Aaargh. Here we go again. The new National Assessment civicsand history results are as deplorable as they were predictable. Whether they’ll also serve as the action-forcer that we need is far from certain. Is this to be a “Sputnik moment” on the civics front or another yawner?
NAEP has been testing U.S. history since 1994, civics since 1998, and the results have always been bleak.[1] At its peak in 2014, the “Nations Report Card” showed a meager 18 percent of eighth graders to be “proficient” in history, while 22 percent reached that threshold in civics. Year after year, assessment after assessment, those two key subjects have reaped the lowest scores of anything tested by NAEP.
Declines in both set in after 2014—well before Covid hit—and it was inevitable that post-pandemic scores would be even worse. Now we’re essentially back to the starting line, i.e., around the same levels as when these subjects were first reported by NAEP. And as we’ve recently seen in reading and math, the declines are worst among low-scoring students, which is to say those who possess the least knowledge and skills in history and civics have experienced the most severe losses.
What’s doubly troubling—but perhaps doubly attention-getting—is that this has happened just as many in the education and policy worlds are striving to launch a renaissance in civics, citizenship, and the historical understandings that must undergird them.
Any number of organizations and projects are working at this. (I’ve been engaged with several, including the estimable Educating for American Democracy venture and its “roadmap for excellence in history and civics.”) They’re responding not just to test scores but also—even more so—to the troubled state of the polity, the erosion of good citizenship, the travails of civil society, and loss of faith in the fundamental institutions and processes of our constitutional democracy.
Educating schoolkids in civics and history is in no way the whole solution to these deep-seated problems, but it has to be part of any solution—and evidence abounds that we’re doing a lousy job of it. The new NAEP results just underscore the blunt fact that the vast majority of American eighth graders don’t know squat about U.S. history or civics.
But why? I’m seeing five big contributing factors.
First, most states have lousy standards for these core subjects, meaning that their expectations for what K–12 students should learn are low, vague, or otherwise lacking. My Fordham colleagues demonstrated this in a voluminous 2021 report that found just five jurisdictions (four states plus D.C.) with “exemplary” standards in both subjects. It’s true that standards alone don’t teach anybody anything, but it’s also true that if you don’t have a clear destination for your journey, you could wander forever and get nowhere.
Second, weak standards are part of a larger “infrastructure” problem in social studies education, admirably documented in a recent RAND study. Although focused on the elementary grades, the failings itemized in that analysis—which include incoherent curricula, lack of teacher support, meager instructional time, ill-prepared teachers, an absence of accountability—apply pretty much across the entire span of K–12 schooling.
Third, curricular materials in this field—with history and civics often submerged in a “social studies” muddle that may be as much about pop-sociology and psychology as essential information and analytic skills—are mostly mediocre, the good ones are little used, and some popular texts are pretty awful. Check out EdReports and the What Works Clearinghouse and you’ll find the curricular cupboards barren for history and civics, this despite the fact that excellent tools exist by which to evaluate such curricula. And the culture wars and political posturing that have recently engulfed curricular deliberations are nowhere livelier than in the realm of social studies, although I’ve also called attention to a latent consensus across much of the land regarding what schools should teach in this realm.
Fourth, many teachers don’t know much about these subjects themselves. Typical certification requirements for social studies teachers include a smattering of “content” courses in any of the half-dozen disciplines that fall under this heading, but persons obtaining such certificates are then deemed qualified to teach any of those subjects. Which is to say a history teacher may have studied very little history and a civics teacher (who may also be the gym teacher) could have majored in anthropology.
Fifth, little time is devoted to history and civics over thirteen years of schooling, and few schools or students are held to account for how well these subjects are learned. Though we routinely term them part of the “core curriculum” along with English language arts, math, and science, we don’t give them nearly as much attention as the other three, and we’re far less likely to insist on any evidence of learning beyond, say, a passing grade in high school history and civics. It’s no help that few colleges pay attention to whether their applicants know anything about these subjects and almost none requires its own students to study them. (Stanford is requiring freshman year civics as of next year.)
Let’s remember, too, the close ties between “knowledge” subjects such as history and civics and students’ reading prowess. As E.D. Hirsch has emphasized for decades, the more you know, the better you’ll be able to read—and understand what you’re reading. As Adam Tyner and Sarah Kabourek recently showed, the more time schools spend on social studies in the early grades, the better readers their students will be. Conversely, the worse one is at reading, the less history and civics one is likely to learn. Hence the failings of U.S. students in those fields tend to track (only more so) our literacy challenges.
Is there hope? The bleak NAEP results that came out the other day could serve as a firebell in the night, the alarm we need to catalyze purposeful action, overcome our divisions, and quell, at least for a moment, the curricular culture wars.
My own advice is implicit in the five causes of decline that I spelled out above, as each implies its own remedy: solid standards, robust infrastructure, quality curricula, well-prepared teachers, time-on-task, and results-driven accountability. It’s really not rocket science.
But one thing more is also crucial: We must improve our diagnostics, starting with NAEP itself. Why do we have history and civics results for eighth grade but not for fourth or (especially) twelfth? It’s the end of K–12 when we most need solid data on what students have and have not learned. And why do we have only national data, not the state-level results that might drive serious action at the level that matters most? NAEPsters will offer all manner of explanations, starting with budget, but the fact remains that—here as everywhere—the problems likeliest to go unsolved are those that are poorly diagnosed in the first place. What we got from NAEP this week is necessary but in no way sufficient for a thorough diagnosis, the kind that points toward better-targeted treatments.
That all this matters to the nation’s future is self-evident. That we will go beyond garment-rending and teeth-gnashing is less so.
Editor’s note: Thisfirst appeared in somewhat different form in Education Next.
[1] In fact, NAEP first assessed knowledge of U.S. history as well as literature (among eleventh graders) back in 1986 via a special NEH-funded probe that gave rise to Diane Ravitch’s and my What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?, as well as Lynne Cheney’s American Memory. The answer to the query posed in our book title was “damn little.”
I don’t doubt that some or all of these factors have contributed to the crisis. As a high school English teacher, however, I found that something else most impacted my students’ (mis)behavior and my ability to manage it: recent changes to grading policies that have the effect of lowering expectations.
While important debates rage over reactive discipline—that is, what schools do in response to student misbehavior—practicing teachers know that the most effectiveclassroommanagementis proactive, since it discourages negative behaviors from happening in the first place. “An ounce of prevention,” Benjamin Franklin famously observed, “is worth a pound of cure.” And essential to proactive classroom management is the ability to establish high expectations. Strong student-teacherrelationshipsare important, but gradesremainakeymotivator. The understanding that an assignment must be submitted within a set timeframe helps keep students on task.
After proactive classroom management, the next best thing is to nip off-task behavior in the bud. My go-to “teacher move” in these cases was always to redirect students to the current academic activity. If I heard a group of students debating the merits of their favorite rappers instead of the assigned discussion prompt, for example, I’d ask them how Playboi Carti served to advance the plot in The Crucible (corny, sure, but generally effective once the eye-rolls ceased).
Keeping my corrective focused on schoolwork rather than behavior meant that I could avoid putting teenagers on the defensive, and it served as a purposeful reminder for why we were together. Of course, this strategy didn’t work every time for every disruption, but it worked often enough and for the most common forms of misbehavior—as well as in the very different school settings in which I taught.
But what if students lack any sense of urgency over the task at hand? What if any assignment can be turned in at a later date, or perhaps not at all?
Take, for instance, the 50 percent rule, an increasingly trendy grading policy that assigns students a minimum grade of 50 percent for any assignment, usually even if it was not attempted. Proponents hold that such policies will increase student motivation by enabling averages to “bounce back” from a poor performance, and that a 50 is still low enough to avoid inflating grades.
