A handful excel, but many struggle

The Cleveland Plain Dealer

8/21/2007

Scott Stephens

Plain Dealer Reporter

The performance of Ohio’s charter schools has more peaks and valleys than a Cedar Point roller coaster.

At the peak sits a small cadre of charters, schools that have emerged as academic powerhouses and have remarkable academic success with hard-to-educate children in neighborhoods where traditional public schools have often failed.

But the valleys dip especially low.

Data released this week by state education officials show that nearly half of all failing schools in Ohio - those identified as being in “academic emergency” - are charter schools.

Of the 330 charter schools listed in the Ohio Department of Education’s 2006-07 report cards released Tuesday, only 24 were identified as “excellent” or “effective.”

“Even friends and longtime supporters of charter schools and chartering are tired of explaining away mediocre and poor results,” said Terry Ryan of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the research arm of the foundation that sponsors eight Ohio charter schools. “The too-few terrific schools demonstrate that it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Schools like the Intergenerational School and Old Brooklyn Montessori School - one of the original 15 charters in the state - prove that by reaching all of their academic targets.

In fact, half of the schools in Cleveland that were rated “excellent” or “effective” are charter schools. In Cleveland, seven of the top 10 Performance Indexes - the summary of how students in a school performed on statewide exams - were charter schools.

Advocates of the publicly funded, privately operated schools say they succeed despite inequitable funding, relentless political attacks and difficulty finding adequate facilities. And because successful charter schools often try things traditional public schools can’t - or won’t - try.

Entrepreneurship Preparatory School in Collinwood, for instance, keeps student in class 10 hours a day, has an extended school year, stresses discipline and offers Saturday tutoring. The results: In its first year, E-Prep beat the Cleveland district scores by 25 points in each subject.

Citizens Academy, a charter school in Hough, posted the top elementary scores for black elementary school students in Cuyahoga County. Its students, 98 percent black and 80 percent poor, tied or exceeded the statewide average on five of eight applicable exams. The school’s fourth-graders topped Ohio averages on every test by an average of 8 percentage points.

“In a state where the achievement gap between African-American and white students remains higher than 25 percentage points, this is truly a remarkable accomplishment,” said the school’s executive director, Perry White.

During a three-day period next week, teachers at Citizens will begin home visits to each of their 400 students to talk to parents about duties and expectations.

Charter school critics say that kind of effort is rare. Next week, a coalition of public school advocacy groups will release its own analysis of charter school performance. The event will mark the 10th anniversary of charter schools in Ohio.

“Ohio taxpayers should not have to pay for educational choices that do not educate Ohio’s children,” said Barbara Shaner of the Ohio Association of School Business Officials.

Charter schools have even taken heat from the usually friendly Ohio legislature. Beginning this year, charter schools that miss state-prescribed academic goals three years in a row must close.

The new law places even tougher rules on so-called cyber schools, which offer students a mostly online curriculum outside a traditional classroom setting. The digital schools can lose all state aid if they miss testing benchmarks two years in a row or fail to have students take state tests.

The Columbus-based Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, the state’s largest cyber school, had to top last year’s achievement just to keep its “continuous improvement” rating.

Research by the Fordham Institute found that in Ohio’s eight largest urban districts, overall performance levels between charter schools and regular public schools was similar. Over the last six years, urban charter school performance has improved at a more rapid pace than in the state’s big-city school districts. Last year, however, district school improvement was higher.

So who’s doing better?

A decade after the birth of charter schools in Ohio, it’s time to get answers, said the Fordham Institute’s Ryan.

“The data makes painfully clear that too many children in charter schools are being left behind,” he said. “Sadly, for many, the choice they have is to go back to a district school that’s not performing any better.”

© 2007 The Plain Dealer

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