Charter school supporters have argued for multiple charter school authorizers within a state since the first schools opened in the early 1990s. The Center for Education Reform, for example, writes that “charter schools grow and flourish in environments that provide multiple ways for groups to obtain charters to open.” There can be, however, too much of a good thing. When it comes to authorizing in Ohio there are simply more sponsors than the state needs or can effectively support, especially if school quality is job one.
Under present law, charter sponsors can charge school fees of up to three percent of their per-pupil funding. It is no stretch to say that, for many sponsors in Ohio, quality sponsorship costs more than such fees can generate. Consider the numbers for a moment – the state has 67 active sponsors. Two of these – the Lucas County ESC and the Ohio Council of Community Schools (both based in Toledo) – collectively authorize one-third of all of the Buckeye State’s charter schools. The state’s remaining 65 sponsors authorize on average three schools each. Fifty-two sponsors authorize two or fewer schools.
Yet quality sponsorship costs money to deliver. For example, sponsors need the resources to meet the legal costs of closing a school, which can accrue quickly.
It is because of limited resources for sponsors and the need for scale and shared expertise that the Fordham Foundation and the Educational Service Center of Central Ohio (ESCCO) are proposing – with a $50,000 planning grant from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers – to merge their sponsorship efforts and launch a new statewide charter school sponsor. Collectively, ESCCO and Fordham authorize 12 schools statewide. Together, these schools serve about 3,200 students.
Both organizations believe that it is practically impossible to have reliably good charter schools without competent, conscientious, properly-motivated, and well-funded sponsors. Sponsors are central to ensuring the performance and success of charter schools. We believe all sponsorship decisions must hold the well-being of students paramount.
Further, as we shared in public testimony before the State Board of Education earlier this week, the role of the sponsor must be separate from that of the operator or supplemental services provider. Operators run the day-to-day operation of schools while sponsors hold schools accountable for results. We see it as an inherent conflict of interest when a sponsor also functions as the (paid) purveyor of services to its schools, or blurs the line between operator and sponsor in other ways.
The goal of the proposed merger is a statewide sponsor that can:
- Hold its schools to a high-standards of performance;
- Support the development of great new schools;
- Recruit outstanding models to Ohio; and
- Support schools by pointing them toward competent providers of school services, be they fiscal, academic, special education, managerial, etc., but play no role in their decision about which services to procure from which vendors.
Fordham and ESCCO expect to launch a statewide sponsor entity that not only merges the sponsorship responsibilities of our organizations, but offers that option to other organizations that may desire to exit the sponsorship business. Todd Hanes, ESCCO’s associate superintendent captured the logic behind this effort when he told the Columbus Dispatch, “The economy of scale, the efficiencies, is really a model for Ohio to look at…It is very difficult for a sponsor with only a few schools to provide high-quality sponsorship services.”
Steve Burigana, CEO of the consulting firm Resource Network Inc. and former chief operating officer at the Ohio Department of Education has been hired by Fordham and ESCCO to assist with the creation of the proposed new sponsor. Should we be able to put all the pieces together we expect this new sponsor entity to be up and running by the summer of 2011. Stay tuned for further developments in the coming weeks and months.