Past Ohio CSP winners have delivered results, future winners can do the same

Ohio’s recent win of federal Charter School Program (CSP) funds has garnered much backlash. Former Governor Ted Strickland went so far as to send a letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan requesting that he reconsider giving Ohio the grant. All five Democrats in Ohio’s congressional delegation sent their own letter to Duncan asking questions about the conditions of the grant and whether it will be used to help charter oversight.  

Two facts are overlooked by critics in the midst of the naysaying: 1) the overall track record of CSP grant recipients in our state is solid (as we’ll see below), and 2) by infusing much-needed resources into Ohio’s charter sector, the program enables the best schools to replicate, could draw in top-notch charter school models from other states, and might even crowd out the state’s worst schools—both of the district and charter variety.

The calls to delay or rescind the money are absurd. Most of those speaking out publicly have clear political agendas. Ohio certainly needs to restore public confidence in its charter sector, and the legislature’s bipartisan passage of comprehensive charter school reform is a good start. A strong grant program focused on identifying and replicating successful charter schools would aid in that process.

But don’t take it from me. Let’s consider the track records of past CSP winners from Ohio. Charter schools that have received CSP grants from the Ohio Department of Education closed at significantly lower rates than Ohio’s charter school movement as a whole. They also generally outperform the Ohio charter sector.

From FY07 to FY13, 155 charter schools in Ohio won CSP awards (a few schools won twice).[i]  Of those, thirty-six have since closed (for a closure rate of 23 percent), and eight of those closures were of district-run charter schools. (Eager to cash in on federal grants, districts sponsored charter schools that were arguably run more like district offshoots than truly independent start-ups.) The Ohio sector’s overall closure rate is 43 percent. (For a more detailed look at charter closure rates across the movement’s history, see my article from last week.)

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Source: Lists of CSP grant recipients available via the Ohio Department of Education, Ohio’s closed community school directory, and the latest annual community school report’s enrollment spreadsheets.

Based on the data in Graph 1, it seems that the Ohio Department of Education has doled out past CSP grants rather successfully. In reviewing applications and deciding which schools were worth funding, the department took a chance on schools that stayed open at significantly higher rates than Ohio’s overall charter sector. This isn’t to say that a school’s success should be defined by its ability to keep its doors open. (Fordham supports the closure of poorly performing charter schools, which leads to better achievement for students.) But in a climate where many charter school failures are the result of under-enrollment and/or financial mismanagement, it’s important to note that earlier rounds of CSP dollars flowed to schools that—from an organizational and financial perspective—knew how to run themselves effectively.

Still, avoiding closure is a low bar by itself. It’s far more important to consider the current performance of those CSP-winning schools that remain open. Nearly one-half of CSP winners earned an A, B, or C on the state’s most recent (2013–14) Performance Index metric, compared to just one-quarter of non-CSP winners (Graph 2).

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