NOTE: Chad Aldis addressed the Ohio Board of Education in Columbus this afternoon. These are his written remarks in full.
Thank you, President Gunlock and state board members, for allowing me to offer public comment today.
My name is Chad Aldis. I am the vice president for Ohio policy and advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education-oriented nonprofit focused on research, analysis, and policy advocacy with offices in Columbus, Dayton, and Washington, D.C. I testified to you in September urging the state to quickly and thoroughly implement the charter school provisions contained in HB 2. I also emphasized during my testimony the importance of moving quickly to get the sponsor performance review (SPR)—which was required by legislation passed in 2012, but took three years to develop and pilot—back on track. The success of Ohio’s recent reforms lie heavily on the SPR, so the department deserves tremendous credit for installing an independent panel to review the SPR and draft recommendations quickly. It is a strong sign that the department is serious about implementation and sponsor quality.
We are pleased to say that we agree with many of the recommendations and commend the panel for its thorough review. However, there are a few items in the panel’s preliminary recommendations that caught our attention and merit additional consideration. I’ll briefly highlight the key issues that we noticed. For more detail, please refer to the comments formally submitted by Fordham’s vice president for sponsorship and Dayton initiatives, Kathryn Mullen Upton.
First, per the panel’s ninth recommendation, all applicable report card measures would be considered in a sponsor’s academic rating (one-third of the overall evaluation). The proposed use and weighting of all report card components concerns us greatly. We strongly recommend that the department limit itself to using Performance Index and Value-Added measures—both of which are used in Ohio law to identify “high-quality” and “low-quality” charter schools already—and not rush into using an overall rating formula that hasn’t yet appeared on school report cards. We also urge ODE to weight value added more heavily when analyzing the performance of a sponsor’s portfolio, as it more accurately reflects the academic contributions of schools regardless of their student population—a critical feature, given that charters typically serve students from our most disadvantaged communities. Without this change, it’s highly unlikely that any sponsor would achieve more than two out of four points on the academic component.
Second, we recommend that you reconsider the scoring requirement for the compliance section. While all sponsors should be monitoring all laws and regulations, 100 percent compliance may be impossible to reach and should not be the requirement to gain maximum points in that category. Consider the 100 percent proficiency goal in No Child Left Behind: As it became clear that virtually no school would achieve that target, the benchmark soon became irrelevant and was treated with contempt. By setting the compliance goal at 100 percent, a similar threat exists. A high rating on the compliance component should be rigorous but still attainable.
Third, it’s important to understand the policy ramifications of moving forward with the panel’s proposed scoring rubric. The legislature put in place incentives for exemplary sponsors in HB 2, but as drafted, we believe no sponsor could achieve exemplary status. We are not suggesting that the evaluation system be weakened—it must be a rigorous and transparent process; however, its design and potential consequences must be carefully considered. If the highest rating is not achievable, then the incentive structure set up for sponsors simply won’t work. Just as it doesn’t make good policy sense to design a teacher evaluation system where no teacher in the entire state earns a highly effective rating, or an accountability framework where not a single school gets an A, the same is true for our sponsor evaluation system. Of note, we do support the panel’s recommendation to increase the performance threshold in future years to attain an exemplary rating.
Sponsors are the linchpin for overall charter sector quality in Ohio. The department must hold them accountable for the performance of the schools in their portfolio, their compliance with laws and regulations, and their adherence to high-quality practices. It is absolutely essential to get the sponsor evaluation system right; the long-term success of the sector depends on it. Thank you for the opportunity to provide our feedback. I welcome your questions.
