Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > September > 24 > Entry
A little secret about Dann’s war on charters
Marc Dann
Overall, the charter school movement in Ohio is very concerned about Attorney General Marc Dann’s move this month to sue low performing charter schools with the goal of closing them down. The rumor is that Dann has a list of about 40 schools that eventually will face lawsuits.
The big fear is that this is just the first phase of a war on charter schools. Proponents of charters have long worried about this new Democratic administration. The feeling is that Gov. Ted Strickland and Dann would just love to close all the state’s charter schools. Neither has actually said they want to go that far, but Strickland did initially seek a moratorium on new charters back in March.
Still, Dann’s posture on charter schools is tough for many proponents. It hits them where they live. That’s because the true believers in the charter movement don’t like low performing schools either. Quietly, some will even tell you they wouldn’t be sorry to see the lowest performing charters close. Even if it’s the attorney general — someone they view as an enemy — who does it.
In fact, I’ve heard some grudging admiration in pro-charter corners for Dann’s tactics. His legal argument is novel and interesting, taking on the schools’ status as “public trusts,” a legal designation that is under the attorney general’s purview. And he was smart about the schools he targeted.
Notice he has picked schools that have been around and therefore have a pretty long track record of poor performance. That makes them harder for the pro-charter crowd to defend. Dann also so far has only targeted charters that are not affiliated with big national management companies, which means the schools he sued won’t have deep pockets to fight back in court.
Overall, the move is seen as a political attack among charter proponents. Some of them have even filed public records requests seeking correspondence with teachers’ unions to see just how closely this move was coordinated with them. (The union agreed to drop lawsuits against the state over charters after Dann took his action.) And some see his choice of three Dayton schools as initial targets as a slap at the very pro-charter Republican House speaker Jon Husted, who hails from the Dayton suburb of Kettering. I did ask Dann’s spokesman about this complaint last week and he flatly denied politics played a role in the attorney general’s actions.
Even so, the charter school crowd has mobilized to fight Dann as a defense of the movement in general. But the truth is many of the movements leaders, including Husted himself, have been saying for a few years now that consistently low performing charter schools only hurt the argument for charters as a reform and should be shut down.
One interesting comment I never got into my stories about this because of space limitations came from Todd Haines, who heads the Ohio Department of Education’s charter school monitoring operation.
Haines said there already are several checks on charter schools in Ohio, including a new mechanism that would shut down consistent low performers starting in two years. He said he was not at all bothered by Dann’s actions.
“The attorney general is pursuing one avenue under the authority of his office and we have some under our office too,” he said. “If this is another avenue of accountability, we welcome that accountability.”
If not for politics, is it possible that charter critics and proponents could see that they actually want the same thing here — to close down low performing charter schools?
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice
Comments
By Caroline
September 27, 2007 6:41 PM | Link to this
DPS schools can’t and won’t be effective until parents and students take responsibility. We have parents who are impossible to reach all school year. When a student is failing, I have tried to arrange meetings with the parents, the counselors, the school nurse, and the teachers. We are lucky if we can get a parent to talk on the phone with us. Sometimes, they will refuse to talk to the teachers at all. However, they start calling at the end of the year if there is any chance that their child will miss graduation. They will buy their child expensive gowns or tuxes, and rent limos for dances. However, they won’t even buy the child a pencil. Yes, schools need to be held “accountable.” However, the school boards and legislatures need to start putting more accountability on parents.By lou
September 27, 2007 4:00 PM | Link to this
If you want accountability you need to see how many parents are taken to court because their children are not in school. If a district does not meet the state indicator for attendance the court system in that district should be held accountable not the teachers. I am sorry that I cannot educate children that are not at school or have been up all night because their parents don’t send them to school or don’t put their children in bed at night. It takes a community not just a teacher. Stats show that for every % increase in attendance is another state indicator. Read John Uphoff’s research on attendance and state report cards.By Laura
September 26, 2007 10:35 PM | Link to this
Tom apparently believes that the failure of the inner city schools to effectively educate their students is at least, in part, the fault of the teachers. Since Tom (and his wife) are veteran teachers from successful school districts, perhaps they should volunteer to come to Dayton and teach the rest of us how it is done. Interestingly, Tom does not mention one part of the equation who has the most control over how successful the children are- the parents. As DPS and other urban teachers continue to be the scapegoats for the failures of so many others, a system is being created that cannot attract well educated, dedicated teachers. Teaching in the inner city is hard enough without constantly being told how incompetent you are, when so much of what you are given to work with is out of your control; yet you are judged on it. For the life of me, I can not imagine why anyone would choose to teach in the inner city. The pay is lower than many other districts, the working conditions are atrocious, the lack of appreciation is evident from everyone around.By ohdave.net
September 26, 2007 10:32 PM | Link to this
