• • Notes from the CEO Bill Sims
• • An Invitation to the Reception at the National Charter School Conference in Atlanta, Georgia
• • OGT 2011 Preliminary Results
• • Know Your Accountability Data Workshop - June 30, 2011
• • OAPCS presents "Creating State Level Dashboards to Promote School Quality" at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools Conference in Atlanta
• • Charter School Job Fair
• • Second School Leader Consortium
• • The Georgia Supreme Court Decision and How it Might Affect Ohio's Charters
• • TFA Founder and CEO Speaks at Cleveland City Club
• • University District Children's Defense Fund Freedom Schools Program

FREE Summer Workshop on Nanotechnology for High School Teachers in Columbus

Tuesday, June 15, 2011   8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
http://www.nsec.ohio-state.edu/teacher_workshop.html

This day-long program includes a hands-on workshop with experiments and a tour of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center facilities. Participants receive a nanotechnology kit valued at $150 and a certificate of workshop completion for 8 contact hours. The workshop is free, but there is a $30 registration fee.
 
Registration form is available at http://projectgro.osu.edu/NSECflyer2011.pdf
For more information, email nsec@osu.edu

Advocacy

Events

Quality Values and Principles

Charter School Law: Good News Pending

I’ll never forget an experience I had several years ago at a national meeting of charter school association leaders. The topic was charter school law. Someone had printed out in separate stacks the specific code from 10 leading states with charter school laws. The point of the display was (I think) to show the differences in complexity, density, and perhaps, succinctness; I can’t remember for sure. I do remember, however, that Ohio charter school law was the winner when it came to the total thickness of pages.

But thickness and density don’t tell the whole story. Trying to “crack the code” also requires an appreciation and patience for the diction and semantics associated with law; and, especially in the case of Ohio’s community school law, the derivative language that sends you into the vast reaches of other Ohio revised code.

How do charter school leaders and volunteer governing board members ever fully comprehend this code and the accountabilities that are embedded within it? The answer is that very few do.
 
At the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, we deal with this language on a daily basis and it’s a challenge. Our dream of a “Cliff Notes” of Ohio community school law has, until this summer, been unfulfilled. But we have some good news. At the end of this summer and with the help of four smart and industrious interns from the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, we will be publishing a layman’s guide to Ohio community charter-school law. Stay tuned.

The Budget Bill

The bill has cleared the House with their amendments; and, the bill has cleared the Senate with their amendments. But the differences between the House and Senate versions of the state budget bill still have to be worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee must reconcile these differences and have the bill ready for the Governor’s signature by June 30, 2011. So we wait for that process to work itself through. 

In the meantime, the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools has published a summary of the bill’s provisions prior to Conference Committee. That summary went out to members at the end of last week but you can access it on our web site here.  If you have any questions regarding these pending provisions, please don’t hesitate to call Stephanie Klupinski, OAPCS’s VP of Government and Public Relations.

Bill Sims
President and CEO
Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools
(614) 744-2266

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2011 OGT preliminary results were recently publicly released on the ODE website. The verification and appeal process is underway, and application of the Where Kids Count Rules will adjust final results that will appear on the Local Report Card (see information on the OAPCS June 30th High Quality Workshop “Know Your Accountability Data). However, we couldn’t help but begin to assess Ohio Charter School Performance.
 
The following schools BEAT the STATE passing average on three or more OGT subject areas:
Dayton Early College Academy (5)
Toledo School for the Arts (5)
Horizon Science Academy Cleveland (4)
Horizon Science Academy Columbus (4)
Arts and Science Preparatory Academy/ACPA (3)
Muskingum Franklin Local CS (3)
Patriot Preparatory Academy (3)
 
The following schools OUTPERFORMED their local district average on three or more OGT subject areas:
Arts and Science Preparatory Academy/ACPA (5)
Dayton Early College Academy (5)
Horizon Science Academy Cleveland (5)
Horizon Science Academy Columbus (5)
New Day Academy & Day HS (5)
Patriot Preparatory Academy (5)
The Charles School at ODE (5)
Toledo School for the Arts (5)
West Central Learning Academy (5)
Arts Academy, Lorain (3)
FCI Academy (3)
Sciotoville Community School (3)
 
We congratulate your hardwork and amazing outcomes!

