Dropout-recovery schools need higher bar

The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, Ohio’s chronically underachieving and overcharging online school, is proposing a transformation. Not one to improve it and help it graduate more students; one to lower its standards even further so that it can stay in business: It wants to become a dropout-recovery school.

The question Ohioans should be asking is whether state law should have standards so low as to enable such a cynical maneuver.

ECOT repeatedly has posted such low test scores and had so many students drop out, among other performance deficits, that it is in danger of rendering its sponsor, the Educational Service Center of Lake Erie West, ineligible to play that role. Ohio charter- school law doesn’t allow sponsors of chronically failing schools to remain sponsors.

That’s an effective aspect of the law. The questionable part is that schools that deem themselves “dropout recovery” or “dropout prevention” schools have not just lower targets to meet, but absurdly low ones.

ECOT graduates fewer than 40 percent of its students, a dismal performance earning it an F in that category on state report cards. If it were reclassified as a dropout-recovery school, though, it would become a graduation-rate shining star, beating its target by a mile.

It’s reasonable for dropout-prevention or recovery schools to have a lower bar to clear for state approval. They serve students who already have failed in school by dropping out, or who are at risk of failing because of any number of risk factors.

That’s why the state in recent years created separate standards for judging the performance of such schools.

But how low can you go and still claim to be providing any hope to students at risk of becoming adults with the catastrophic handicap of no high-school diploma?

A standard high school has to graduate at least 84 percent of its students to earn a C in that category. Dropout-recovery schools, graded as either meeting, exceeding or failing to meet standards, can earn a “meets standards” rating while graduating only 8 percent.

A charter-school-reform law passed in 2015 created a committee to study whether Ohio is using the right yardstick to measure dropout-recovery schools. The group met three times in the summer of 2016 and has issued a draft report, but hasn’t proposed any law changes.

It’s safe to suggest, however, that any charter school from which 92 percent of students leave without diplomas isn’t working and shouldn’t continue to receive taxpayer support.

Lawmakers should appoint experts to set new standards for dropoutrecovery schools that recognize their special challenges but still expect success for more than a fraction of students. Otherwise, why bother?

As for ECOT, its latest bid to survive is a fresh demonstration of the nerve of its founder and chief beneficiary, William J. Lager. This is the same school that got caught billing taxpayers for 2 ½ times as many students as actually logged in and participated meaningfully. The school is fighting the state’s effort to claw back $ 60 million in undeserved payments from one school year alone.

If ECOT succeeds in getting reclassified as a dropout- recovery school, it will nearly double the total statewide enrollment for such schools. That’s twice as much reason to have standards that aren’t a joke.