Questions about the Columbus Plan (HB 167)
Posted June 26, 2013 in Press Releases
Mayoral sponsorship will add bureaucracy even as the Commission seeks to streamline administration and increase accountability within the school district. These proposals are built on quick fixes and trendy ideas, not on the solid, sustainable kinds of solutions students, parents, and educators need in Columbus.
For immediate releaseContact Piet van Lier, 216.361.9801Download statement
In December 2012, Mayor Michael Coleman convened the Columbus Education Commission (CEC), made up of 25 representatives from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, to consider the challenges facing Columbus City Schools. Among a set of sweeping changes it proposed in April, the CEC recommended legislative action to establish the mayor’s office as a charter school sponsor and to allow the Columbus schools to share property tax revenue with charters.[1]
Neither the CEC report nor House Bill 167, the Columbus Plan legislation that has moved quickly through the General Assembly, address the many costs and questions associated with the plan.
Charter school sponsorship
The Columbus Plan authorizes the mayor’s office, with the approval of the Columbus City Council, to sponsor charters located in the district. Giving this authority to an entity with no education-related infrastructure or experience is an abrupt, unprecedented change in Ohio law. Proponents suggest mayoral sponsorship will increase the number of good charters in Columbus by allowing the mayor’s office to recruit the best charter models to the city. They also assert that it will bring more local accountability to Columbus’ charter sector. These proposals raise the following concerns, which have not been addressed in the debate about the Columbus Plan.
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Authorizing the mayor’s office to sponsor charter schools does not increase local control. Since control would extend only to schools signing a contract with the mayor’s office, it is not clear how these changes will decrease the number of failing charters. The mayor’s office will have neither the power to close existing charter schools in the district nor to prevent new start-up charters from opening under different sponsors.
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Sponsors do more than recruit charter schools. Sponsors monitor the academic and fiscal performance of charters and their compliance with charter school laws; as Policy Matters and others have documented, many Ohio sponsors fail to meet basic requirements.[2] This highlights the difficulties of sponsorship, the ways that Ohio law provides an incentive for sponsors to keep low-performing schools open, and the problems of maintaining quality charters in a system that lacks strong accountability measures.[3] Presenting the sponsorship role as primarily about recruitment oversimplifies the role of sponsors.
- The mayor’s office lacks educational expertise. Unlike the Columbus school district and other sponsors, the mayor’s office has no expertise that it can draw on to oversee and support charter schools. HB 167 marks the first time an entity with no background in education will be allowed to sponsor Ohio charters. Currently, eligible sponsors include school districts, educational service centers, state universities, and qualified nonprofits with an “educational orientation”