I’m all for motivating students, but that math just doesn’t add up. Imagine a class in a school with the 50 percent rule and a typical letter grade system. Say a student earns an 85 average (mid-range B) in the first quarter and then decides to forgo all assignments in the second quarter. Averaging 85 and 50, the teacher would be compelled to award a passing score of 67.5 (D+) for the semester without the student having done a thing for weeks.
Kids get the message, loud and clear: they can pick and choose which homework assignments to complete, which classroom activities to join, and whether they’ll take the unit test. When I taught in a district mandating the 50 percent rule, here’s what I learned:
1. Some students are absolutely going to do the bare minimum to pass. It’s not malicious; it’s tactical. I had students who very politely informed me that they hoped I didn’t take it personally, but they had done enough work earlier in the year to coast, and they didn’t care for writing essays, so they wouldn’t be bothering with the final paper.
2. Struggling students who don’t expect to excel can suffer the worst effects. In a scenario where they would have to attempt an assignment to get at least partial credit, they typically would. But in one with the 50 percent rule, why would they give it their best shot if they thought that the grade they’d earn wouldn’t be much different from the one they’d get for doing nothing?
3. Highly motivated students will strive to earn that A, no matter what, and they know they can’t get there by skipping assignments. But they also aren’t the ones most likely to alter their behavior in response to grading policies.
It doesn’t take a lot of students losing focus for the situation to snowball. First, the lack of meaningful grades means that teachers are less equipped to redirect students in response to everyday misbehavior, which can then escalate. Second, when students don’t keep up with classwork, they are likely to get confused as the class moves forward with new content. And confused or frustrated kids are more likely to act out. Finally, misbehavior is contagious: When even a few students are off task, others often follow suit. Frequent disruptions interferefurther with learning, perpetuating the cycle of misbehavior.
To improve student outcomes and decrease the need for reactive disciplinary intervention, schools and districts must revisit lax grading policies.
Instead of across-the-board changes to grading, allow and encourage teachers to be flexible on a case-by-case basis. Those concerned about equity should keep in mind that equity is about giving individual students what they need, rather than giving every student the same thing. Granting an extension or a retake to a student who has been ill or has lost a family member is fair and conscionable. Allowing unlimited flexibility for all students, on the other hand, doesn’t do much for equity.
And if teachers are responsive to individual students’ circumstances, there isn’t any reason to keep the 50 percent rule. The occasional “catastrophic failure” can be rectified without chucking expectations out the window for all other students.
In the face of a deadly pandemic and widespread societal disruption, more generous grading policies had their place. But three years later, with schools back to operating in-person and the national emergency coming to a close, it’s high time to reestablish meaningful expectations that help restore normalcy to classrooms.
A recent study finding dramatic boosts in reading achievement from a knowledge-building curriculum has come in for criticism, some of it well-taken. But the study should be seen as just one more piece of evidence casting serious doubt on standard literacy instruction.
The study, which I wrote about in an earlier piece, analyzed the reading scores of two groups of children. Beginning in kindergarten, one group got a curriculum based on the Core Knowledge Sequence that builds academic knowledge. The other group got “business as usual,” which generally means a focus on reading comprehension skills, like “finding the main idea,” over substantive content.
Children in both groups had applied to Core Knowledge charter schools that were oversubscribed. The researchers compared the children who got in through a lottery (the “treatment” group) with those who did not and went to other schools (the “control” group). They found that, by third grade, the treatment group significantly outperformed the control group on state reading tests.
That was especially true for students living in an area characterized as low-income. They made such significant gains that the test-score gap between that group and higher-income students was eliminated.
Although the still-unpublished study hasn’t attracted attention from the mainstream press, at least two education outlets have run stories on it. Both raised questions about the study’s findings.
PD and read-alouds
A story in Education Weekquoted the lead researcher, David Grissmer, as saying that, because only one of the nine schools in the study was in a low-income area, it’s possible that factors other than the curriculum affected the results there.
The article continued: “There are other potential differences between the treatment and control groups that could have affected results. Most of the Core Knowledge school teachers received professional development on how to implement the guidelines, while it’s not clear what PD teachers at other schools received. The program also uses different methods than many other reading curricula—relying more heavily on read-alouds, for example.”
But these “differences” aren’t factors that interfere with isolating the effect of a knowledge-building curriculum. They’re factors that are inextricably linked to that kind of curriculum and therefore part of the curriculum’s effect.
The evidence indicates that PD for teachers works best when it’s grounded in the specific content of the curriculum. But the standard elementary curriculum either doesn’t specify content or has extremely thin content because the focus is on comprehension “skills.” So the PD may have been better in the Core Knowledge schools, but that was possible only because the schools were using a curriculum with specified rich content.
Similarly, a heavy reliance on read-alouds is a component of any effective elementary knowledge-building curriculum. In a classroom using the standard approach, the teacher may read aloud for ten or fifteen minutes from a text chosen not for its topic, but for how well it lends itself to modeling a comprehension skill. Then students spend most of the rest of the reading block, which averages two hours, reading on their own to practice the skill. In a school using a knowledge-building curriculum, teachers spend half an hour or more reading aloud from texts too complex for students to read on their own because that’s the most effective way to build knowledge of a new topic before students are fluent readers.
Valid cautions about the data
Another critique of the study came from the Hechinger Report’s Jill Barshay. Barshay dug into the data and came up with several valid cautions:
At the school serving low-income families, she wrote, the median family income was over $50,000. Schools in poorer districts might not achieve the same results. (While Barshay characterized these figures as applying to the school, they actually applied to the district. Average income levels at the school may have been even higher—or lower. It’s puzzling that the study didn’t include school-level demographic data, which is usually publicly available.)
The data from the low-income school was based on only sixteen students, a sample size so small that it’s hard to be confident of the results. (There were over 500 students in the treatment group as a whole, though, so this caveat doesn’t affect the general finding that Core Knowledge students got a significant boost on reading tests.)
The reading scores of the Core Knowledge students didn’t increase in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade, suggesting that they got the entire benefit of the curriculum by third grade. That runs counter to the theory that acquiring knowledge is a cumulative process that results in ever-increasing gains in comprehension, at least up to a point.
I confess that I missed these points when I wrote about the study, and I’m grateful to Barshay for bringing them up. It’s important to subject scientific evidence to critical review, and I hope that the authors of the study discuss these limitations more prominently in their final write-up of the results.
Barshay made two other points I consider less convincing. She found it highly significant that roughly half of the 1,000 families that won admission to the Core Knowledge schools chose not to enroll their children. In an email, Barshay explained that, in her view, that made the sample less random: Maybe those parents realized their children weren’t likely to do well at a Core Knowledge school, skewing the sample in favor of kids who were likely to succeed. True, but then again, maybe an equivalent number in the control group would have decided not to enroll their children if they had gotten in, for the same reason. In that case, the two groups would still be comparable.
Barshay also argued that, because the Core Knowledge schools were charters, they may not have been comparable to the schools the control group ended up attending. “It’s impossible from the study design to distinguish whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference or if it could be attributed to other things that these charter schools were doing, such as teacher training or character education programs,” Barshay wrote. (Barshay told me she was speaking in general terms about features of charter schools rather than primarily about the schools in the study.)
As far as I can tell, it’s possible that some control group students also ended up at charters, albeit not Core Knowledge charters. But leaving that question aside, it’s true that charters often differ in significant ways from traditional public schools—and you could also argue that parents who make the effort to apply to charters are likely to be more involved in their children’s education.
However, the researchers discounted those differences because, on average, charter schools in non-urban areas have no better track record than traditional public schools. (All schools in the study were in non-urban areas.) That doesn’t address whether the specific charter schools in this study differed from the schools that the control group attended, but it would be impossible for researchers to control for all the possible differences between the Core Knowledge schools and others in the study.
