Ohio lawmakers inserted all sorts of awful provisions in the new state budget before they left for summer recess. But they didn’t get around to passing a badly needed charter school reform bill before the next school year starts. That lapse is inexcusable.
Lawmakers of both parties understand the need to rein in Ohio’s worst charter schools. Gov. John Kasich has pledged to work with the General Assembly to pass a strong reform bill. State Auditor Dave Yost calls Ohio’s charter school regulations “a broken system of governance.”
Click here to read more Blade editorials
Last month, the state Senate unanimously approved a sound charter reform bill that offered useful improvements over a House version passed earlier this year. The Senate bill would make it harder for failing charter schools to “sponsor hop” to avoid being shut down.
It also would require charter schools to use the same accounting standards as traditional public schools — a change that Mr. Yost has long advocated to make the schools easier to audit. Charter schools, which get public funding but often are operated by private companies, now can hide much of their spending by claiming the information is proprietary.
Both versions of the bill would eliminate major conflicts of interest. They would make it illegal for charter school sponsors to sell services to their schools, and require schools to make more information available about their board members.
The Senate bill had enough support to clear the House last month. But House leaders pulled it at the last minute, claiming they needed to look more closely at some of its provisions.
House lawmakers have dragged their feet on charter school regulation. Many accept generous campaign contributions from charter school interests, which have been especially active in attempting to influence the reform bill.
Despite what some lawmakers suggest, there’s no mystery about what needs to be done to make charter schools more accountable and responsibly managed. The General Assembly has had the opportunity to do so for years.
Instead, lawmakers have redirected more money to charter schools, just as it’s become clear that charters perform no better than traditional schools overall, and that they misspend taxpayer money at a higher rate than any other sector.
In the past year, charter schools in northwest Ohio and throughout the state have been accused of falsifying attendance records and spending exorbitant sums on marketing. Online schools are some of the worst culprits, yet lawmakers handed them disproportionately more funding in the new two-year budget.
The national reputation of Ohio charter schools has become so notorious that U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) has introduced legislation in Congress that would mandate many of the same accountability rules as the bills before the General Assembly. Senator Brown’s measure appears to be a good fit for Ohio’s situation, but not necessarily for the entire country. Federal law shouldn’t have to compensate for Ohio legislators’ default.
The principle that inspired the charter school movement — that injecting competition into public education can yield better results for children — is sound. In practice, though, that theory largely has failed in Ohio, because state lawmakers have refused to level the playing field for charters and traditional schools.
If Ohio lawmakers truly want to act in the best interest of children, not on behalf of special interests, they should take a cue from states where charter schools have achieved a measure of success, and hold charters to the same standards that all other schools charged with educating children should meet.
First Published July 10, 2015, 4:00 a.m.