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Ohio’s charter schools can assure that their school year 2010-2011 data is complete and accurate by attending the Know Your Accountability Data workshop on June 30, 2011. This workshop will help schools preview the 2011 Local Report Card rating and fix any mistakes prior to the final EMIS processing. Marianne Mottley from ODE’s Office of Accountability will take participants through the Secure Data Center, so participants should bring their Secure Data Center login information and laptop, to be able to follow along and view their own school’s data. Please complete the registration form by June 24. Click here to learn more. Click here to register. If you have questions about this workshop, please contact Jenny Wall at (614) 744-2266 or jwall@oapcs.org.

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Marianne Lombardo, OAPCS Vice President for School Performance and Accountability, will be presenting at the National Charter School Conference in Atlanta on Tuesday, June 21st, from 3:45 to 5:00 pm in Room A315 of the Georgia World Congress Center. Marianne is partnering with colleagues from the Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS) in DC and from the Wisconsin Charter School Association. The presentation will show how to turn publicly available school performance data into interactive, easy-to-read data dashboards that compare schools to one another and to district averages. Marianne is very happy to have found a place to share her obsession will data, graphs and charts!

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The Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools (OAPCS) is aware of how challenging it can be to develop a good pool and pipeline of high-quality teacher candidates for open teaching positions. In an effort to help with this talent search, the OAPCS is giving consideration to a Charter School Job Fair next April (2012). The Job Fair would be held on a Saturday in Columbus and invitations would go out to charter schools from all over Ohio to set up a booth to meet with teachers looking for employment in an Ohio charter school.

Booth costs
$300 for OAPCS members
$500 for non-members

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September 23rd, 2011 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

OAPCS School Leader Consortium is an informal gathering of professionals. Its agenda is the product of its members. The OAPCS provides meeting facilities and a conference bridge for those interested in participating by phone. There are no costs with consortium membership other than membership in the OAPCS.  

OAPCS School Leader Consortium was created to provide a forum for charter school operators to discuss common advocacy, operational, technical, and academic issues. It is also a forum for sharing best practices and school innovation.

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By OAPCS’ Legal Interns

The recent Georgia Supreme Court decision in Gwinnett County School District v. Cox has created a stir in the charter school world. In a 4-3 decision, the court held that commissioned charter schools are not “special schools” (the only alternative to the public schools system permissible under the Georgia constitution) and that the Charter Schools Commission Act of 2008 was unconstitutional. Confused by the decision or the effects it might have? OAPCS’ Legal Interns have broken it down.

Background

In Georgia, the local districts have nearly exclusive authority to administer K-12 education. The only caveat to this grant of power is for schools termed “special schools” that offer an education for those unlikely to have their needs met by the typical K-12 programs. Special schools are administered by either the state or local district and include vocational schools, schools for exceptional students, and adult education schools.

Georgia passed its charter law in 1993. Under the initial state law, all charters had to be approved by the local school district in which they were located. But there was evidence that local school boards were disapproving the charter school petitions of well-qualified applicants.

In 2008, the Georgia legislature, responding to concerns that well-deserving charter applicants were being denied, passed the Georgia Charter Schools Commission Act. Working under the assumption that charter schools were included in the constitutional definition of special schools, the Act created the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, which was made up of seven members, nominated by elected officials and appointed by the state board of education. The Commission was granted the power to authorize a charter school even if the local district had denied the petition. (Prior to this act, all charter schools in Georgia were approved by and received funding from local school districts.) After the Commission was created, sixteen charter schools received approval and either opened or planned to open this upcoming school year.

There are currently over 110 charter schools in Georgia, serving about four percent of the state’s student population. The majority are sponsored by districts. Although the move to allow charter schools to be created by the Commission helped schools bypass some resistance from districts, it also created a significant problem: the constitutional authority of the commission charter schools was on shaky ground because K-12 education was the exclusive authority of the local district.

Legal Issue

The Act allowed the Commission to create alternative schools to the public system under the “special schools” clause of the Georgia Constitution. Charter schools were seen as alternatives to public schools because the charter schools enroll the same K-12 students who would otherwise attend public schools. Local school districts brought suit, alleging that charter schools created by the Commission did not meet the “special schools” definition and therefore the Georgia Charter Schools Commission Act was unconstitutional.

