Ohio Charter News returns after a one-week break, covering news items from 8/30 – 9/12/25.
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New schools for the new school year
We start with two great profiles of charter schools that recently opened their doors around Ohio. First up, is T-Squared Honors Academy, a homegrown charter school network in northeast Ohio whose latest campus opened in East Cleveland to start the 2025-26 school year. The new school is housed in a former GE headquarters building (that looks like a gorgeous Gilded Age home) and welcomed ninth and tenth graders for its first year. It is named for W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of the “Talented Tenth”, and the vision for the school follows suit: “Every student has the potential to think critically, lead boldly, and care deeply about the issues affecting their communities and the wider world.” Nice. Next up is the Academy for Urban Scholars, whose sixth Ohio charter school campus launched its inaugural year in Toledo last week. “We meet the students where they are at and provide wrap-around services to them,” explained co-founder Pamela Gregory during opening day festivities. “They will all have a success coach who will help identify barriers to the student’s graduation. They will help students overcome those obstacles.” It is also pleasing to read about the plethora of Glass City talent both running and supporting the school, which should bode well for its future. Here’s to a great school year for everyone!
A busload of misinformation
Sadly, the Associated Press followed the same misleading playbook as other recent national and international coverage last week when discussing the student transportation troubles in Dayton and, by extension, all of Ohio. Besides repeating the myth that transporting charter and private school students somehow limits districts from transporting their own students, the AP also neglects to mention that high school busing in Ohio is entirely voluntary (except for students with specific IEP requirements). When will the misinformation end?
Better news from Indianapolis
As school leaders and policymakers across Indiana begin to actualize the state’s new requirements for greater cooperation and collaboration among district, charter, and private schools, busing of students will be one important litmus test of how well the effort is going. Here’s a look at a group of Indianapolis charters (and one private school) who have banded together with the desire to solve longstanding transportation problems in their city. Worryingly, there seems to be no movement by the city schools to join in with this important effort yet.
NAEP news
While most of the news about new NAEP score data for older students (12th grade reading and math, along with 8th grade science) was bad, kudos to Marc Porter Magee for highlighting the fact that charter school students’ scores largely bucked the national downward trend. And kudos to those charter schools who continue stepping up to help mitigate Covid learning loss for their students.
Private, not public
A virtual private school model will replace the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City’s plans to open the nation’s first religious charter school. Those original plans were rebuffed when an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court resulted in a prior Oklahoma Supreme Court decision against it being allowed to stand. The appropriately-named St. Carlo Acutis Classical Academy is now planned to open its virtual doors in the 2026-27 school year, enrolling up to 300 students statewide in kindergarten through eighth grade.
New data
New data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools shows that charter enrollment has seen a steady rise over the past six years. From the 2019-20 to the 2024-25 academic year, charter schools saw a boost of nearly 15 percent, representing more than 492,000 students. Over the same time period, traditional district enrollment fell by 4.4 percent, or over 1.9 million students. Big news indeed.
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