The passage of comprehensive charter school reform in the form of House Bill 2 was supposed to move charters past the controversies that had overshadowed the excellent work of good schools. The new era promised to be focused less on audits and academic failings and more on how charters can create more high quality education options for families in the Buckeye State. Unfortunately, a series of troubling recent developments involving online charter schools threatens to undermine the progress that Ohio has made. Rather than waiting until the clarion call for change is deafeningly loud, Ohio charter advocates should once again step up and lead the effort to improve their sector.
Online charters in the spotlight
While the academic performance of online charter schools has been criticized before, a national study released in October by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University provided the most compelling—and shocking—data to date showing the lackluster academic achievement of online charter school students. In Ohio, for example, the CREDO study indicated that online students lost seventy-nine days of learning per year in reading and 144 days in math compared to their peers in traditional public schools.
Cringeworthy numbers to be sure, but the story gets worse. The Columbus Dispatch and Akron Beacon Journal recently published pieces on a couple of small online charter schools that struggled with attendance audits. One of the schools was unable to properly document student attendance and was forced to repay a significant portion of the public funding it received. Around the same time, perhaps fearing an attendance audit of its own, representatives of ECOT (The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) were rumored to be pushing for changes to law that would allow funding based upon “offering” classes to students rather than actually “providing” the education. None of these stories painted online charter schools—or the charter movement overall—in a favorable light. Rather, they reinforced the worst assumptions people have about some charters: that they put profits before students.
The need to act
Standing idly by and hoping everything works itself out is a risky course of action for choice advocates. Ohio online charter schools serve somewhere around forty thousand students. If the academic information found by CREDO—and backed up by many state report card measures—is even close to being correct, far too many students are struggling and potentially falling hopelessly behind. As advocates for students first and foremost, we charter supporters have a duty to step in and make sure irreparable academic harm is not occurring.
Second, allegations of waste or fraud—whether in an online or brick-and-mortar charter school—cause serious harm to the reputation of the sector as a whole. Right now, the significant reforms included in HB 2 should be improving the performance and public perception of charter schools—unfortunately, the debate is once again stuck on basic elements like student attendance and what it means to educate a student in an online setting. This doesn’t inspire the confidence of taxpayers (or, for that matter, legislators).
Third, it’s been a nearly constant refrain of charter school opponents for the last decade or so that a few powerful charter school operators have an outsized political influence due primarily to campaign contributions. Forgetting for a moment the hypocritical aspects of those claims, given the active political engagement of teachers’ unions, letting ECOT take center stage on these issues is a strategic mistake for charter advocates. ECOT, like all special interests, deserves to have its voice heard, but the solutions that legislators craft should also reflect the input of other online providers, the broader charter community, education stakeholders, and taxpayers.
Finally, if neither an alarming lack of student learning nor public perception of fraud and alleged improper political influence is enough to stir the charter community to action, then a recently introduced bill by Senator Joe Schiavoni should be. Schiavoni, a leading critic of charter schools, has put forward legislation that would attempt to address attendance issues but would go farther and prohibit online schools from offering career and technical education, require disclosures on school marketing materials, and prevent charters from pursuing a hybrid model unless they have an “exemplary” sponsor. Whether Schiavoni’s bill—well received by statewide media—is likely to pass or not, the charter movement does itself a grave disservice when we don’t directly address issues and put forward our own solutions. By policing ourselves, the charter movement can develop solutions that are smarter, quicker, and less intrusive than those devised by charter critics and political leaders.
Moving forward
Charter critics undoubtedly see the most recent struggles of online charter schools as an Achilles’ heel for the fast-growing charter sector. They’re right, but online charters aren’t going away—and they shouldn’t. Online education isn’t yet producing the overall results that it needs to, but it can’t be overlooked that around forty thousand Ohio families have chosen an online school for their children’s education. For many areas of the state, it’s still the only meaningful form of school choice if the assigned district school isn’t meeting a student’s needs.
Moreover, the potential for innovation in the online setting is high. This is a new era, and Ohio needs to figure out what the model is capable of and how it can effectively serve students. Charters play a valuable role in this effort. There are even some indications, judging by the most recent report card of Ohio Connections Academy, that some online schools might be starting to figure it out.
Figuring it out for the whole sector, though, is going to involve some really difficult decisions on a host of topics that are critical to developing this model of education. Ohio policy makers will need to answer key questions impacting online education, such as how to track attendance, whether to provide funding based upon attendance or course completion, how to handle students who don’t have the support structures to succeed in an online setting, and whether online schools have a responsibility to provide additional help to struggling students. Charter school advocates not only need to be involved in those conversations, we need to lead them. If we don’t step up and use our expertise to offer solutions, we run the very real risk that opponents of choice—those who don’t believe in a parent’s inherent right to choose—will do it for us. These aren’t easy issues, but until they are solved, the reputation of Ohio charter schools and the education outcomes for more than forty thousand online students could suffer. For Buckeye State charter school advocates, more work remains.
