Charter changes would help ECOT
The chairman of the Ohio House Education Committee wants to change the state’s new charter-sponsor evaluation system in a way that would lessen the impact of poor academic ratings on the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and other large e-schools.
Rep. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell, is crafting amendments to the two-year budget to change how much each charter school counts toward a sponsor’s overall
academic-performance rating.
Without the change, ECOT, the state’s largest charter school, is expected to eventually struggle to find a willing sponsor.
Charter schools cannot operate in Ohio without a sponsor. On the flip side, organizations
like current ECOT sponsor Lake Erie West Educational Service Center can’t sponsor schools — and collect state payments — if they continue to score zero on academic performance.
“I’m trying to get it so they’re weighted
appropriately,” Brenner said.
Lake Erie West sponsored 31 charter schools that counted toward its overall academic rating in the 2015-16 school year, including ECOT, which scored zero on academics.
Under the current system, ECOT and its more than 15,000 students made up 53 percent of Lake Erie West’s academic rating.
Brenner said he is working out the details of how to reduce that impact but still make it worth more than a school of, say, 500 students.
“I’m trying to come up with a balance,” he said, adding that his budget amendment could include subdividing charter schools with elementary, middle and high schools.
Some are skeptical of the change.
“It’s clearly a fix geared primarily toward helping out ECOT,” said Stephen Dyer, education policy fellow for the liberal Innovation Ohio. “I just don’t know what kind of willingness there is in the legislature anymore to keep putting lipstick on that pig.”
The debate over the charter-sponsor evaluations has been ongoing since they were passed and then refined in late 2015.
Weighting schools based on enrollment is one of several issues in play. Others include concerns about how academic performance is calculated, that sponsors with a zero score on one of three components — academics, law compliance and adherence to quality practices — cannot be rated higher than “ineffective,” and the volume of laws that are checked for compliance.
Ron Adler, president of the pro-charter Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, said the Department of Education is going beyond legislative intent. He said he supports
accountability, “but it’s gotten too extreme.”
“I’m not sure why the performance of a school (with 1,200 students) should be weighted heavier than a charter school down the street with 130 students,” he said. “Either they’re doing a good job or they’re not.”
The evaluations are designed to ensure sponsors are holding their schools accountable for academics and operations.
“Ultimately the sponsor is responsible for the kids,” Dyer said. “If most of your kids are in one school, then you’ve got to spend time worrying about that school because a huge school has the opportunity to give the most help and do the most damage.”
Brenner said the Department of Education wrote rules to implement the chartersponsor evaluations, but they “really weren’t in line with what (the law) was trying to accomplish.” He’s exploring a variety of changes, some of which will be drafted as separate legislation.
“If you’ve got a bad school in your portfolio, and they’re not improving, get rid of the school,” Brenner said. But the academic portion of the evaluation is “getting tanked” in some cases because one school has a problem.
“It’s creating a potential black hole for some decent schools that might be able to be turned around that sponsors aren’t going to want to take on,” he said.
If a sponsor earns a zero grade in one of the three categories, it cannot be labeled higher than “ineffective.” An “ineffective” organization for three consecutive years loses its ability to sponsor charter schools.
If Lake Erie West were to lose its sponsorship ability, or decides to drop ECOT, it could be very difficult for other sponsors to pick up the school. Unless its academic score improves, ECOT’s size means it would have a considerable negative impact on the academic rating of practically any sponsor.
Chad Aldis of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which supports charter accountability and sponsors 11 schools in Ohio, said he has problems with the way the state calculates the academic score. Student growth, he said, is not given enough emphasis.
He said he understands the two sides of the debate over weighting based on enrollment. Counting them all the same doesn’t seem right, he said, but neither does counting one school for half a sponsor’s grade.
A hybrid, Aldis said, is probably better.
If nothing changes for Ohio’s largest e-schools, “their time will be ticking,” Aldis said.
The first round of state budget changes is expected Tuesday. The next round of sponsor evaluations is coming in mid-October.