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The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, which is running "A Million Lives" campaign to increase the number of students in quality charter schools says Ohio has not help its charters or authorizers/sponsors to high standards.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio is taking good steps to rein in its "Wild, Wild West" of charter schools, but time will tell if the state has the backbone to make its rules stick.
Alex Medler of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), said that national observers look at Ohio as having a free-for-all in who is allowed to "authorize" new charter schools – help create them, oversee them, help them improve and (rarely) close them when needed.
NACSA promotes charter schools and the school choice movement, while also wanting authorizing agencies – like school districts, state or city panels, colleges and non-profits – to do a better job of making sure schools provide solid educations to children.
The Plain Dealer had a chance to hear Medler single out Ohio - without prompting - at a conference in Nashville, Tenn., this spring. We talked with him further after his panel and then by phone later for more of his organization's view on charter schools here.
Ohio has recently used NACSA's model standards for charter authorizers in setting its own standards for authorizers – called "sponsors" here. But Medler said that Ohio has gone so long without strong standards that it will take time to raise the bar.
"Ohio has a real quality control problem," Medler said. "Ohio's more broken than the Wild West."
Why is that?
Ohio has too many authorizers, for a start, Medler said.
Ohio had 69 separate agencies authorizing schools in 2012-13, making it a national outlier, he said. Some states, he said, allow just the state to approve charter schools, along with letting local school districts authorize charters in their own areas. Most states, he said, add just one or two other authorizers to those.
Nationwide, the vast majority – 945 - of the just over 1,000 charter school authorizers are school districts, Medler said.
But in Ohio, just over half of the authorizers of general education schools – not dropout recovery schools – are school districts.
Much of the gap in Ohio is filled by non-profit agencies.
Nationwide, only 18 non-profits authorize charter schools, Medler said, with most of them in Minnesota or Ohio. In Ohio, according to Ohio Department of Education data, non-profits authorize more than 40 percent of the state's general education charters.
And most in Ohio don't do a good job, he said. Sponsors rarely close schools that need to be closed and often approve and back new schools that should never start. With so many sponsors/authorizers in the state, anyone that wants to start a new charter school can go sponsor shopping until they find one willing to back them.
In Cleveland, for example, nine different agencies – plus the city school district – are authorizers of charter schools.
"That's totally out of control," Medler said. "It is not helpful to have so many authorizers you can apply to in the same city. Schools are just trying to find somebody who will say yes to anybody."
Shopping for a new sponsor is what Cincinnati's Value Learning and Teaching (VLT) Academy did this year when it's sponsor, Educational Resource Consultants of Ohio (ERCO) declined to renew its sponsorship of the school.
Ohio's new authorizer rules, will improve things over time. Some sponsors/authorizers will have to be shut down because they don't meet standards, he said, while others won't want to comply and just shut down on their own.
"It's a long term fight," Medler said. "It's a three or four year fight, not a one year fight."
But Ohio also has to be willing to close an authorizer not meeting standards - something he's waiting to see.
"We have yet to see Ohio sanction an authorizer in a timely basis and have it stick," he said. "That will test the political will and support there is for doing the right stuff."