The problem I see with Tom’s argument is that charter schools do have a negative impact on public schools by drawing funds away from them. If charters are going to draw funds away from public schools in order to find new solutions and more successfully educate students from high-poverty districts like Dayton, then that investment is worth the money. If not, then charters are doing a double disservice: failing to help the students they serve, and drawing precious resources away from already struggling public schools.By David
September 26, 2007 5:26 PM | Link to this
Tom’s criticism of the shutdown of ineffective schools that are charter schools is that the law already will shut them down. That probably will be as prompt as the legislature’s fixing of the funding formulas and funding the public schools per the Supreme Court’s decisions during the last 15, or is it 20, years. It won’t happen. If we want to spare excess spending we could get rid of 90% of the legislators because all they do is what their political party prompts them to do. I personally and as a taxpayer am glad to see the plundering of state funds for schools desired by Republicans, conservatives, parochial schoolers, those who hate the teachers’ unions, those who don’t want to pay taxes to support the structure to educate others’ youngsters, etc. The post reads like something from that side of the issue trying to mascquerade as reason. Someone has to take the reins and start controlling the excess spending. If you don’t want the students to go back to DPS, they can transfer to any other school they want by living there or being accepted on open enrollment. Go Dann Go.By Dave
September 26, 2007 5:07 PM | Link to this
Scott, since Tom is a former state Board of Education member, I have to ask what responsibility he shoulders for the current situation. Did he make a positive difference, or did he fiddle while Rome burned?By Scott Elliott
September 26, 2007 3:10 PM | Link to this
Some interesting thoughts in the prior comment from a former Dayton-area state board of education member. Anyone have any reactions to Tom’s take on Dann’s actions?By Tom
September 26, 2007 2:25 PM | Link to this
As you know, Mr. Marc Dann, Ohio’s Attorney General, recently filed a lawsuit seeking to have three Dayton-area charter schools shuttered due to their underperformance. Observers have posited several criticisms of Mr. Dann suit; first, existing state law already requires the timely shutdown of underperforming charter schools and thus, Mr. Dann’s lawsuit only serves to hasten this at considerable expense to Ohio’s taxpayers and an already overburdened judiciary; second, Mr. Dann has overstepped his bounds by attempting to use the judicial branch to perform the role that is traditionally within the purview of the legislature; and third, Mr. Dann’s suit is designed to appease the state teachers’ union, most likely for his personal political ends. Any or all of the foregoing criticisms may be valid, but one thing is certain: Mr. Dann’s suit is not about helping the students at underperforming charter schools that Mr. Dann has targeted. It is doubtful that Mr. Dann could argue that students at these schools would be in better academic circumstances if they were transferred to the Dayton Public School District. After all, Dayton Public School District is ranked as the third worst performing school district in the state, and is currently languishing under “academic watch” status according to its most recent evaluation by the Department of Education. Underneath its glossy veneer, Mr. Dann’s lawsuit seems to represent nothing more that a politically-motivated tantrum by a staunch opponent of charter schools. In my opinion, the debate between the proponents and opponents of charter schools has become so polarized that both sides have lost sight of their goal, which ought to be the successful education of Ohio’s children. The reality is that neither charter schools nor traditional schools are a panacea for the educational needs of our state’s inner-city children, and Mr. Dann’s lawsuit is not going to change this unfortunate fact. Instead, it is likely only to harden the positions of both sides and further harm the students enrolled at the schools targeted by the lawsuit. If Mr. Dann really wants to do something for Ohio’s students that will assist them with the tough task of succeeding in today’s global economy, he should file his lawsuit against all three branches of our state government, the state school board, all those local school boards with at least one failing school, the principals and other administrators of failing schools, and all of the teachers that teach at these schools. Perhaps such a suit could force a comprehensive evaluation of what needs to be done to correct our state’s deplorable problem with education. We, the citizens of Ohio, need to do a better job of educating our children. In order to do that, we must first admit that our current approaches are failing. Once we admit our failures, we can focus on formulating effective, proactive solutions that are directed toward improving the lives of our state’s young people rather than miring their futures in protracted and wasteful litigation for the sake of political gain. Mr. Dann is right to no longer tolerate underperforming charter schools, but it is nonsensical for him to target failed charter schools while leaving similarly failed traditional schools unscathed. I challenge the citizens of this state to not remain idle while Mr. Dann abuses the judicial process for his own anti-charter school agenda. What we really need from our state’s leaders is a concerted effort to improve student achievement among our needest children. As a voting public, we need to choose leaders who will not abuse their authority, but rather will use it to cut-through the many excuses proffered by those individuals who are responsible for our state’s underperforming schools, both charter and traditional.By Aisha J. Saunders
September 26, 2007 10:37 AM | Link to this
Why target low performing charter schools? Close all low performing school be they traditional public or charter. More time and money should be spent on programs with a track record of improving students performance.By Jim
September 25, 2007 4:28 PM | Link to this
“Close down the low-performing charter schools…” But that’s most of them. They were to perform far beyond those awful public schools that the religious/republican/conservatives hate to fund. And they were to do so with less money because, well, just because they knew better how to educate. An acquaintance talked about how far behind students were that transferred into her district from charters, and from parochials. That’s an historic problem noone wants to write stories about.