So what’s wrong in Ohio?

So what’s wrong in Ohio?

A report issued by a Stanford University economist recently is being seized on by charter school proponents as proof that their preferred method of educating young Americans is superior to traditional public schools.

In her latest report on charter school performance, Caroline M. Hoxby found that students who entered lotteries and won spots in New York City charter schools performed better on state exams than students who entered the same lotteries but did not secure charter school seats, Her findings, she said, debunked other claims that charter schools do better than public schools because they attract cream-of-the-crop students.

Here and there

This is great news for charter schools and scary stuff for public schools — in New York.

Unfortunately, it says nothing about the state of education in Ohio — and in Youngstown — where there is little evidence that charter schools are doing anything but siphoning students and public tax money from public schools into charter schools that perform no better, and often worse.

It’s possible that New York is seeing some success because charter schools there are truly an experiment. There are only 30,000 charter school students in a district of 1.1 million students. New York is now in a position to pursue the growth of charter schools with some solid examples of what works and what doesn’t work.

By contrast, Ohio legislators were intent on pursuing a school choice program that was plainly hostile to a public school model that had worked for generations. To be sure, the failure to perform by public schools, especially in urban centers, couldn’t be ignored. But instead of considering serious reforms, Ohio legislators seized on charter schools, which they billed as an experiment. Then they pursued a policy that expanded charter schools and, more recently, voucher programs, without any consideration of whether the experiment was working.

Meanwhile, in an effort to deflect the attention of the Ohio Supreme Court away from questions about whether the state was meeting its constitutional mandate to provide an “efficient:” education for all students, the General Assembly poured billions of dollars into public school building programs.

The result is that Youngstown will have spent $190 million, most of it in state money, on new buildings, while its enrollment base is being swallowed by under-performing charter schools and, increasing, vouchers to private, primarily religious, schools.

Compare and contrast

And while a relatively small number of students in New York charter schools are outperforming their public school counterparts, Youngstown’s oldest and largest charter school, Eagle Heights Academy, remains in academic emergency and has been ordered closed by the state at the end of the academic year. Don’t count on that happening. School officials say they’ll fight the order, and why wouldn’t they? They saw what happened the last time an under-performing charter school was ordered closed in Youngstown. Summit Academy Community School for Alternative Learners was ordered closed at the end last school year because it had been in academic emergency for three straight years without showing improvement. But instead of closing, the school received approval from its Lucas County sponsor to change its description and its name and to expand its operation.

So to answer the question posed in our headline — what’s wrong in Ohio? — ideology trumped pedagogy. The initial sponsors of the charter school movement, many of them indebted to campaign contributors tied to the for-profit charter school movement, weren’t committed to improving education. They were only committed to change, whether it worked or it didn’t And in Ohio, with few exceptions, it hasn’t worked.