It’s hard to run experiments on knowledge-building
And therein lies the rub, or part of it. It’s hard to control all the variables in any education study; there’s always attrition, there’s always variation in the way teachers deliver whatever the “intervention” is, etc. That’s even more difficult when a study extends over several years, as this one did. And it seems that the only way to see the effect of a knowledge-building curriculum on standardized reading tests is to run a study that lasts several years.
Another commentator on the recent study, teacher and author Nathaniel Hansford, argues that “this is why we need to look at multiple studies and studies with different designs to be sure than an intervention or pedagogy is effective.” I agree in theory, but in practice that could leave us waiting indefinitely.
The Core Knowledge study took fourteen years to come out—those kindergartners are now nineteen—and I’ve been told it cost an enormous amount of money. I don’t know of any similar long-range studies in the pipeline, and even if there is one, we’re unlikely to see the results for over a decade. Do we really want to wait that long before re-evaluating our approach to reading comprehension?
Fortunately, we don’t have to. Barshay and Hansford have each said that this one study isn’t “convincing” or “definitive” proof that a knowledge-building curriculum boosts reading comprehension. That’s true, but no one is claiming that it is—or at least, I’m not. Instead, we need to see it as evidence that, combined with other evidence, strongly suggests that a well-implemented knowledge-building curriculum is likely to work better than what most schools are currently doing.
Other evidence on building knowledge
Some of that other evidence comes from experimental studies, but the effects—while statistically significant—have been small. That may be because they generally haven’t lasted more than a year or two, and that’s too soon to see results—at least, results on standardized reading tests.
Those tests are considered the gold standard for measuring progress in reading comprehension, but as Professor Hugh Catts has argued, they can be seriously misleading. Different measures of comprehension often disagree. In one study, researchers used four different comprehension tests to measure the same group of students and found that, over half the time, students identified as poor readers by one test were put in a different category by another. The same was true for readers identified as being in the top 10 percent.
One likely reason for that variation is that the passages on standardized reading tests are on random topics that students haven’t learned about in school. The theory is that the tests are assessing abstract reading comprehension ability, not content knowledge. But if students lack knowledge of the topic, or of enough of the vocabulary used in a passage, they may not be able to understand the passage well enough to demonstrate their “skills.”
So this supposedly scientific approach to measuring progress in reading comprehension—which is used not only by teachers and government authorities, but also by many researchers—is due for a serious re-examination. It would be far more reliable and fair to test students’ ability to make inferences or find the main idea of passages on topics they’ve actually learned about.
We also have some accidental experiments that suggest the benefits of building knowledge at the elementary level. One occurred in France several decades ago, when the government abandoned its longstanding national curriculum for elementary schools, which focused on building knowledge of specified, rich content. The result, as E.D. Hirsch, Jr., has pointed out, was an overall decrease in student achievement and a widening of the gap between students from high- and low-income families.
There’s also evidence from the United States. Researchers at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute discovered that children who got thirty more minutes a day of social studies than average had higher reading scores by fifth grade. The benefit was greatest for those from low-income families and negligible for those from the highest-income families. At the same time, an extra thirty minutes a day on reading was not correlated with higher reading scores. One likely reason is that social studies was providing students with the knowledge and vocabulary they needed to understand the passages on reading tests—especially if they were unlikely to pick up that knowledge at home.
And of course, we have plenty of evidence that the standard skills-focused approach to comprehension isn’t working for most students. Only about a third score proficient or above on national reading tests, with little or no change in decades. Large gaps between students at the upper and lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum persist.
Plus, even if there’s not a lot of laboratory evidence that building knowledge boosts comprehension, there’s ample undisputed evidence that having knowledge—either of the specific topic or of general academic information—is correlated with better reading comprehension.
Not to mention that there’s a lot of anecdotal evidence from the increasing number of schools that have adopted knowledge-building curricula. Teachers are reporting that students are more engaged, better able to make connections between different texts, and possessed of more sophisticated vocabularies. One teacher in an urban, low-income school recently told me he’d overheard his seventh-graders discussing Kantian ethics. Another in a small Southern city has seen students who are still learning English write well-informed essays about the American Revolution. These are marked differences from what they observed before.
It’s true that evidence based on observations can be misleading. For example, it can look like students are reading when they’re just guessing at words. But it’s relatively easy to do experiments showing whether phonics instruction works. In an area like comprehension, which is much trickier to measure, it makes sense to also look at what’s actually going on in classrooms.
That’s not to say that all that schools need to do is adopt a knowledge-building curriculum. To implement that kind of curriculum well, teachers need to understand why it’s important, and they need support in delivering it.
Nor will the adoption of knowledge-building curricula solve all our social ills or even completely level the academic playing field. But given all the available evidence, it would almost certainly make things a lot better than they are now. As one teacher whose school made the shift said to me, “Why not try it? What have you got to lose?”
Editor’s note: This was first published by Forbes.
Most American public school teachers are paid according to a fixed salary schedule that determines their income based only on their years of education and classroom experience. Critics contend that these criteria are weakly associated with teacher effectiveness and instead advocate alternative compensation strategies, such as performance pay. To date, however, research on performance pay incentives for teachers has found mixed results when it comes to student achievement. Now, a new working paper by researchers from Columbia University, the University of South Carolina, and the University of California, Riverside, has become the first to analyze the impact of performance pay on American student outcomes beyond test scores.
The study examines South Carolina’s implementation of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP), a performance pay initiative that serves mostly high-need, urban schools in several states. Several of its core components are unique among performance pay systems: TAP offers career pathways that enable teachers to advance professionally without leaving the classroom (such as roles coaching other teachers); emphasizes collaborative professional development and individualized feedback on instruction; and determines eligibility for performance pay based not only on student test scores, but also on classroom observations of teachers. In South Carolina, TAP is further distinguished by especially high bonuses and by factoring in school-wide performance (rather than being based entirely on individual teacher performance).
Compiling data from several state agencies plus school report cards, the researchers analyzed various outcomes for students who were first-time eighth graders from the 2002–03 to 2012–13 school years. (South Carolina schools participating in TAP joined the program between 2007–08 and 2010–11.) They used a statistical procedure called propensity score matching to compare outcomes of students in TAP schools to those of peers in otherwise similar but non-TAP schools. The study also accounted for the effects of college prep grants enacted around the same time, TAP’s possible influence on families’ decisions to switch schools, and student demographic factors like gender, race, and poverty.
Statistically significant results were encouraging across the board. TAP increased the likelihood of twelfth-grade enrollment by 3.5 percent and high school graduation within four years by 3.8 percent. Exposure to the program also decreased the likelihood of students’ being arrested for a felony by age eighteen by 1.4 percent and in adulthood by 0.6 percent, and it decreased their likelihood of reliance on social welfare programs by 2.7 percent. Worth noting is that these numbers are averages over time; the longer a student was exposed to TAP, the larger the effects grew. From the first to the fourth year, for example, the increased probability of twelfth-grade enrollment almost quadrupled, growing from 1.8 percent (not statistically significant) to 7.1 percent (statistically significant). And in addition to academic and societal benefits, these effects produced long-run economic benefits: The authors calculate that the reduction in crime alone offset TAP’s cost by a ratio higher than six to one.
The paper offers two major takeaways. First, South Carolina’s version of TAP appears to be particularly successful when compared with other performance pay systems. Although assessment outcomes were not the focus of the study, the authors still note that South Carolina’s program significantly raised students’ test scores within two years of their exposure, in contrast to the results of severalothersimilar efforts (including some other states’ versions of TAP). Future research ought to examine more closely which specific elements have made South Carolina’s TAP successful in boosting student achievement where other performance pay endeavors have fallen short.
