BuckeyeBlog

The state is ordering two charter schools closed for being chronic poor-performers. On the surface, that’s well and good. At least one of the schools, though, was a special education school, which raises questions well-rehearsed by the public district schools about what this performance data actually means. When such real consequences hit a public school, do they actually close? Color me skeptical. In fact, let’s pose that question: How many public district schools of similar performance have closed? Or are they all above average?

Students whose behavior is so poor as to embroil them in the Mahoning County juvenile justice system, including truants, will find themselves at a new school, Vindy.com reports.

It’s a charter school. Happens to be sponsored by the Mahoning County Educational Service Center, which already sponsors two others.

Too bad it’s only for the kids who are so poorly behaved that they are actually charged with crimes. What’s really needed is for a teacher to be able to put a student in an alternative school easily, for mere misbehavior. This is the single biggest issue behind problems in our large public schools. Change the equation so that it’s hard to stay in and easy to wash out, rather than a prison that you can’t escape from no matter how disruptive your behavior, and it will be remarkable how student attitudes will change.

The only tin note is the idea that they’re creating “education courts,” just as they have drug courts (and mental health courts). It’s not at all clear that we want this sort of judicial proliferation. What’s next? Debt courts? Eating bad food courts? Why don’t they start with Bad Judge Courts and see how they do there.

Youngstown teacher union boss Will Bagnola should be credited for candor in revealing the YEA’s true interests in thwarting kids from getting the education they need from a charter school. According to the Youngstown Vindicator:

Will Bagnola, teachers union president, said the Youngstown Education Association’s chief concern was that sending city kids to the charter school could result in job losses for teachers in the regular system.

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It’s pretty common to see home builders advertise on billboards around the outer loop of any city, certainly including Columbus. It’s common to see those signs advertising "Homes starting in the 110’s" and "Pickerington Schools", too.

A few years ago a would-be developer in Pickerington ponied up a few hundred thousand dollars, I think the initial figure discussed was something like $500,000, to help building new school buildings. It ended up being less, something like $300,000, still not chump change. (Sadly, the board of education, in its wisdom, folded the money into its $50 million budget, which meant that the large fund had no affect whatever on any student or anything done at the school, except that it caused the treasurer to write a slightly different sum in his projections than he otherwise would have.)

There’s a developer in Illinois who’s done something similar, except he was smart enough not to give it to a school board. He built a charter school instead .

Now there’s an impact fee Ohioans could live with.

The LA Times reports on a new study of charter school performance in the city of angels.  The study, conducted by the California Charter Schools Association, found that “charters in LAUSD outperform traditional public schools on a variety of student achievement measures.”  But, the interesting part of this story is not the study’s findings, but rather the response from the LA school system.

Ramon C. Cortines, L.A. Unified’s newly appointed senior deputy superintendent, said the report pointed to how traditional schools could learn from charters — a strikingly different attitude from that typically expressed by district officials.

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As S.B. 57, passed by the Ohio Senate, gears up in the Ohio House, there’s little doubt that the teachers unions, Democrat party and Gov. Ted Strickland will be angling toward the veto. The bill would establish scholarships for students with disabilities.

Strickland’s view is, “Funding private schools with public tax dollars deprives the state and its taxpayers of proper oversight .”

Yep. Proper oversight.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, a few free individuals are allowed to do what actually works, rather than report to bureaucracies and do the happy dance when their ignorance ratios move from 56 percent to 55 percent. Teachers, students, parents and those who care about getting actual things done for actual children have opened a school that avoids patterns in the decoration, installs obscuring, movable screens over mirrors - all things that are important to autistic students.

Autistic students gained their ability to benefit from funds spent for them several years ago, thanks to efforts by many people, including state Rep. Jon Peterson, R-Delaware.

Too bad students with other disabilities won’t be able to do the same.

The Reason Foundation makes a strong case for charter schools in this powerful video featuring Cleveland native Drew Carey.