Holding

The Court found that the 2008 Commission Act was unconstitutional and that charter schools created by the Commission did not fall under the “special schools” provision of the Georgia constitution. The schools created by the Act, called “commission charter schools,” are distinct from a state-created charter school and charter schools approved by the local school district. It was thus only these sixteen commission charter schools that were found to be unconstitutional; the other charter schools, authorized either by the local school districts or the Georgia Department of Education, were not affected.
    
The Supreme Court of Georgia held that the definition of “special schools” was limited to the types of schools identified in earlier versions of the Constitution, namely vocational, special education, and gifted schools. Therefore, any school created by the Commission that did not fall into one of these three categories was unconstitutional. Because the purpose of the Commission was to create schools other than those considered “special schools,” the Georgia Charter Schools Commission Act itself was unconstitutional.

Discussion

The Georgia education system requires local administration of K-12 schools. The issue in Gwinnett County revolved around the state, through the Commission, usurping control over the creation of charter schools from local districts. These charter schools provided K-12 education to local students while using local funding. The Georgia decision gives power back to these local school districts. The local schools boards have the sole power to organize and administer K-12 education, which includes approving and funding charter schools within their geographic boundaries.

This decision profoundly affects the sixteen Georgia charter schools that were approved and funded under the Commission Act. The schools will now have to apply to the Georgia Board of Education as state-chartered schools and will lose any local funding they previously received. Two of the affected schools have already been approved. Meanwhile, the Georgia Supreme Court recently denied a motion by the attorney general and the affected charter schools to reconsider its decision.

What does this mean for Ohio?

The decision of the Georgia Supreme Court is only binding in Georgia, but it may be persuasive to the courts if a similar challenge to community schools arises here. The most likely way for this to happen is if Ohio community schools seek to increase their funding through local revenue. Generally, community schools in Ohio are funded only with state dollars. Community schools only receive funding from the local school district if they are sponsored by that local school district or created through the conversion of an existing school by the local school district.

A concern among Ohio’s community school supporters has been funding inequity between local district schools and charter schools that results from most community schools not receiving any local aid. On average, community schools in Ohio receive about 30% less funding per pupil because they don’t have access to local tax revenue. Any attempt to reduce that funding disparity through a process similar to the Georgia Charter Schools Commission could have similar constitutional problems here, especially after the 2006 Ohio Supreme Court decision in State ex rel. Ohio Congress of Parents and Teachers v. State Board of Education.

Since the state of Ohio funds education on a per pupil basis, any attempt to reduce the inequity of funding can only be accomplished by changing per pupil amounts at the state level. Ohio does not, however, have the power to reallocate local funding to charter schools on a per pupil basis like Georgia had before the Gwinnett County ruling. If Ohio wanted to fund its traditional public schools and charter schools equally, it would need to restructure funding for education so that the state government controls all funding for Ohio’s schools instead of the partial share of funding currently in place.

OAPCS is following the developments of this case in Georgia and will provide our members with any additional information as to how it might affect us in the future.

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Wendy Kopp, who wrote perhaps the most famous college undergraduate thesis in American history, spoke to a full crowd at the Cleveland City Club on June 6. As a senior at Princeton in 1989, Kopp was convinced that many in her generation wanted to make a real difference in the world and that top college students would choose teaching over more lucrative opportunities if a prominent teacher corps existed. And so, the idea of Teach For America was born, a domestic corps program that brings talented recent college graduates from any major to commit to teach for two years in some of the nation’s most underserved schools.   

During Teach For America's first year in 1990, 500 men and women began teaching in six low-income communities across the country. Since then, Teach For America's network has grown to over 28,000 individuals (including OAPCS’ VP of Public Affairs, Stephanie Klupinski) who teach in places ranging from rural Mississippi to New York City, from Chicago to native reservations in New Mexico, from Hawaii to Rhode Island. And hopefully, that list of places will soon include Ohio. In April, Governor Kasich signed legislation that would remove the barriers that had previously prevented TFA recruits from working in Ohio.

During her City Club speech, Kopp spoke of the importance of quality teachers who have high expectations and a commitment to ensuring their students succeed. As an example, she described one particular New York City teacher—Meagan Broussau—who refused to accept others' assumption that her students could never pass the challenging New York Regents Exam. Meagan worked tirelessly with her 112 students, through lunches, after school and on Saturdays, and inspired them to work harder than they ever had before. Ultimately, Megan and her students did make history: every one of her students passed the exam, and they outperformed city-wide averages.