Second, the study underscores the value of examining outcomes beyond test scores. Although academic achievement is important, short-term effects don’t always correlate with crucial longer-term outcomes, as the authors note. More evidence for a cost-effective program that improves students’ well-being in adulthood could better equip advocates to navigate political opposition and to maximize the potential of performance pay policies.
A heroic seventh grader in Michigan took control of his school bus and parked it safely when the driver lost consciousness. —Insider
Scholars should publish research findings that cut against the conventional wisdom without fear of cancel culture. —Matthew Yglesias
Jeers
Friendship Academy of the Arts—a culturally-affirming charter school in Minnesota that serves a majority Black student population—is threatened by a lawsuit before the state Supreme Court. —Star Tribune
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten has politicized her union and inserted herself into America’s culture wars. —New York Times=
“States with comprehensive [early literacy] policies… saw modest, but significant, improvements on students’ [reading] NAEP scores—while states with policies that weren’t comprehensive did not.” —Education Week
One Ohio small town is using a combination of strategies—including home visits, grocery donations, therapy sessions, animal encounters, and curricular change—to combat a student mental health crisis. —Washington Post
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The science of reading movement is sweeping across the nation, and state and local policymakers are taking steps to ensure that students are learning to read via proven methods. Here in Ohio, Governor DeWine is leading bold efforts to ensure that schools use methods that focus on the components of the reading science: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
State Rep. Dani Isaacsohn is new around the General Assembly, so I’ll try not to snark too harshly over his op-ed piece here where he talks about the House’s praiseworthy work (if he does say so himself) on building a state budget bill. Lots of presents for everyone, bipartisanishly he says, except of course for the “huge and unnecessary increases in private school vouchers and charter school funding” that got in the final bill unipartisanishly, apparently. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 5/1/23) Speaking of voucher grouchers, the ones pushing the legal case against EdChoice here in Ohio have, in case we didn’t already know, some temerity. In case you doubt me, let the words “a subpoena served to the President of the Ohio Senate” roll around in your head for a minute. (Gongwer Ohio, 5/1/23)
Toledo City Schools held the district’s first ever “signing day” at Bowsher High School earlier this week. Ostensibly, this is to celebrate seniors who have enrolled at college, enlisted in the military, or have employment locked in for after graduation in a few weeks. Being Toledo City Schools, however, it is somewhat…less than that. Take a look and see if you think I’m being too cynical about the bread and circuses nature of it. (Toledo Blade, 5/1/23)
I have heard it said that Miami of Ohio is a world unto itself. This Miami-only version of College Credit Plus, which is available to every kid in the state, is a pretty good example of that maxim. While it sounds good enough, it also sounds very exclusive (any charter schools students in the Cincinnati area that might benefit from your fancy college credits?) and far more prescriptive that CCP. Almost as if they prefer it that way. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 5/1/23)
For more than two decades, the charter school movement has aimed to provide parents with more public-school options, empower educators to launch innovative schools, and boost student achievement. This report looks at the progress Ohio is making toward achieving these ambitious goals. It includes an overview of the landmark reforms that state lawmakers enacted in 2015 to strengthen accountability for charter school performance, as well as the improvements the sector has made since then. The report also discusses the large funding disparities that public charter schools in Ohio still face, and how legislators can work to bridge those gaps.
Introduction and Summary
Since their inception in 1998, public charter schools have become an integral part of Ohio’s K–12 education system. The sector began with just a few schools educating a sliver of the state’s students, but has since grown to 324 charter schools in 2021–22, serving some 110,000 students, or 7 percent of the state’s public school population. Most charter students in Ohio are economically disadvantaged (80 percent) and/or Black or Hispanic (57 percent). Roughly three quarters enroll in brick-and-mortar schools, while the rest attend online charter schools. In cities such as Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown, more than one in four public school students attend charter schools.
At the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, we have long supported the promise of charter schools. Foremost, students who are ill-served by traditional school systems deserve other education options that can help unlock their potential. Entrepreneurial educators also need room—outside the clutches of district bureaucracies and union contracts—to create schools that offer specialized instruction and innovative models. Parents from all communities deserve a wider menu of public-school alternatives from which they can select that will best serve their children.
Around the nation, states have harnessed the charter school model to empower parents and educators and drive higher student achievement. Ohio embraced this model, as its charter sector took off with enrollments growing unabated from 2000 to 2015. Yet, too many Buckeye charters struggled—alongside many of their district counterparts—with educational performance during this period. Some also ran into management and fiscal troubles. Worrying news stories surfaced about questionable practices, and the quality challenges came to a head in the mid-2010s, with a firestorm over the then-huge, but now-defunct, online charter known as ECOT.
Responding to concerns raised by Fordham and others, state legislators wisely overhauled Ohio’s charter law in 2015. The legislation, House Bill 2 (HB 2), toughened charter accountability measures and demanded more responsible practices from those working in the sector. The bill included dozens of reforms, but its centerpiece was stronger accountability for charter sponsors—the entities that permit charters to open, directly oversee them, and, if necessary, require them to close. The first part of this report documents the clean-up that took place in the wake of those accountability reforms. Key changes included:
The exit of dozens of low-capacity sponsors. Just prior to the HB 2 reforms, Ohio had a whopping sixty-six sponsors overseeing charters, most of which had no business authorizing schools. Thanks to stronger accountability from the state, low-capacity sponsors have left the authorizing business, and only nineteen remain in operation today. The Institute’s sister organization, the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, has served as a sponsor since 2005 and it presently authorizes thirteen charter schools.
Permanent closure of more than one hundred low-performing schools. Facing stricter accountability, remaining sponsors got serious about holding the charters they authorize to higher standards and have aggressively moved to close low-performing schools. (HB 1’s anti-“sponsor hopping” provision helped ensure these decisions were final.) Between 2015–16 and 2021–22, 112 charters—roughly one quarter of the sector at its peak—closed their doors. In many cases, these closures were the direct result of sponsor actions; in others, schools chose to close voluntarily as they were no longer viable, due to low enrollment. In just one case was a school shut down due to the state’s automatic charter closure law.
Improved overall academic performance. Stronger accountability measures have driven higher sector performance. As Figure ES-1 shows, the sector’s impact on student academic growth was roughly even with comparable districts in reading, and significantly below them in math in 2015–16. Three years later, the charter sector outperformed districts in reading, and performed similarly in math.
Figure ES-1: Annual impact of attending an Ohio charter school (brick-and-mortar or online)
Note. The table illustrates improvement in the estimated annual impact of charter school attendance (including e-schools and schools serving students with special needs) on student achievement in grades 5-8. Values displayed in bold and with asterisks are statistically significant at a 5 percent level. Model specifications and tabular results appear in Appendix G.
Source: Stéphane Lavertu, The Impact of Ohio Charter Schools on Student Outcomes 2016-19 (Columbus, OH: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2020).
The second part of this report focuses on charter funding, which also impacts the performance of the sector. Since their debut, Ohio charters have been systematically underfunded, receiving around 65 to 70 percent of the overall taxpayer support of their local districts. This inequity disadvantages charters in competing for teacher talent, limits the extra supports and enrichment opportunities they can provide to students, and constrains their ability to expand and reach more students. Such large shortfalls are fundamentally unfair to charter students, who don’t deserve to be shortchanged purely by virtue of their choice in schools.
