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Education News for 11-02-2012

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State Education News

  • State Board of Education: Voters to fill 7 seats on Tuesday (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Like a game of musical chairs, two members of the Ohio Board of Education are running for a seat representing Franklin, Delaware and Knox counties…Read more...

  • ACLU getting involved with Celina pro-gay shirt issue (Lima News)

    • The controversy over T-shirts supporting gay rights at Celina High School has attracted the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Students put bullies on alert (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Consider them the neighborhood watch of Baldwin Road Junior High School. As part of the school’s new bully patrol, about 60 students are monitoring the building for any sign of kids who are calling names…Read more...

  • Technical problems ironic at meeting (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Mayor Michael B. Coleman’s third education briefing yesterday was to focus largely on new online technologies that could bring the most-skilled teachers into classrooms…Read more...

  • Cuts To Come In December If Licking Heights Levy Fails (WBNS)

    • Dozens of school districts are asking for more tax dollars in next week's election. But one community says its cuts will begin in less than 30 days, if voters say "no."…Read more...

Editorial

  • Burden on the schools (Akron Beacon Journal)

    • As many as 194 Ohio school districts have levies on the ballot on Tuesday, 123 of them seeking new money for facilities or operations. Whether they come from small, suburban districts or large urban systems…Read more...

Ohio charters are solving the wrong problem

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NPR has begun what looks to be a very interesting series of articles on charter schools in Ohio.

In 1998, Ohio opened its first 15 charter schools. There are now more than 300, and they’re enrolling more than 100,000 primary and secondary students. Ohio is paying upwards of $500 million to support those schools. But as charter schools have grown, so have divisions between them and traditional public schools.

The whole piece is worth the time to read. As charter schools are given ever greater license to expand and spread, they are coming under ever greater scrutiny. A handful of charters, with a few failing might be seen by most as no big deal, hundreds of charters with dozens upon dozens failing begins to stand out in sharp relief.

One hundred and twenty charter schools in Ohio have collapsed over the last 13 years. They owe the state millions of dollars in audit findings.

Considering there are only 300 charters in Ohio, that's an astonishing number. When you couple that with terrible academic performance and the catastrophic failure of e-schools in Ohio, maybe greater attention to charter reform is needed.

The great promise of charters was supposed to be their ability to innovate without the shackles of regulation. Instead, charter operators and their sponsors have used the lack of regulation in order to drive down the costs of providing education, which in turn has driven down the quality. Why is it, free from regulation, no charter or sponsor has decided to try and replicate successful education models used in countries like Denmark? Here's Diane Ravitch talking about our race to the bottom, and the alternatives

The corporate influence on the charter movement isn't creating excellence in education through innovation, it is simply driving out quality by drivning down costs. That's decidedly NOT the problem charters were sold to Ohioans as trying to solve.