NOTE: Ohio Charter News Weekly is back from vacation and presenting this special catch-up edition. Another edition will be published tomorrow with up-to-the-minute news you can use.
The boost
The Ohio Department of Education late last week reported that charter school enrollment in Ohio is up more than 8 percent this year as compared to last fall. Data show this is largely driven by a 38 percent increase in online charter enrollment. The same thing is happening in neighboring Pennsylvania, where online charter schools saw their largest-ever enrollment on the first day of school this fall: about 11,400 students. There is much speculation in these stories as to the reason for the influx, focusing around the coronavirus pandemic, but the true answer probably predates the pandemic. This commentary piece from Minnesota compiles numerous reasons why parents in the North Star State chose charter schools, and they all have to do with better education for their children.
Putting it bluntly
The founder of Roger Bacon Academy (RBA) charter schools in North Carolina explains bluntly in the National Review why his schools perform better than the traditional district schools from which RBA students come: they teach students to read. No exceptions. No excuses. Discussion of RBA’s Reading Mastery program is detailed and interesting.
Supporting students into college
Four charter management organizations in Detroit are banding together to make sure their high school graduates have what they need to make it in college. “You’ve got a group of schools here who are really committed to college or bust,” said the executive director of plan partner the Detroit Children’s Fund. “They recognize that we talk about careers more in places where kids are poor than we talk about college. I think you have a group of schools here who recognize that their kids are fully capable of going to college and doing well. But it’s not going to be easy.” They promise that within a decade, 90 percent of their graduates will complete a full year of college coursework.
To sprout and grow
The Charter School Growth Fund is looking to support educational leaders wishing to grow their high-performing charter schools by providing grant funding through both their Seed strategy (“early-stage growth” to serve 250-1000 additional students over the next two years) and their Scale strategy (“later-stage expansion” to serve more than 1000 additional students over the next three to five years). Details and application information can be found here.
Closer to home
As of late last week, many schools in Dayton—including a number of charters—were planning to move soon from fully-remote learning models to some variety of hybrid learning. Plans could have changed with spikes in coronavirus cases being reported across the state this week, but whenever students return to their classrooms, it seems as though district-centric transportation will continue to be a difficulty to overcome.