Starting in the 2019–20 school year, Ohio lawmakers took an important step toward equity by launching a supplemental funding program that provides high-quality charters—those earning strong state report card ratings—with up to an additional $1,750 per economically disadvantaged pupil and $1,000 per non-disadvantaged pupil. As Figure ES-2 indicates, this initiative eases the funding gap faced by high-quality charters. Yet, even with these extra funds, Ohio charters have remained underfunded. On average, brick-and-mortar charter schools statewide receive just 74 cents on the dollar in comparison to their local districts, a shortfall that continues to treat charter students as second-class citizens.
Figure ES-2: Charter funding gaps, with and without the high-quality supplement
Note: This figure displays the percentage of state and local funding that Ohio’s brick-and-mortar charters received on average in FY 2022 relative to the districts in which they are located (virtual schools are not included). It displays the existing gaps both with the current high-quality (HQ) supplement and without it.
Strong accountability and equitable funding policies are critical to the health of Ohio’s charter school sector. Within the past decade, Ohio has taken great strides forward in the realm of accountability, but significant work remains to achieve funding parity. As state lawmakers continue to review and refine charter policy, we summarize three recommendations (more specifics appear in the conclusion).
Keep the pedal to the metal on charter accountability. Ohio can’t afford to slip back into the dark ages of lax accountability and anything-goes in the charter sector. Lawmakers need to maintain the commitment to accountability for sponsors and schools to ensure that student achievement remains a priority and that the performance of the sector continues its upward trend.
Encourage the expansion of quality charter schools. Now that the accountability bar is higher, policymakers should boldly ratchet up efforts to expand quality charters to meet the state’s continued need for excellent schools. One critical avenue to accomplish this goal is better funding for quality schools. To his credit, Governor DeWine recently proposed a hefty increase to the high-quality charter initiative for FYs 2024 and 2025. Legislators should embrace his proposal, along with other efforts that would help quality charters grow and replicate.
Provide equitable funding for all brick-and-mortar charters. As a matter of fairness to charter students, Ohio lawmakers should work to fund all charters more evenhandedly. At a minimum, legislators should aim to ensure that all brick-and-mortar charters receive at least 90 percent of district funding. One way to do this would be to create a new “equity supplement” that provides $1,000 to $1,500 per pupil to all site-based charters. If this more generous amount were adopted, the average Ohio charter would receive 92 percent of its local district’s overall funding.
Through much-needed reforms, state lawmakers have reinvented Ohio’s charter school sector. The Buckeye State is no longer the “wild west” of charter schools, as dozens of low-performing schools have closed, and more than forty sponsors have departed. The recent launch of the high-quality fund has also infused top-notch, homegrown schools with some of the extra resources needed to expand, and it has helped persuade quality national charter organizations to make Ohio home, including the highly respected IDEA Public Schools network. With a continued focus on accountability and equitable funding, state policymakers can further brighten the future of Ohio’s charters and the students they serve.
Charter School Enrollment and Demographics
In an effort to reinvigorate public education, give parents more options, and boost lackluster pupil achievement, education advocates and reformers throughout the 1980s and 1990s began proposing autonomous public schools that would operate independently of traditional districts and be free from some regulatory red tape. Lawmakers from both parties found these ideas persuasive, and responded by putting the concepts into real-world policy frameworks. Minnesota passed the nation’s first charter school law in 1991, and six years later Ohio did likewise. Its first charters launched in the fall of 1998, enrolling just over 2,000 students in fifteen schools.
As Figure 1 indicates, Ohio charters grew rapidly between 1998 and 2014, with enrollment reaching almost 121,000 students. That number declined to 102,000 students by 2019, reflecting the closure of dozens of low-performing schools in the wake of the accountability reforms discussed in this report. Charter school enrollment bounced back in 2021 and 2022, helped by an uptick in students attending online charter schools during pandemic-impacted years. In 2021–22, just over 110,000 students (seven percent of Ohio’s public school population) attended one of the state’s 324 charter schools. Approximately 80,000 students enrolled in brick-and-mortar charter schools, while the rest attended one of the state’s fifteen online charters.
Figure 1: Ohio charter school enrollment, 1997–98 to 2021–22
Note: The Appendix displays the number of charter schools operating by year.
The vast majority of brick-and-mortar charters operate in the state’s major urban areas, the result of a longstanding provision in law that limited charters to certain “academically-challenged” districts (the restriction was repealed in 2021). As a result, Ohio charter schools serve disproportionate numbers of historically disadvantaged students. Figure 2 shows that 59 percent of students attending either an online or brick-and-mortar charter school are Black or Hispanic, compared to a statewide district average of 22 percent. Meanwhile, 80 percent of charter students are economically disadvantaged, compared with 45 percent of district students.
Figure 2: Characteristics of Ohio charter students (brick-and-mortar and online) versus districts statewide, 2021–22
When focusing exclusively on brick-and-mortar charters, the percentage of Black and Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students rises. Seventy-one percent of brick-and-mortar charter students are children of color, while 90 percent are economically disadvantaged. As Figure 3 indicates, these numbers track closely with the Big Eight districts’ demographics—reflecting, again, the fact that most site-based charters are located in those cities. In five of the Big Eight cities—Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown—more than 25 percent of the city’s public school students attend charter schools (the charter shares for each city appear in the Appendix).
Figure 3: Characteristics of Ohio charter students (brick-and-mortar only) versus Big Eight districts and districts statewide, 2021–22
Given that they educate such large proportions of disadvantaged students, charters are a critical part of efforts to narrow longstanding achievement gaps in Ohio (as in many states). As we’ll see later, with strong accountability mechanisms now in place, brick-and-mortar charters have done a solid job boosting the achievement of Black and Hispanic students in recent years. Their demographics are also important context in discussions about whether charters should receive equitable funding, as disadvantaged pupils typically require more resources for their education.
Accountability Reforms and Subsequent Results
One of the central tenets of the charter model has always been greater operational autonomy in exchange for heightened results-focused accountability. Since their debut in 1998, Ohio’s public charter schools have been held accountable through several mechanisms. First, just like traditional public schools, charters receive report card ratings from the state and are subject to school improvement requirements if they are deemed low-performing under federal guidelines. Second, charter schools automatically lose funding when students leave them. If enough parents are dissatisfied and choose to enroll their children elsewhere, charters are forced to close for financial reasons. Third, a state law enacted in 2006 requires chronically poor-performing charters to permanently close, a requirement that does not exist for district schools.[1] Fourth, charter sponsors are directly responsible for overseeing schools and holding them accountable, including potentially closing them for poor performance.
The charter reforms enacted in 2015, via House Bill 2 (HB 2), largely focused on stronger accountability through sponsors; hence, this section focuses heavily on this mechanism. But before delving into the details of HB 2, we must first understand the charter governance model.
The basic form is illustrated in Figure 4 below. Starting at the individual school level (we will come back to management organizations), each charter has its own governing authority, or “board,” that guides its mission and operations. Akin to a local district school board, the governing authority is responsible for making budgetary decisions, selecting curricula, and choosing a school leader and holding him or her accountable.
Overseeing the school and its board is a sponsor, also known as an “authorizer.” Sponsors permit a charter school to open via contract with the governing authority, and then hold the school accountable for academic performance and compliance with various rules and regulations. Sponsors may non-renew or terminate contracts for poor performance, which almost always results in the closure of a school. Unlike most other states, Ohio allows various types of entities to sponsor charters; they may be a traditional district, educational service center, institution of higher education, an approved nonprofit, or ODE (the breakdown of sponsor types is here). Last, it is important to recognize that although a sponsor does not actually run the school—that’s the role of the board and administration—it can influence the way schools are managed through its oversight and accountability practices.
ODE is responsible for holding sponsors accountable. As discussed below, HB 2 altered the relationship between ODE and sponsors by empowering the agency to more rigorously execute its oversight duties.