Unfortunately, as Kopp noted, there are not enough Megans to fill our struggling schools. Schools need high-quality teachers, but, as Kopp emphasized, that the real change needs to happen at the systemic level. “We can recruit high-performing graduates into low-performing schools and it doesn’t work right away,” she explained. “We have to set them up for success and build a culture that will bring people up.”

To do that, districts and states must work together to raise achievement levels for all students. Also, transformation requires comes dynamic leaders who embrace ambitious visions and commit themselves and their staffs to accomplishing goals—and they do whatever it takes to do so.

Kopp’s far-reaching educational goals challenged everyone in the audience to think creatively about education reform. OAPCS is thrilled that TFA is considering expanding to Ohio in 2012. Its passionate and talented recruits are exactly the type of teachers that Ohio’s charter schools need.

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By Lindsay Nichols

It’s that time of year again! School’s out and it’s time for lazy days by the pool, spending time with friends and family and... Reading? Yes, reading. At least for the students enrolled in the University District Children’s Defense Fund Freedom Schools Program. The Freedom Schools are summer academic programs designed to address inequities in education and literacy issues with minority children. The University District’s Freedom Schools run from June 20 to July 29.

However, the Freedom Schools are not your ordinary summer academic program. This program aims at teaching kids to learn to love to read, with the hope that from the love of reading, essential literacy skills will follow. The best part? It’s fun! This is a “high quality [program with an] academic literacy focus, but also so much fun,” says the Freedom School’s executive director April Blaine. Blaine is also a full-time co-pastor at Summit United Methodist Church, in addition to being the Freedom Schools’ executive director. The Freedom Schools include all grade levels and are “exciting, high energy, and motivational.”

The Freedom Schools happening this year in the University District are just one part of a large movement. The original Freedom Schools can be traced back to 1964 Mississippi where, as part of a nationwide civil rights project, schools were set up for volunteer teachers (usually college students, usually white northerners) to teach African-American students literacy skills and how to become active citizens in their communities. Those schools, and their commitment to social justice, inspired the modern day revival of Freedom Schools in the 1990’s. The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) is part of a large network of offices that recruit various organizations like churches and schools to spearhead these programs.

This summer, central Ohio will host nine Freedom Schools; two of those will be in the OSU University District. Maynard Avenue United Methodist Church and Summit United Methodist Church have paired up to create a six-week program for one hundred pre-K through 12th grade students. This program specifically targets children in the University district, and with only a few spots still open on their roster, Blaine expects that the program will be full by the time school opens. The Freedom Schools also have a team including Site Coordinator Grecca Walker, Project Director Mark Reed, and several college interns from the Ohio State University who will be teaching the classes. Additionally, the program utilizes reading volunteers from the community. Several local government workers, members of Columbus companies, and even OAPCS’s own Stephanie Klupinski have signed up to be volunteer readers.

The goals of the program revolve around literacy and empowerment. The Freedom Schools seek to engage the students with the reading material through family programming, creative lessons and partnerships. For instance, the OSU chapter of the 4-H program will assist with starting a garden and OSU art students volunteered to lead the students in art projects. The actual reading materials emphasize that the children are vital members of their community and they have a voice in that community. Every day starts with Harambee (Swahili for “let’s pull together,”) thirty minutes of singing, dancing and cheering that motivates the students to start the day.

The Freedom Schools would not be possible without donor and community support. Blaine cites the Columbus Foundation, OSU, the United Methodist Church, OWU, the Education Fund and the Ingram-White Castle Foundation and private donations as generously giving almost all of the funding needed for the Freedom Schools.

Blaine is already planning for next summer’s Freedom School and welcomes charter school involvement! This year, several students are hailing from Columbus Collegiate Academy and the Freedom Schools are a great opportunity for other Columbus-area charter schools to become involved with for the coming year.

If you can’t wait that long to get involved, the Freedom Schools still have a few needs. They are about $1,000 away from being fully funded and are always accepting volunteers. See summitumc.org/freedomschool for more information or contact Mark Reed at markreed@summitumc.org.

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