Few sponsors qualify for grant money
Ohio won’t need nearly $22 million of a $71 million federal charter-school grant because state education officials don’t think there are enough potential new schools that will meet tougher performance criteria.
“Our rigorous school sponsor evaluation system has limited the number of eligible grantees in our community school pipeline. While these numbers are lower than originally projected, we think the increased level of accountability will bolster the grant’s
purpose of creating highquality community schools,” Steve Gratz, executive director of the Department of Education’s center for student support and education options, wrote to federal regulators last week.
The grant money is available to new schools opened by sponsors deemed “effective” or “exemplary,” the two highest of five possible ratings on new state sponsor evaluations.
Only five of 65 sponsors meet the criteria: the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation; the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio; the Jefferson County Educational Service Center; St. Aloysius Orphanage; and Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
The Education Department will begin accepting applications May 18, with awards expected to be announced in July. Schools are eligible for planning grants of up to $100,000, and implementation grants of up to $350,000 the first year of operation; up to $250,000 the second year. Charter schools are taxfunded, privately operated, tuition-free schools that operate free of many state regulations.
According to an earlier report sent to the U.S. Department of Education, state education officials intend to “increase student academic achievement by increasing the number of high-performing, site-based community schools across the state, with a special focus on strategically replacing poor-performing schools,
opening community schools in high-need locations that serve educationally and economically disadvantaged students, and supporting high-quality educational models aligned to student needs.”
Of the five sponsors that met grant criteria, four received D academic-performance ratings — one of three components of sponsor evaluations — and the fifth, Jefferson County ESC, got no rating for academics because its schools did not qualify.
That means there are 33 charter sponsors that do not qualify for federal money even though they have higher academic performance ratings than the five that qualify.
Many of those other sponsors got overall “poor” or “ineffective” ratings because they scored zero
on one or both of the other two pieces of the sponsor evaluation: complying with state laws and following quality practices. That includes some school districts, such as Hamilton Local and Pickerington, that were automatically rated “poor” despite a C grade for academics.
The U.S. Department of Education released Ohio’s grant last fall, labeling the state “high risk” and imposing strict oversight amid concerns about its oversight of charter schools.
Federal officials required the state Department of Education to hire an approved, independent monitor to oversee the state’s use of the funds and demanded federal approval each time that money is spent.
The grant had been in limbo for nearly a year after
questions about the accuracy of the state’s grant application prompted federal officials to put the money on hold. The application was drafted by former Ohio school-choice chief David Hansen, who later resigned after it was discovered that he, in the course of doing sponsor evaluations, scrubbed data of poorperforming online charter schools to aid their sponsors.