Finally, a school’s governing board may choose (or not) to contract with a management organization, which may handle some (or all) of the day-to-day operations of the school. These entities can be for-profit or nonprofit: As of 2019, 47 percent of Ohio charters hired for-profit management organizations, 28 percent hired a nonprofit, and 25 percent of charters chose not to contract with any management group.[2] There is sometimes confusion about the status of a school when it hires a for-profit operator. But under state law, the school itself remains a nonprofit organization. Governing boards have the power to terminate or non-renew a management contract if they are dissatisfied; hence, charter boards are primarily responsible for holding such organizations accountable for results.
Figure 4: Governance structure of Ohio charter schools
Source: Juliet Squire, Kelly Robson, and Andy Smarick, The Road to Redemption: Ten Policy Recommendations for Ohio’s Charter School Sector (Columbus, OH: Thomas B. Fordham Institute, 2014).
While this general structure has been in place since the inception of charters, loose accountability policies undermined the framework for a number of years. At the top, ODE wasn’t holding sponsors rigorously accountable for the performance of their schools. Some sponsors, in turn, took a lax approach to overseeing schools in their portfolios and instead focused more on using sponsorship as a revenue source for themselves.[3] Charter boards allowed too many poorly run management organizations to continue operating their schools. This cascading effect resulted in uneven academic performance and a sector that—until reforms were enacted—was plagued by questions regarding its ability to regulate itself.[4]
House Bill 2
Concerned about weak accountability and its impacts, Fordham and others began urging state lawmakers to strengthen the state’s charter school laws.[5] Former Governor John Kasich and the 131st General Assembly heeded these calls and enacted comprehensive reforms in 2015 via House Bill 2 (HB 2). Its key provisions included:[6]
Requiring new and existing sponsors to enter a contract with ODE before operating. To ensure stronger state-level oversight, the legislation requires ODE to vet and approve, via contract, new entities seeking sponsorship. With two exceptions,[7] the legislation also required that all existing sponsors receive ODE approval to continue operation.
Establishing clear consequences for poor sponsor performance. Ohio launched a sponsor evaluation system just prior to HB 2, but it lacked the teeth needed to produce stronger sponsor-driven accountability for school performance. The legislation established an enhanced evaluation framework that includes clear sanctions for low-performing sponsors. Further explanation of the revamped evaluation system—a crucial reform—begins here.
Eliminating sponsors’ ability to sell services to schools they authorize. Prior to HB 2, sponsors were permitted to sell supplemental services to their schools, a blatant conflict of interest with their oversight role. Save for school district and university sponsors, the legislation prohibits this practice.
Reducing the likelihood that low-performing schools “sponsor hop.” Formerly, low-performing schools could switch sponsors to avoid closure when a sponsor non-renewed or terminated their contract. HB 2 now requires low-performing schools to meet several conditions before changing sponsors, including receiving ODE approval for the shift.[8]
Ensuring that a charter board’s decision to fire a management company is final. Under former law, a management organization could appeal its dismissal to the school’s sponsor or state board of education. This provision directly undermined the authority of the charter board to hold its management organizations accountable. HB 2 wisely eliminated the possibility of appeal.
Requiring charter school boards to hire an independent fiscal officer and legal counsel. One concern prior to HB 2 was that some charter boards were not conducting arms-length transactions with management organizations. This provision helps ensure that boards are acting independently and in the best interest of the school.
Taken together, these reforms laid the groundwork for a more responsible, higher performing charter sector. The next section looks at how the legislation reshaped Ohio’s charter environment.
Impacts on the charter sector
HB 2 had three major impacts on Ohio’s charter sector. First, it removed dozens of low-capacity sponsors. Second, it led to the closure of a number of low-performing charter schools. And third, it helped to push overall sector performance higher. Let’s look at each in turn.
Removal of low-capacity sponsors
Prior to HB 2, Ohio had more than sixty sponsors in operation, authorizing anywhere from a single charter to dozens of schools. Because these sponsors were weakly regulated, too many failed to follow quality practices and often turned a blind eye to poor school performance. To rein in poor sponsors, lawmakers first established a sponsor evaluation system in 2012.[9] But the initial system was not rigorous enough, and HB 2 significantly strengthened it. The updated evaluation has three equally weighted components:[10]
Academics: Based on the report-card performance of a sponsor’s schools.
Compliance: Based on ODE review of sponsor compliance with state laws and regulations.
Quality practices: Based on ODE review of sponsor adherence to quality authorizing practices.[11]
The state combines sponsors’ scores on these components to determine a composite, overall rating of exemplary, effective, ineffective, or poor. Under HB 2, ineffective sponsors are barred from authorizing new schools and are subject to an improvement plan. Sponsorship authority is revoked if an entity receives either a poor rating or an ineffective rating twice in a three-year period.
In the years immediately after HB 2, many sponsors received low ratings via the toughened evaluation system. In 2015–16, sixty of the state’s sixty-five sponsors received ineffective or poor ratings. The next year, twenty-one of forty-five remaining sponsors received such ratings. By 2017–18, thirteen of the state’s thirty-four sponsors were rated ineffective or poor. The net result, as shown in Table 1, has been a dramatic reduction in the number of sponsors still active in Ohio.
Table 1: Number of sponsors in 2012–13 and 2021–22[12]
Closure of low-performing schools
Ohio’s stronger accountability policies not only downsized the number of sponsors, but also pushed remaining sponsors to more aggressively close low-performing schools. Figure 5 shows the large number of charter school closures that occurred immediately after the reforms—112 schools shut down between 2016 and 2022. Closures during this timeframe were driven by sponsors, or by schools themselves, whether for financial, academic, or enrollment reasons or merger with another school.[13] Only one school during this period was closed due to the state’s automatic closure law.
In addition to closures, Figure 5 also shows a significant slowdown in the emergence of start-up charter schools in Ohio. The slowdown reflects accountability reforms that promote more judicious and careful vetting before sponsors permit new schools to open. But it could also reflect the longstanding financial constraints on charters that have made new school formation increasingly difficult, especially as facilities have become scarcer and the competition for talent and students has grown fiercer. The slowdown in charter startups in Ohio also follows the national pattern in the charter sector.[14]
Figure 5: Number of charter school closures and startups between 2010 and 2022
Higher sector performance
One of the major goals of HB 2 was to improve the academic performance of charter schools. Based on data from the years immediately after its passage, the legislation appears to have accomplished its goal. In a rigorous evaluation that compared charter students’ academic growth on state exams to demographically similar students in district schools, Ohio State University professor Stéphane Lavertu documented a noticeable uptick in charter performance starting in 2015–16. In that year, overall charter performance—including both brick-and-mortar and online schools—was roughly on par with their traditional district counterparts in reading, while the sector underperformed districts in math. By 2018–19, however, charters outperformed districts in reading and were about equal in math. The figure below, drawn from his report, displays the annual learning gains or losses (in standard deviations) of charter students in grades five through eight, relative to comparable students attending district schools.
Figure 6: Academic impact of all Ohio charters (brick-and-mortar and online schools) on student achievement, 2016–2019
Note. The table illustrates improvement in the estimated annual impact of charter school attendance (including e-schools and schools serving students with special needs) on student achievement in grades 5–8. Values displayed in bold and with asterisks are statistically significant at a 5 percent level. Model specifications and tabular results appear in Appendix G.
Source: Lavertu, The Impact of Ohio Charter Schools (2020).
Various studies have found that students attending online schools, whether in Ohio or elsewhere, lose significant academic ground in this educational setting;[15] thus, their results have long weighed down overall charter sector performance. But when the focus is on brick-and-mortar schools, stronger outcomes emerge. Figure 7 shows that Black and Hispanic students attending site-based charters made particularly strong academic progress throughout the period immediately after HB 2 passed. The average Black charter student made learning gains that, accumulated over five years, are equivalent to moving from the 25th to 40th percentile in statewide achievement.
