Stories featured in Ohio Charter News Weekly may require a paid subscription to read in full.
Be careful what you wish for (again)
The editorial board of Cleveland.com published a piece this week opining that the state law requiring school districts to bus resident students who use charter, STEM, or private school options is “no longer workable” and should be scrapped in favor of “a radical rethink”. Their reasoning is mostly based on available funding, but they conveniently forget to note that the families of charter, STEM, and private school schools pay the very same taxes that other residents do—taxes which pay for busing. Do the editors realize that a transportation revamp that really takes this into consideration will look very different than it does today?
Budget update
Speaking of revamps, Fordham Institute’s Aaron Churchill dug into the new Senate version of the Ohio budget bill. He finds that while it represents an improvement on the House’s guarantee-driven funding system, it also falls short of Gov. DeWine’s proposals in two key areas important to charter schools and the families they serve: charter funding streams and the criteria to access performance-based funding. His analysis can be found here.
Setting limits
Pennsylvania House Bill 1500 was approved by the full House this week. Among other provisions in the far-reaching education reform measure, the bill would reduce the amount of per-student funding for cyber charter school students. Additionally, cyber charters would not be able to maintain cash balances above 12 percent of their total spending and they would be required to more fully disclose their policies, instructional materials, and budgets. The bill now moves on to the Senate.
Co-location
Some interesting new data show that co-locations of charter schools inside Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) buildings have shrunk in recent years from their peak in 2018. While the main culprit is a reduction in the overall student population in L.A., charter supporters point out that LAUSD rarely completes facilities requests without resistance and conflict—despite state requirements—which has also served to depress the number of successful co-locations over time.
The view from the other coast
Meanwhile, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis this week signed HB 1105 into law. Among its many provisions, the bill would simplify the process of converting district schools into charters, leaving the decision up to school parents rather than including teachers and principals in the exercise as had previously been the case. The bill goes into effect July 1.
Long-term student success
Is twenty years of positive student outcome data enough to declare a program a success? The city of New Orleans hopes so. Because that’s what the latest research out of Tulane University’s Education Research Alliance shows. Following the widespread devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, New Orleans’ remaining meager school infrastructure was replaced by a fully choice-based system mainly delivered by charter schools. Improvements in student test scores, graduation rates, and college attendance and completion compared to pre-Katrina numbers were immediate. And while improvement generally plateaued by 2015, those better outcomes have been maintained to the present day and NOLA’s rise from the bottom of Louisiana’s district ratings to the middle of the pack has endured. Awesome!
*****
Did you know you can have every edition of the Ohio Charter News Weekly sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.
