Ohio’s charter school sector has been a thorn in the side of the Buckeye State for far too long. The Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) has documented that, on average, students in Ohio’s charter schools achieve fourteen fewer days of learning in reading and forty-three fewer days of learning in math than their traditional public school peers. The proliferation of authorizers has led to low-quality, sometimes questionable authorizing practices that allow persistently low-performing schools to remain open. And State Auditor David Yost has harshly criticized the charter school sector for misspending public tax dollars.
But at last, there may be a light at the end of this dark tunnel.
Yesterday, the Ohio legislature passed House Bill 2 by an overwhelming majority (91-6 in the House and 32-0 in the Senate). The bill is designed to remedy many of the incoherent policies and loopholes in the current law, which my colleagues and I documented last December in our report, “The Road to Redemption: Ten Policy Recommendations for Ohio’s Charter School Sector.”
The legislation follows our recommendations quite closely, making considerable changes that will strengthen authorizer oversight, governing board independence, and school operator transparency. The full text of the legislation is extensive, but a few changes are worth highlighting:
- To rein in poor authorizing practices, the law strengthens state oversight of authorizers, including requiring all new and existing authorizers to enter into a contract with the Ohio Department of Education (ODE); these contracts must include clear provisions for when ODE can intervene or revoke authorizing authority.
- It clarifies the authorizer evaluation system, which annually evaluates and rates all authorizers as Exemplary, Effective, Ineffective, and Poor.
- It includes incentives for any authorizers rated Exemplary for two consecutive years and sanctions for any authorizers rated Ineffective or Poor.
- It clarifies the role and responsibility of authorizers, including eliminating their ability to sell services to the schools they authorize, outlines specific responsibilities of authorizers, and sets expectations for the content of authorizing contracts.
- It empowers charter school governing boards by requiring contracts with operators to spell out who owns the facilities and property (to avoid future decisions like this) and requires boards to retain separate legal counsel and fiscal officers, independent from management organizations.
- It eliminates the ability of an operator to appeal to a sponsor when a board fires it (a current practice NACSA president Greg Richmond called “the most breathtaking abuse in the nation”).
- It requires ODE to publish a directory of operators and an annual report on operator performance.
- It strengthens the requirements around e-schools’ standards, record keeping, and communication with families.
As positive as these changes are, the governor’s signature on this bill will only be the beginning. Smart, sustained implementation will be essential, and, even then, the benefits of this law won’t be reflected in the sector’s overall performance for some time. But this legislation is the necessary first step, and Ohio’s leaders deserve credit for their work.
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