Figure 7: Academic impacts of Ohio’s brick-and-mortar charter schools on math and reading achievement
Note. The table illustrates the annual impact of attending a site-based charter school (as opposed to a traditional public school) on student achievement in grades 4–8. Students with a “low score” or “high score” are those with test scores below or above the statewide mean, respectively. Model specifications and tabular results appear in Appendix B.
Source: Lavertu, The Impact of Ohio Charter Schools (2020).
Rigorous analyses of charter effectiveness have not been undertaken since the pandemic. However, like their district counterparts, charter students suffered significant learning losses as a result of school disruptions. In general, the losses are comparable to districts. Between 2018–19 and 2021–22, the performance index scores of Ohio’s Big Eight charter schools declined by 14 percent, the same percentage as for the Big Eight districts. Value-added growth results from last year were roughly similar: 31 percent of Big Eight charters received four- or five-star ratings from the state in that realm while 34 percent of Big Eight district schools did so.[16]
As schools emerge from the pandemic and work to address learning loss, policymakers should ensure that charter accountability measures, which were put on pause during the pandemic, are restarted and continue to be rigorously implemented.[17] Reverting back to loose accountability would put charter students at greater risk of academic struggle and likely undo the progress Ohio’s charters have recently made. Moreover, relaxing accountability could also stymie ongoing efforts to improve charter school funding, the topic to which we turn next.
Persistent Funding Gaps
While Ohio has taken major steps forward in accountability, it continues to underfund its charter schools. The bleak situation has existed since charters first appeared on the scene, and it’s caused by a combination of charters’ lack of access to local tax revenues and state funding that does not adequately offset the shortfall. Fordham first documented these funding gaps in a 2004 Dayton-specific study, which found that the city’s charters received just two-thirds of the revenue of the local district. Ten years later, a report from the University of Arkansas showed that the situation hadn’t improved, as charters statewide received on average about 70 percent of district funding. A Fordham analysis published four years ago found similar charter-funding disparities.[18] These analyses mostly focus on operational dollars—e.g., funds used to pay employee salaries and purchase textbooks—but charter schools also lack significant resources for school construction, renovation, and maintenance. A 2021 analysis by Excel in Ed found that Ohio supports just 18 percent of charter facility needs.[19]
In principle, children attending public charter schools ought to receive the same taxpayer support for their education as their peers attending district schools just down the street. Failing to do so is a violation of basic principles of funding equity—a particularly egregious offense given that charter students are disproportionately low-income and students of color. Without equitable resources, charter schools often struggle to provide the extra supports and the enrichment opportunities that students need. They face challenges both attracting and retaining talented teachers in a competitive labor market, as their lower funding levels leave them stuck offering lower salaries. Charters also have less capacity to work to continually improve their educational programs and expand their reach to serve more students.
To their credit, Ohio lawmakers recently took a step forward in bridging the gap by launching the “high-quality charter funding program.” That initiative—championed by Governor DeWine—currently provides up to an extra $1,750 per economically disadvantaged pupil for qualifying schools and $1,000 per non-disadvantaged student. In FY 2023, 117 schools—just over a third of charters statewide—are receiving the supplemental aid. In his latest budget proposal, the governor recommended a significant boost to the program for FY 2024 and 2025. Under his plan, qualifying schools would receive $3,000 per economically disadvantaged student and $2,250 per non-disadvantaged student.
Sidebar: Ohio's high-quality charter fund
Led by Governor DeWine, state lawmakers enacted a new funding initiative in 2019 that provides high-quality charter schools with extra dollars to help bridge funding gaps, increase their capacity to expand, and spur improvements in non-qualifying schools. To access these dollars, existing schools must meet to key performance criteria: 1) receive a four- or five-star "value-added" growth rating and 2) earn a performance index score that is higher than their local district for two consecutive years. To qualify, charter schools must also enroll at least 50 percent economically disadvantaged students, and the program provides more dollars when schools enroll more disadvantaged students. Startups that are replicas of schools eligible for these funds, or partnering with a qualifying out-of-state charter management organization, may also qualify under alternative criteria.[20]
The table below summarizes key information about the program from its launch in 2020 through 2023, including the total amount of funding available, the per-pupil amounts (they've been reduced to fit the total appropriation), the number of qualilying schools, and the number of students served.
Table 2: Overview of Ohio's high-quality charter fund
Note: ED refers to economically disadvantaged students.
Even with this high-quality fund in place, large disparities persist between charter and district per-pupil operational funding levels. Figure 8 shows that—without the high-quality supplement—the typical Ohio charter received about 70 cents on the dollar compared to their local district in FY 2022.[21] This tracks with previous analyses and indicates that, apart from the high-quality supplement, Ohio has done very little to improve charter funding. When the high-quality dollars are included, the gap narrows slightly, lifting high-quality charters’ funding to 73 percent of their local district and 74 percent for charters statewide.
Figure 8: Ohio’s current charter funding gaps (brick-and-mortar only)[22]
Note: Figures 8–10 display the percentage of funding that Ohio’s brick-and-mortar charters spend on average relative to their local districts in FY 2022. Calculations rely on the state’s expenditure per equivalent pupil data, a measure that weights district and charter schools’ enrollments to account for the extra dollars needed to educate students with disabilities, English learners, and economically disadvantaged students. This measure allows for more apples-to-apples comparisons of spending data than raw per-pupil spending data. To accurately analyze the gap created by state and local funding, federal dollars are excluded from both charter and district spending; transportation expenditures are also subtracted since districts are supposed to transport charter pupils, too. Capital outlay is excluded, but if those dollars were included, the gap would widen as districts receive more dollars for facilities.
As noted above, Governor DeWine has proposed a significant increase to the supplemental aid that high-quality charters receive. Figure 9 shows the impact of his proposal on the charter funding gap, should it be passed by the legislature. Funding for high-quality charters would be at 85 percent of their local districts, while other charter schools would remain at 76 percent.[23]
Figure 9: Impact of Governor DeWine’s proposed increase to the high-quality fund
The high-quality fund narrows funding gaps for about one-third of Ohio charters, but it doesn’t lend any extra support for schools that do not qualify. Yet students attending these schools still deserve fair funding, especially given the fact that most of the students in non-qualifying schools are economically disadvantaged (82 percent) or students of color (59 percent). The shortfalls in funding limit students’ opportunities, and constrain their schools’ efforts to achieve higher performance as well.
To move Ohio closer to funding parity for all charter students, legislators could create an “equity supplement” that would complement the high-quality program. There are various ways to design such an initiative, but the most straightforward approach is to provide a per-pupil supplement for all brick-and-mortar charters, whether they qualify for the high-quality fund or not. Figure 10 shows the impact of such a program. If Ohio funded the equity supplement at $1,000 per pupil, the charter funding gap statewide narrows to 88 percent of district funding. At $1,500 per pupil, it closes to 92 percent.
Figure 10: Impact of a charter equity supplement
Conclusion and Recommendations
With stronger accountability in place, Ohio’s charter sector has come a long way in a short time. But where next? What else needs doing to turn the sector into the high-gear educational resource that its students need and that the state should demand? Indeed, how can state leaders fully leverage this model to the benefit of more parents and students? We offer three closing thoughts:
Maintain strong charter accountability, including a rigorous sponsor evaluation system. Ohio’s sponsor evaluation system is the linchpin for accountability in the charter sector. It ensures that sponsors hold schools accountable for results, and in turn that school leaders are focused on improving student learning. But there have been efforts to weaken sponsor accountability since the passage of HB 2, including an unfortunate “tweak” that now allows sponsors to receive an “effective” rating even if they authorize all, or nearly all, failing schools.[24] Lawmakers should consider reversing that policy and could even further strengthen the importance of school performance in sponsors’ evaluations by increasing the weight of the academic component from one-third to one-half. This would sharpen the focus on student outcomes and lessen the need for extensive and repetitive reviews of sponsors’ paperwork. In the end, Ohio needs to maintain this rigorous evaluation system that strongly incorporates academic results and includes consequences for poor sponsor performance.
