Charter School Support in Dayton
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 By Matthew CarrOn Sunday, the Dayton Daily News published a thoughtful and fair editorial on the Governor’s plans to place a moratorium on charter schools and end the EdChoice program.
Gov. Strickland is right that Ohio’s charter school law has failed in important ways. But his solution — a moratorium — is wrong.
Ohio has a ton of charter schools, but the problem is not the number per se. The problem is that bad ones have not been shut down. Charter schools are, by definition, supposed to be free of some regulations, but that doesn’t mean the state should let anything go.
—
Maybe most important, the state adopted a requirement that charter schools with low test scores have three years to show improvement (as judged by nationally normed tests) or they must close.
These sorts of changes are better than a moratorium that would punish promising charter start-ups.
—
Ohio’s public schools are better today because of the competition charter schools and vouchers have created. The governor and public school advocates need to deal with that.
The Daily News is absolutely right in this respect – the program theory behind charter schools is sound, but the program implementation has been inadequate. The solution is not to put a moratorium on the program, but rather to fix the problems that have become apparent in time. The primary problem at this time is finding ways to create more high quality charters and weed out the lackluster ones. Though more difficult and complex, policy solutions to do this will produce more public value than a cap on all charter schools.
