Public School Boards Of Education, Administrators, Teachers And Advocates Should Work Diligently To Rescue Students From The Failing Charter School Industry. Steve Dyer’s September 21, 10thPeriod Is A Wake-Up Call.
Steve Dyer, a former legislator and champion of the public common school, on an ongoing basis, shows the failure of the charter and voucher industries through his data analysis. His September 21, 10thPeriod compares the readiness of charter students and public school students for the post-graduate world. His analysis should motivate public school folks to put on a full court press to rescue students from charters.
98 Percent of Ohio Charter School Graduates are Less Prepared for Post-Graduate World Than Students in Youngstown City Schools
Dayton is the lowest performing major urban district. Yet 2 out of 3 Ohio charter schools are less prepared than Dayton students.
Stephen Dyer
Sep 21
Ohio’s new report card has revealed something extremely troubling about Ohio’s Charter Schools. On a new measure called “Students in the 4-year Graduation Cohort who Completed a Pathway and are Prepared for College or Career Success”, only 9 percent of Ohio’s potential Charter School graduates met those qualifications. More than 36 percent of Ohio’s public school district students met those qualifications.
(Data Note: These data only examine students who could graduate high school, not whether they graduated high school. Public School Districts graduated 91.4 percent of their potential 121,968 graduates. Charter Schools only graduated 65 percent of their 4,657 potential graduates — a lower rate than any Ohio Public School District.)
Of the 43 Ohio Charter Schools with enough students to count in this College and Career Readiness measure, 18 schools had zero — that’s right, not a single student —who qualified as college or career ready. That means that 3 out of every 25 Ohio charter school graduates attended a school where not a single potential graduate was considered college or career ready.
But it gets worse.
More than 54 percent of Youngstown City School potential graduates are college or career ready. Only one Ohio Charter School — Dayton Early College Academy — has a higher rate.
That means that 98 percent of potential Ohio Charter School graduates are less prepared for post-high school lives than Youngstown City Schools’ potential graduates. Remember that Youngstown was seen as such a “failed” school district that the state created a new law to take over the district — in large part so more Charter Schools could open there.
Yet that district’s students are more likely to be prepared for post-high school lives than 98 percent of the 4,657 students potential graduating Ohio’s Charter Schools.
But wait. It gets worse.
The lowest-performing major urban school district in Ohio — Dayton — only had 5.7 percent of its students qualify as career or college ready.
Not good.
But before all you pro-charter school/voucher people scream “School Choice, Now!”, an astonishing 2 out of every 3 potential Ohio Charter School graduates attend schools with worse post-graduate preparation measures than Dayton.
Dayton is the home of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and has been a hotbed of charter and voucher activity for 25 years. It’s not like school choice hasn’t been tried in Dayton.
And it ain’t working.
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More Ohio students in all schools need to be career and college ready than they currently are. Full stop.
But what’s clear is that the best place for that to happen is in Ohio’s local public schools, not in Ohio Charter Schools.
I’d also like to use some space to bring up the Ohio Virtual Academy (OHVA) — the ECOT-sized online school. OHVA was paid to educate 14,530 students last year — more students than ECOT ever was paid to educate.
Yet they are just as bad as ECOT at preparing their students for the post-graduate world. An astonishing 87 of 1,820 potential OHVA grads were considered college or career ready. That 4.8 percent rate is lower than all but one Ohio school district — New Miami Local in Butler County, which only had 1 of 44 potential graduates considered college or career ready.
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Maybe it’s time to take a look under OHVA’s hood. They did receive $104 million last year to produce these anemic results, after all.
Learn more about the EdChoice voucher litigation
VOUCHERS HURT OHIO