Earlier this month, the Harvard Graduate School of Education and MIT released a study that reports students in Boston charter schools outperform their peers in traditional Boston district schools. My first thought after reading the study: kudos to these schools for prevailing despite caps and the ongoing fight for respect and operational freedoms. My second thought: why hasn't Ohio had an analysis like this one?
Eleven years into our charter program, the Buckeye State still has not seen an in-depth study of charter school performance, despite a legislative mandate for the state to conduct one. (The closest we've come is a 2006 report by Fordham, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the National Association of Charter School Authorizers and a series of reports by the now-defunct Legislative Office of Education Oversight.) Part of the problem is that Ohio's colleges and universities have not taken an interest in charter schools (save a few superb exceptions). This is a shame, and a waste of knowledge and resources. Ohio has 61 public colleges and universities (including branch campuses) and 51 private higher education institutions. Of these, 50 offer education programs. Yet only one, Bowling Green State University, is an approved charter school authorizer and none has endeavored to conduct rigorous research into the state's charter schools. Contrast this with our neighbor to the north, where higher education is actively engaged in the charter sector as both authorizers and researchers.
Ohio's colleges and universities should step up and play a role in developing and improving the state's still relatively-young charter school sector. Critics gripe that education-school faculty members are too far removed from the classroom. Surely that gap could be bridged if colleges served as charter school authorizers or even operators. And results from a major study by a top Ohio university would do what smaller analyses can't: identify top schools worth supporting while putting public pressure on low-performing schools to close (something state law is slow to do). This would encourage the state to allow good schools to grow and replicate, and (finally!) give decision makers the impartial information they need to make smart improvements to the state's charter laws and policies. Imagine rigor and research driving the debate in Ohio instead of special interest groups and big money lobbyists.
