-section of students, and we don’t want to penalize our charters who serve students from different districts. That, unfortunately, is what we fear this proposal does.
 

Consider the effect of the proposed changes on Columbus Preparatory Academy (CPA), one of the highest scoring schools in the state with a Performance Index of 111.1.  Our simulation estimates that CPA is likely to lose at least $100,000 in funding, even after factoring in funds intended to support enhanced Early Childhood and Gifted services and to address facility inequities.

 

Governor Kasich has repeatedly emphasized that no district will receive less under his budget proposal.  We think it is only fair and equitable that public charter schools do not receive less per pupil than what they currently receive.  To remedy the problem, one possible solution may be that the per pupil funding amount that follows the student be the greater of the current amount of  $5,704 or the amount generated by the combination of Opportunity Grant and Targeted Resources funding as proposed in HB 59.  Schools should be assured that charter students will be funded at no less than the amount that they are today, while also being able to take advantage of increases where they are available.  We believe this may be an appropriate fix, but without having seen the budget spreadsheets for charter schools, we cannot be certain.  We thank you for your efforts to obtain the spreadsheets—I know we are all looking forward to seeing them."
 

Klupinski's testimony mirrored the testimony of other Charter School advocates, including those from White Hat Management -- David Brennan's outfit.

What's very clear is that Charters don't like the $5,000 per pupil foundation amount, nor do they like that they're not going to be getting any guarantees that their funding won't drop from the previous year.

There is a potential synergy here with what traditional public schools have been saying throughout this process. Is there a way to finally have Charters and traditional public schools come together around a set of principles?

Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope. And wouldn't that be a welcome change from the last 15 years of distrust between the two groups?

Startling Charter and Traditional Teacher Data

Now that the Ohio Department of Education has released its full report card, it is possible to examine in-depth data about various aspects of Ohio's educational landscape. Given that this week is Charter Week in the Primary and Secondary Education Subcommittee, I decided to look at teachers in both Charter and Traditional Public Schools.

As with prior years, the average teacher salaries in Charter Schools are about 40% lower than traditional public schools. The Charter School average is $33,993 and the average in a Traditional Public School is $57,303.

But where I found the comparison fascinating is in the other data points.

The typical Traditional Public School building has teachers with an average of 14.8 years of experience. In a Charter School building, that average is 6.3. However, the most telling statistic here, I think, is the mode.

The mode tells you which number appears the most often in a set of data. The mode on Traditional Public School buildings' teacher experience is 14 years, which means more Traditional Public School Buildings have teachers with an average of 14 years of experience than any other number of years.

Charter Schools? Their mode is 0. That's right. More Charter School Buildings have an average level of teacher experience of 0 than any other.

That is amazing to me.

Two equally stunning statistics.

1) The average Traditional Public School building has about 2/3 of its teachers with a masters degree. The average Charter School building has about 1/3 of its teachers with a masters degree. Granted, there is some debate about the impact of masters degrees. But I don't think they hurt student performance.

2) About 1 out of 3 Charter Schools in Ohio have at least some core courses taught by someone with a temporary teaching certificate. Of the more than 3,200 Traditional Public School buildings in the report card data, not a single one has core courses taught by teachers with temporary certificates.

Given this rather remarkable data regarding teachers -- the single largest cost in any school, I'm even more curious why Ohio's brick-and-mortar Charter Schools cost $54 more per pupil than Traditional Public Schools.

IO Exposes How Ohio's Charter Funding System Hurts Kids

Innovation Ohio has released a report that details how the way Charter Schools are funded in Ohio has hurt kids both in Charters and in the schools that lose children and money to Charters.

As I've said many times before, I'm not against Charters. I do not like how they're funded in Ohio. And I don't like how poorly they've performed overall.

It is unfair that 90% of the money going to Charter Schools that are rated in Ohio go from better performing school districts to poorer performing Charter Schools on the Performance Index. Or that every kid in this state not in a Charter receives $235 less in state aid because of how Charter Schools are funded.

We must fix this. For all our kids.

Further Exploring Kasich Plan's Fatal Flaw

In an earlier post, I tried to explain how flawed it is for Gov. John Kasich to bet his education plan on per pupil valuation. I thought explaining how it would take 191 years for folks in Noble County to catch up to Olentangy's capacity to raise a mill of revenue, if Noble County continued growing its property wealth at 66% every five years.

Yet today in the Ohio House of Representatives, Kasich's Education Funding Czar Barbara Mattei-Smith called Olentangy "Property Poor". That's right. A district that raises $3.2 million on a mill is property poor, according to Mattei-Smith. That's why a district as property wealthy as Noble (which raises $125,000 on a mill) should sacrifice state funds so kids in Olentangy can get over 320% increases. Or so went the argument.

Since apparently I was unable to make my case effectively with the 191 year thing, here are two charts. The first shows the difference between Olentangy and Noble's per pupil valuation, which is what Kasich is trying to "equalize" (and not very well at that). The second is a graphic showing the difference between Olentangy and Noble's ability to raise money on one mill of property tax.

Which do you think, dear reader, best describes the property wealth disparity in this state?

I'll let you decide.