Most charter schools cheating students out of a decent education
By GUIDO H. STEMPEL III
Published: Monday, October 20, 2008 12:54 PM EDT in the Athens Messenger
Ohio Department of Education report cards for this year give academic watch or emergency ratings to 76 percent of the for-profit charter schools in Ohio . None of those schools gets an excellent with distinction or excellent rating, according to figures compiled by Tom McGuire of the Ohio Fair Schools Campaign.By comparison, 17 percent of the regular public school districts are rated excellent with distinction, 34 percent are rated excellent and 1.5 percent are rated academic watch or emergency. Twelve percent of the charter schools run by school districts got excellent with distinction or excellent ratings, but 29 percent got academic watch or academic emergency ratings.These figures show that regular public schools and charter schools run by public schools are doing much better than for-profit charter schools.
Despite all the criticism of schools, public school teachers and administrators do know what they are doing and they are doing it better than the for-profit charter school operators. Parents need to understand that the public school in their district probably offers a better education for their children than the for-profit charter schools. Charter schools run by nonprofit organizations other than schools do a little better than the for-profit schools. Four percent of them are rated excellent, but 55 percent are rated academic watch or academic emergency.The good news is that only 4 percent of the school children in Ohio are enrolled in charter schools. The bad news is that 61 percent of them are in programs that have an academic watch or academic emergency rating.Percentages, however, don’t tell the whole story. We are talking about more than 46,000 students in Ohio who are getting a very poor education. This is happening because charter schools are being pushed by politicians. It is easier for them to do that than to address the problem of school funding. And politicians and education critics have sold the public on charter schools.A recent Gallup Poll shows that two-thirds of the American people think charter schools are doing a good job. Charter school advocates argue that figures like the ones cited here for Ohio are because charter schools are taking children with learning disabilities. This may explain why some charter schools are doing badly, but public schools also have students with learning disabilities.Some charter schools are doing a good job, but most are not, and it seems clear that for-profit charter schools are not the answer to providing a good education for every child in Ohio .
* * *Stempel III is a distinguished professor emeritus in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University .
