What can Florida learn from Ohio’s charter school debate?

As the debate continues over improving charter school quality in Florida, it might be worth following developments in Ohio. Legislators there are working on an overhaul of charter school laws.

In essence, they seem to be driving toward the kind of grand bargain that at least some charter school operators and district leaders have been talking about in Florida: Stronger accountability to screen out unqualified schools, coupled with greater access to school facilities (which is a major hurdle, and source of financial stress, for charter schools).

Some issues in Ohio don’t apply in Florida. Ohio allows multiple authorizers, while in Florida, by and large, only districts can sponsor charters. “Sponsor shopping” isn’t really possible here.

Other elements at the legislation, and the debate swirling around it, could apply here. Take these two excepts from testimony by Andy Smarick, a longtime charter school advocate and consultant with Bellwether Education Partners. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently posted his comments on Ohio’s charter bill on its Flypaper blog.

On tracking the performance of charter school operators:

An important provision in the House bill is the development of a performance report for management organizations. Since Ohio has so many sponsors and so many community schools, it can be hard to assess the performance of a management company’s entire portfolio of schools if those schools are spread across the state. This new system of transparency would provide valuable visibility into the performance of entities running several schools. I’d encourage you, however, to ensure that this reporting system focus solely on outcomes and not inputs; that is, community schools and their operators should be held accountable for results, not micromanaged when it comes to practices.

On the difficulty of acquiring suitable school facilities:

In Ohio, community schools receive considerably less funding than district-run schools, lack access to facilities, and often have trouble securing reliable transportation for their students. State and local dollars should follow students to charters, charters should have access to fair transportation funding, and charters should have access to adequate facilities aid and/or have greater access to underutilized and un-utilized district-owned facilities.

More could be done to help high-quality charter schools access facilities. The new legislation has one strong element that would engage the Ohio School Facilities Commission in helping charters acquire suitable buildings. The facility assistance program would help cover up to 50 percent of the costs of projects for successful schools.

Another provision tries to encourage districts to make district-owned space accessible to charters. However, the bill would make this optional. It would also provide a state subsidy to districts that house charters in district-owned facilities. If the space isn’t being used, why would the state pay extra for a district to ensure that space is used to educate students?


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BY Travis Pillow

Travis Pillow is Director of Thought Leadership at Step Up For Students and editor of NextSteps. He lives in Sanford, Fla. with his wife and two children. A former Tallahassee statehouse reporter, he most recently worked at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, a research organization at Arizona State University, where he studied community-led learning innovation and school systems' responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. He can be reached at tpillow (at) sufs.org.