October 5, 2007

Something’s Fishy At Eduwonk [Updated]

Filed under: Education by Leo Casey @ 3:57 pm

Something is fishy about the complaint of Eduwonk’s Andy Rotherham that Ohio teacher unions are out to do in all Ohio charter schools. He writes [we'll include the whole post so it is clear that nothing is being quoted out of context]:

I’m shocked….shocked, that the teachers’ unions in Ohio are working with the AG there against charter schools. Actually, not so much. Perhaps I’m tone deaf on Ohio politics but while people keep emailing me this Columbus Dispatch story and also this AP one outlining the collaboration, what’s the big surprise here? This stuff will come back to haunt Democrats, especially with minority voters, but that’s a longer time horizon story.

That said, there are some really lousy charter schools in Ohio, but the teachers’ unions there are against all of them, lousy or good. And that’s too bad because there are ways to boost quality and provide more options for students and parents.

We actually read the two articles which Rotherham cites. They talk of teacher unions working with the Ohio Attorney General “to go after [three] failing charter schools” [Columbus Dispatch] and of teacher unions suggesting to the Ohio Attorney General the strategy of bringing suit against “a string of underperforming charter schools… three of the privately operated, tax-funded schools in Dayton” [Cleveland.COM/AP].

Maybe we count differently here in New York City, but we have a hard time understanding how a law suit against three low performing charter schools — and there are a great many more low performing charter schools in Ohio than three — constitutes being “against all [charter schools], lousy and good.” Rather, it seems to make exactly the sort of differentiation Rotherham says he supports.

We would also think that if anything would come back to haunt a politician, Democratic or otherwise, it is failing to take action when a school is failing. If charter authorizers in Ohio were doing their job, there would be no need for the Ohio Attorney General to intervene: the schools would have closed down already.

UPDATE:

Rotherham responds here.

On the particulars, all we can say is that if the Ohio teacher unions were “the most vocally concerned” about the UFT starting two charter schools, they must have been talking to everyone but us, and privately too, since we did not see anything in the public record.

There is no question that Ohio teacher unions have been quite vocal about Ohio charter school law, but that has something to do with the law — which is quite different than New York charter school law. Here we have two authorizing entities — the Regents and the SUNY Board of Trustees — and they have been pretty diligent about ensuring the quality of the schools they authorize. By contrast, Ohio is the wild, wild West of charter school authorizing, where virtually any not for profit corporation can become an authorizer; consequently, entities like White Hat Management, politically connected to state Republicans, are running large numbers of failing schools across the state with little or no oversight and consequences. The Cleveland Plain Dealer did a thorough analysis of the situation. It would seem that the least of the problems Ohio charter schools face is the criticism of teacher unions.

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  • [...] Casey of Edwize does a nimble job of refuting Edwonk’s assertion that the Ohio Education Association and Ohio Federation of Teachers are [...]

    Pingback by Columbus Education Association » Blog Archive » Education: Week In Review — October 6, 2007 @ 8:57 am

  • I agree completely with Leo on this one; there are quite a few more failing charters in Ohio than just these three, but these are exemplarary in their failure.

    Comment by misterhayes — October 6, 2007 @ 9:06 am

  • [...] October 05, 2007 Say Anything! Over at Edwize Leo Casey is all upset with this statement from this post:”…there are some really lousy charter schools in Ohio, but the [...]

    Pingback by Eduwonk.com: Say Anything! — October 6, 2007 @ 10:27 am

  • Rotherham is ducking and dodging. You busted him again for his union/teacher bashing. He obviously is not really interested in charter-school accountability, but just trying to score a few points against unions. BTW, aren’t Chester Finn and the Fordham Foundation running a string of Ohio charter schools? Aren’t they also double-dipping as charter authorizers? Why doesn’t Rotherham mention them? How are Finn’s charters doing, I wonder?

    Comment by mklonsky — October 8, 2007 @ 11:52 am

  • [...] charter schools. That was the crux of our recent exchange with Eduwonk’s Andy Rotherham. [See here and here.] As a general rule, the world of charter school advocacy approaches every criticism of [...]

    Pingback by The Defense of Public Education, Democratic Change And Charter Schools | Edwize — October 14, 2007 @ 7:53 pm

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