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Reporting on the state of education in your community and across the country.

House Bill Reforms Charter Schools, Critics Say Bill Falls Short

Brian Bull / ideastream

The House is taking a shot at reforming charter schools in Ohio.While several Republican leaders are praising the bill as comprehensive -- others believe the legislation falls short.When newly elected House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger addressed the media earlier this year to lay out his legislative priorities—reforming charter schools was on the list.Chad Aldis with the pro-charter school group Fordham Institute said Rosenberger stayed true to his word by passing House Bill 2.
 

“House Bill 2 is a serious effort to look at the problems that some of our charter schools are experiencing and addressing them,” said Aldis.According to Aldis—the bill increases accountability for charter school sponsors, offers more independence for governing boards, and provides more information behind the contracts that operators enter in to.During debate on the House floor Republican Representative Mike Dovilla of Berea praised the bill.“In the spirit of ensuring quality educational options for all students, House Bill 2 offers viable, meaningful, comprehensive improvements to Ohio’s community schools’ statutes,”Dovilla said.When the bill started out in committee, most Republicans and Democrats seemed on-board with the proposals. However, some Democrats said they could no longer support the bill after undergoing several changes—including Representative Teresa Fedor of Toledo.“In a sense we were all ready to vote yes but when that hit the computer screens that really changed a lot of our minds,” Fedor explained.Fedor’s talking about a change to the language that weakens regulation against what’s known as “sponsor hopping.”This is a when a sponsor is ready to pull support from a low-performing charter school—so the charter school switches to another sponsor before they lose funding.A previous version required the Ohio Department of Education to oversee any sponsor hopping. That provision got cut.“But what happened was language was put in to in a sense provide a loophole so that these charter schools we’re trying to help move the ball into high quality—found a loophole. So they can sponsor hop again,” said Fedor.While Aldis says the bill is a good step towards weeding out the rare bad actors—he admits the weaker rules against sponsor hopping caught his attention as well.“It is important as we build in this new structure for charter school sponsors that we don’t create an environment for schools—if a sponsor is getting a little bit tough on them—don’t jump to another sponsor that still has somewhat lower standards,” Aldis said.About a dozen amendments from Democratic representatives were shot down in committee. The main argument for tabling the proposals was that there are instances when some charter schools should be considered private entities.Stephen Dyer is the education policy fellow for the liberal-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio. He says this is a looming dynamic in the charter school reform debate that needs to change moving forward.“We need to make it absolutely clear that these are actually public schools and not by just calling them public but by having the duck actually quack and walk like a public entity,” said Dyer.That House bill now moves to the Senate where that chamber has already been discussing its own set of reform measures.