71 Percent of Ohio Corporate Welfare Charter Schools Failing

Mr. White Hat, David Brennan, must be in full spin mode this evening with the release of OEA's 2006 Charter School Report. It would seem that Ohio parents might be in the mood to send Brennan in search of a real job, rather than continuing to subsidize his leeching of public education dollars to run his for-profit educational sweatshops. Here is part of the press release for OEA's 2006 Report:

• 297 Charter schools are currently operating in Ohio, enrolling more than 72,000 students.

• One of every 25 public school students attends a charter school.

• Overall, charter school enrollment for the 2005-2006 school year increased 15 percent over 2004-2005 levels, reflecting slower growththan the 40 percent average annual increase of the previous four years.

• For the 2004-2005 school year, 71 percent of charter schools were placed in either academic watch or academic emergency, up from 57 percent for the 2003-2004 school year.

• Local Report Card results show that traditional public schools outperform charter schools in each of the state's 21 proficiency and achievement tests.

• Charter schools will receive $487 million in state foundation payments for the 2005-2006 school year and, by the close of the school year, over $1.7 billion dollars since the program's inception.

The report concludes with the following call for a legislative probe of charter schools: "We hope members of the General Assembly will read the report, probe its underlying data and conclusions and adjust the charter program in a way that promotes better academic performance, a narrowing of achievement gaps, more thorough testing of charter school students and a genuine look at how charter schools have affected public school funding. Without that re-evaluation this experiment will continue to put a generation of public school students and charter school students at risk." A copy of the report is enclosed and can also be found on the OEA site at http://www.ohea.org.