Help high-quality schools expand to serve more students. With less than half of Ohio students reaching proficient on rigorous national assessments, and achievement gaps still as wide as they were two decades ago, Ohio continues to need many more excellent public school options. State lawmakers should continue to support the expansion of high-quality charters through various policy avenues. The most critical is better funding, and Governor DeWine’s recent proposal to boost the high-quality charter fund would be a big step forward. His fellow legislators should go a step further by putting the high-quality fund into the overall charter school funding formula, a move that would ensure that per-pupil amounts are not reduced and increase the likelihood that the program is maintained well into the future. Other policy levers to support new school formation include relaxing onerous licensing requirements that prevent quality schools from hiring talented staff and implementing facility initiatives—such as a credit enhancement program—that can help charters secure appropriate classroom spaces.[25]
Fund all brick-and-mortar charter schools equitably. Simply put, Ohio needs to stop shortchanging charter students just because they attend non-district schools. Ohio’s charter students, like those in several other states, deserve to be treated on equal terms as their district counterparts. Ohio has already made some inroads in fighting this inequity through the high-quality fund. To complete the work, the legislature should take the additional steps needed to ensure that all charter students have equitable funding. As discussed above, an equity supplement that provides all brick-and-mortar charters an extra $1,000 per pupil would narrow the overall charter funding gap to 88 percent of local district funding. A larger $1,500 per pupil supplement would ensure that charters statewide receive on average 92 cents on the dollar compared to their local districts.
Providing charters with equitable funding and holding sponsors and charter schools accountable for results are key ingredients for continued progress in Ohio’s charter sector. To their credit, state policymakers have strengthened both aspects of policy over the years, but work remains to make certain that all charter students receive the world-class education they deserve.
About this report
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute promotes educational excellence for every child in America via quality research, analysis, and commentary, as well as advocacy and charter school authorizing in Ohio. It is affiliated with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and this publication is a joint project of the Foundation and the Institute. For further information, please visit our website at www.fordhaminstitute.org or write to the Institute at P.O. Box 82291, Columbus, OH 43202. The Institute is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my Fordham Institute colleagues Michael J. Petrilli, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Chad L. Aldis, and Jessica Poiner for their thoughtful feedback during the drafting process. Jeff Murray provided expert assistance in report production and dissemination. Special thanks to Nathan Leibowitz who copy edited the manuscript and Andy Kittles who created the design. All errors, however, are my own.
- Aaron Churchill
Ohio Research Director, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Glossary
Big Eight: The Big Eight districts, identified as such in state law, consist of the public school systems of Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown.
Charter management organizations may be hired by a charter governing board to carry out day-to-day school operations. In Ohio, management organizations are also known as “operators.”
Charter school: A nonprofit, tuition-free, publicly funded school that is governed and operated independently from a local school district. Public charter schools are also known in Ohio as “community schools.”
Charter sponsors allow charter schools to open under a contract with the school’s governing board. Sponsors exercise direct oversight of the school and have the authority to close it by terminating or non-renewing a contract. Sponsors are also known as “authorizers.”
House Bill 2 (HB 2): Passed in 2015, HB 2 of the 131st General Assembly made significant reforms to Ohio’s charter school laws.
Ohio Department of Education (ODE) is the state education agency that implements education laws. The department directly oversees charter sponsors; for some charter schools, it serves as the sponsor.
Endnotes
[1] The automatic closure law is designed more as a “fail-safe” when sponsors refuse to close a low-performing school. Just twenty-five schools have actually closed under this policy—none since 2019—as the statutory criteria require extremely low performance over multiple years. Current law requires charters to close if they receive three consecutive years of poor ratings: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3314.35. The list of charters closed under this provision is available at ODE, Annual Reports on Ohio Community Schools, table titled “History of Closure Under 3314.35.”
[7] Two longstanding sponsors—Lake Erie West Educational Service Center (ESC) and Ohio Council of Community Schools—are not required to have a written agreement with the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) unless they receive low sponsor ratings for two consecutive years.
[10] HB 2 and prior law required annual evaluations of sponsors; however, subsequent legislation passed in 2021 now allows effective or exemplary sponsors to be evaluated once every three years while ineffective sponsors continue to receive annual evaluations.
[11] The quality practices rubric is informed by the National Association of Charter School Authorizer’s sponsorship standards as well as Ohio policy. For more, see Ohio Department of Education, “2022–2023 Sponsor Quality Practices Rubric.”
[12] The 2012-13 data are from Squire, Robson, and Smarick, The Road to Redemption (2014). The 2021–22 numbers are from ODE’s webpage, “Overall Sponsor Ratings.”
[13] ODE provides short explanations about why a school closed in its “Closed Community Schools” file available at https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Community-Schools. Among the reasons include “contract non-renewed,” “closed by sponsor,” “financial viability,” and “declining enrollment.” A handful of schools also closed when their sponsor closed.
[20] The out-of-state performance criteria include schools with an operator that has received a federal startup grant, funding from the Charter School Growth Fund, or have a school in another state that outperforms its local district. More information about the fund is available at ODE’s webpage “Quality Community School Support Fund.”
[21] The higher baseline gap for high-quality charters vis-à-vis other charters (62–76 percent) is explained by lower average spending in high-quality schools.
[22] Information about the expenditure per equivalent pupil methodology is available at ODE’s webpage, “Expenditure Per Pupil Rankings.”
[23] This does not include the proposed increase in charters’ facility allowance from the current $500 to $1,000 per pupil. Those dollars are excluded in this analysis since it focuses on operational expenditures (not capital outlay).
[24] Prior to 2022, sponsors could not earn an effective or above rating if they received zero points on any of the three components. This was changed in House Bill 583 of the 134th General Assembly. Now a sponsor can receive zeroes on the academic portion and still receive an effective rating through satisfactory scores on the paperwork-driven quality practices and compliance components.
Only one clip today, but it is illustrative beyond its singular presence. Hired staff and elected school board members who run traditional districts across Ohio seem to me to be in a state of high anxiety over school choice expansion on the horizon—both new charter and private schools opening around them in the fall and the specter of voucher expansion and backpack funding being proposed in the legislature. You can get a fair sampling of the “sky is falling” rhetoric being used in this regard in northeast Ohio via this Vindy coverage. It is full of misinformation (“taking money”, “free tuition”, etc.) but that’s at least par for the course. What’s interesting is the stuff that’s actually true but not explored beyond the statement. To wit: Youngstown City Schools is clearly very frightened of the prospect that “universal vouchers” will be enacted by legislators. In argument against it, district reps say that that should not happen because universal eligibility already exists in Youngstown. (Due to, you know, extended suckiness.) This is true, and has been for years. (Very extended suckiness.) So where is the discussion of the fact that if every kid in Youngstown City Schools has had unqualified voucher eligibility for nigh on ten years now and a mass exodus from the (continually objectively sucky) district product available still has not occurred, it is highly unlikely that an extension thereof will result in any additional departures beyond the norm? In fact, the Youngstown example seems like the last one that voucher grouchers should invoke since it completely tanks their argument. (Y'town also tanks their "all schools should be accountable" argument, but that's a discussion for another clips day.) Unfortunately, I don’t see any media types out there calling out the flaws in their contention so perhaps that is why it persists. (Vindy.com, 5/1/23)
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