After the passage of House Bill 9, which grants funding for charter schools and designates Northern Kentucky as the likely spot for a pilot program, education leaders are no longer talking about the demand for charters, but the possible pitfalls of having one and how to overcome them.
During the 2022 legislative session in Kentucky, lawmakers passed House Bill 9, marking the first time charter schools were granted a vehicle for funding in the state. The bill also outlines plans for a pilot charter school, and the parameters point to Northern Kentucky – specifically Kenton County – as the most likely candidate for the new school. The bill faced opposition from Democrats and a veto from Gov. Andy Beshear, but the Republican majority overruled Beshear and sent the bill through.
Lynn Schaber, a resident of Newport, said other states’ charter school mistakes and scandals have painted perceptions, leaving little room for success stories.
Around eight years ago, some of Ohio’s charter schools made headlines for misleading data and fraud. Other institutions faced sudden closures that left students and parents stranded mid-year. HBO host John Oliver called out Ohio charters in an episode of “Last Week Tonight” that aired in 2016.
After slamming Pennsylvania’s loose charter school laws, Oliver turned to Ohio.
“I’m not even sure Pennsylvania deserves to be called the worst, because Ohio’s charter law was, for decades, so lax that even charter advocates have called it ‘The Wild West,’” he said, citing a 2014 Cleveland Plain Dealer article.
He went on to give examples of “huge problems with lack of oversight” when it comes to Ohio charter schools, like Lisa Hamm, the former superintendent of Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy. She was accused of misspending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on personal purchases and vacations, one of which included a trip to see Oprah Winfrey. She claimed the purchases were school-related, but an anonymous tip to the state auditor ultimately led to finding more than $520,000 in public money was misused.
Hamm pleaded guilty to three of the 26 charges she faced and was sentenced to probation in November 2014.
Since those incidents came to light, Ohio has tightened its oversight of charter schools, but those missteps are still reflected in Kentucky’s hesitancy for charters. It’s why Schaber says the “hatred for charter schools runs pretty deep,” but parents are still looking for alternatives to the area’s public schools that aren’t parochial academies.
“I think it’s unreasonable to think that one school or one school district can meet the needs of every single student, right?” Schaber said.
Colleen Grady, senior program officer for educational options and policy at the Ohio Department of Education, said one of the most important measures the state has taken is tightening restrictions on charter school sponsors.
Grady said sponsors are responsible for “monitoring compliance with state laws and regulation,” and that those sponsors themselves are evaluated. She said there are more than 300 laws that are “checked with charters every single year” and “there is no similar kind of compliance audit for districts.”
In the pilot charter program, Northern Kentucky University is named as the authorizer. In other possible instances, publicly elected school boards will be the authorizers of Kentucky charters.
Former Boone County Superintendent Randy Poe has worn many hats in education, and in May Beshear appointed him to executive director of the Northern Kentucky Education Council. In Poe’s view, accountability and transparency for public dollars are two main ingredients for charter schools’ success.
“These are public dollars that are being used, and we need to make sure that the books are open and transparent to everyone,” Poe said.
He added that Kentucky’s law is written so that only certified educators can teach in charter schools, eliminating a problem some institutions have experienced with under-qualified teachers. Though the language does not skirt the issue of a teacher shortage that Kentucky and the majority of the U.S. are experiencing right now.
Schaber, who once tried to establish a charter school in Northern Kentucky, said the intention is to have experts in their field come in and teach, but this stipulation still allows for those experts to visit and give a guest lecture.
Poe also said charters need to be measured by the same means their public school counterparts are – with standardized tests and similar academic results – and that funding should be equal, too.
“We’ve got to make sure that whatever metrics we put in place to monitor public schools should be the same metrics that we use for monitoring charters,” he said. “If you’re not holding them to the same standards as public schools, then how do you measure the results that a charter school in and of itself could be better than an existing public school?”
Schaber now works with a group of parents under the Newport Education Task Force. They’re a watchdog group that wants to see improvements in the Newport Independent Schools system. She said the group recently released a report that shows the Newport Independent School District has some of the highest paid administrators in the area paired with the lowest academic performance.
Although the group was not well received by the school board last year, she said this year they were willing to meet with them and hear their suggestions.
Test scores are a common thread among parents who want to send their children elsewhere, and Schaber said it’s partly why she and other families are “excited” about the possibility of more public school options in the area.
Charter school advocates have also promoted the idea that competition for the area public schools will garner better results all around.
But Poe pushed back on the idea that competition equates to success.
He said because Kentucky’s charters will be required to serve all students regardless of previous academic performance, they will “see the same academic results” as their public school neighbors unless they find the means to meet students’ social and emotional needs.
“Until you remove the trauma of poverty that is brought with a student to whatever setting they’re doing, six hours in a classroom on a daily basis is not going to change the traumatic world of that student,” Poe said. “So we can talk about competition all we want, but until you take care of the basic social needs, that student can’t learn.”
But Schaber said higher expectations call students from all backgrounds and life experiences to higher achievement.
“I think that one of the mistakes that we make in many of our current schools is not having high expectations for the students, no matter where they come from,” Schaber said. “The research and data prove over and over again that it doesn’t matter if they’re poor or rich, or what ethnicity they come from. If from day one you have high expectations on how they behave and what they are capable of learning in school, children will rise to that occasion.”
The primary themes among Poe, Schaber and Grady came down to accountability and measuring success. However, Grady warned Kentuckians to be patient as these pilot programs gain their footing.
“It takes a little time to refine things and determine what works better than something else. I don’t think we should ever hesitate to tweak or change direction if it becomes apparent that there is a better way,” Grady said. “What it looks like on day one is going to look different from day 500, so give it time.”