THE
OHIO EDUCATION GADFLY: SPECIAL EDITION
A Bi-Weekly Bulletin of News and
Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Volume 4, Number 16. July 8, 2010
Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Frontlines
In Fordham's customary role as a bumptious ed-reform think tank and advocacy shop, it's unusual to engage in the real work of transforming schools and educating children. But our home state of Ohio has blessed us with many opportunities to get down and dirty in real-world education-reform struggles affecting real kids in a real place. Not the least of those opportunities has been our sobering, eye-opening work as an authorizer of charter schools in the Buckeye State.
Humbling might be a better term for this experience. One of our sponsored schools imploded in a fashion worthy of a Greek tragedy. The W.E.B. Dubois Academy in Cincinnati was visited by the (then) governor, lauded in the U.S. Senate (as a praiseworthy example of a school narrowing achievement gaps), and cited in a Seattle newspaper as a prime example of why Washington State voters should approve a charter school measure then on the ballot. But fast forward a few years and the school's dynamic founder was pleading guilty to five counts of theft in connection with charges that he misused school funds and services to improve his home. The school he founded was closed--for weak academic performance--just last month.
And that painful saga is just the tip of our experiential iceberg in Ohio, where we've learned the hard way that think-tankers don't always fare well in the rough and tumble of politics, organizational interests, and human frailty. Expert theories don't always hold water, either, and the ivory tower perspective doesn't necessarily translate into real gains for schools and children.
We examine these lessons in Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Front Lines. This new book recounts our efforts to reform urban education on the ground, beginning in Dayton; to help launch new schools; to fix broken older schools; to assist needy families to make their way into better education options and to duke it out with powerful institutional resistances, reform-averse politicians and adult interests bent on maintaining the status quo. (You can find excerpts online at Education Next and can obtain the book itself--at a discount--here.)
A main thread through this story is the evolution of charter schooling in Ohio, home to four of the nation's top ten charter cities. This form of school choice has been fought over since 1997. Every year, more bills and regulations have been proposed to reshape Ohio's charter program. Some measures would strengthen it, others stunt it. Charter-school policy in the Buckeye State today resembles a multi-layered archaeological site with relics from many past civilizations heaped atop one another.
Ohio is one of just two states where nonprofit organizations like ours may sponsor charter schools. (Minnesota is the other.) Sponsorship--aka authorizing--is probably the least understood element of the charter world. How outfits such as ours function in that capacity is unmapped terrain. Much of this book chronicles why we became a sponsor and what we've encountered in this role since 2005.
Yet there's more to this story than charter schools. It is also a saga of school reform--and the prospects for economic renewal--in a key state in America's old industrial heartland, and in a once-proud city now buffeted by profound economic, demographic, and social changes. Dayton and Ohio are struggling on multiple fronts, but nowhere more visibly than K-12 education. And nothing is more crucial to their revitalization than transforming the quality of their human capital, the performance of their schools, and the vibrancy of their neighborhoods.
The issues, of course, transcend Ohio and speak to how America is dealing with the twenty-first century: issues of governmental competence and institutional effectiveness, public and private interests, economic renewal and international competitiveness, social justice and equality of opportunity, and, of course, the efficacy of academic standards and school choice as education renewal strategies.

In the book's concluding chapter, we share a number of lessons distilled from our work in Ohio and beyond. Here are some of the most compelling:
Read excerpts from Ohio's Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Front Lines here, watch a video interview with authors Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Terry Ryan here, and buy the book --at a discount --here.
by Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Terry Ryan
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The Ohio Education Gadfly is published bi-weekly (ordinarily on Wednesdays, with occasional breaks, and in special editions) by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Have something to say? Email the editor at [email protected]. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email [email protected] with "unsubscribe gadfly" in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward the Gadfly to others, and from our website you can even email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and would like to subscribe, you may email [email protected] with "subscribe gadfly" in the text of the message. To read archived issues, go to our website and click on the Ohio Education Gadfly link. Aching for still more education news and analysis? Check out the original Education Gadfly.
Nationally and in Ohio, the Thomas
B. Fordham Institute, along with its sister organization the Thomas
B. Fordham Foundation, strives to close America's vexing achievement gaps
by raising standards, strengthening accountability, and expanding high-quality
education options for parents and families. As a charter-school sponsor in Ohio,
the Foundation joins with schools to affirm a relentless commitment to high
expectations for all children, accountability for academic results, and transparency
and organizational integrity, while freeing the schools to operate with minimal
red tape. The Foundation and Institute are neither connected with nor sponsored
by Fordham University.