A federal grant has met with strong—and undeserved—opposition.
Charter schools have grown exponentially in recent years, with nationwide enrollment more than tripling between 2004 and 2014. The publicly funded but privately run institutions have a mixed record, but overall they have proven to be a viable alternative to the current failing public-education system. Partly owing to this success, teachers’ unions and their political supporters remain adamantly opposed to charters (which typically do not have unions), and they are eager to pounce on any chance to discredit them. A controversy over a $71 million federal grant to the state of Ohio to fund charter schools has become the latest bone of contention in this dispute.
When the Department of Education announced its competitive charter-school grants last fall, the news that Ohio had won the largest share of the $249 million awarded to eight states faced an immediate backlash. Ohio, critics said, had been a poster child for everything that can go wrong with charters – from misspent funds to failing schools. Ohio Democratic senator Sherrod Brown called on the Obama administration to take another look at Ohio’s programs before releasing the grant money. This month, the administration announced that Ohio would get the funds, with some strings attached. The news was met with scathing media reports.
“It remains an open question why a charter sector with this record deserves a grant at all,” Washington Post reporter Valerie Strauss wrote. She cited Innovation Ohio, a left-leaning think tank, which found that 37 percent of Ohio charter schools that received federal funds either closed down or failed to open. Strauss also highlighted the state’s charter-sector scandals, saying that it had “misspent tax dollars more than any other [state sector], including school districts, court systems, public universities hospitals, and local governments.” However, this narrative is not entirely accurate.
First off, the Innovation Ohio statistics are not as troubling as they seem. Charter schools are designed to be able to shut down – that’s one reason why parents like charters, since their children are not stuck attending an F-grade institution in their district. “Some are going to close,” Chad Aldis, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s Vice President for Ohio Policy and Advocacy, told National Review. “And that’s okay. Those that are not serving the kids well should close.”
Compared with traditional public schools, charter schools are run more like businesses. They can begin to operate after an agency – which can be a nonprofit, a university, or a school district – outlines and approves a school’s objectives, standards, and more. And if a school fails to meet the proposed objectives or standards? In stark contrast with traditional public schools, those failures are more likely to result in the schools losing funding or ceasing to operate entirely.
In fact, many of the failed charter schools cited by Innovation Ohio were authorized by the very same school districts that run traditional public schools. So when those charter schools close, “Ohio’s school districts are partly to blame for that,” Aldis notes.
The media narrative creates the perception that all Ohio charters are doomed – Strauss cites an education blogger bemoaning the fact that one Ohio charter-school network was even denied its bid to begin operating in Mississippi – a state known for low-performing schools. Ohio does, however, have some successful charter schools, such as KIPP in Columbus and Breakthrough in Cleveland, which won praise even from Senator Sherrod Brown. “I’ve seen the quality of their education and what they’ve offered students,” he said. The federal grant will help provide the resources for other charters to model these successful programs, allowing more schools to open rather than close.
The restrictions placed on the grant are designed to ensure that the money is spent only on schools that have the potential to excel. High-quality authorizers are expected to allow schools to be autonomous while at the same time holding schools accountable through high performance standards. The state will be required to hire an independent monitor, and all withdrawals from the grant account must be documented and approved by the U.S. Department of Education.
So, with increased accountability and federal funds, why couldn’t the aspects of the charter sector that Brown deems a “disgrace to our state” improve? If Ohio meets its goal, the state will have a total of 400 charter schools and 100,000 more enrollment openings by 2020. Just this past year, Ohio moved up five spots in the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools state ranking from 28 to 23. One reason for this improvement is the state’s new law to improve the charter authorization process with the aim of increasing accountability and transparency. “Without those changes,” Aldis said, “I don’t think the Department of Education would have released those dollars.”
If Ohio successfully manages the funds and charter schools begin to see significant improvements, it seems only fair that Ohio should then be treated like any other state receiving federal funds; at the very least, the independent monitor should relinquish responsibilities. “I’m confident this requirement will go away,” Aldis said, “and it should go away.”
The Ohio Department of Education secured $32 million this year, and the remaining federal funds will be doled out over the next four years. If the funds are used as intended, Ohio’s charter-school sector has a real opportunity to overcome its rocky start and become a model for other programs.