By Jennifer Smith Richards
There is a rule about bad charter schools in Ohio: They can’t stay open if they don’t improve.
There’s also a confusing truth: Sometimes charters don’t get better and they don’t close.
Some schools have avoided the state’s charter-closing laws after enrolling more students with disabilities, which exempted them. Others were closed by their sponsors for poor performance only to find a new sponsor. And recently, one charter operator whose school was shut down for bleak academic performance updated the building, staff and school board, and opened another school in the same spot under a new name.
Just as they do with traditional public schools, the new state report cards highlight the serious struggles of many of the charter schools statewide and in Franklin County. More than 1 in 4 charters statewide received mostly F grades. In Franklin County, about 23 percent of graded charter schools got mostly F’s.
A few of the long-struggling schools were “non renewed” over the summer by a sponsor, or overseer, for poor academic performance. But they shopped for a new sponsor and still are open.
“Is it going to get worse? I think it could,” said Dave Cash, who acts as a sponsor for St. Aloysius Orphanage and is president of Charter School Specialists in Pickerington. “As our expectations and accountability increase — and it is with the new report cards — people are going to look for an out. I’m all about treating the schools fairly, but if it doesn't make any difference whether we non renewed them or not, then I have no value.”
