During the past four years in office, Republican Gov. John Kasich has been a steadfast supporter of school choice. In the final installment of our series on charter schools, StateImpact Ohio's Amy Hansen looks at the governor's views and policies when it comes to charters.
Right from his very first term, Kasich made his views on school choice--including charter schools--very clear.
"More choice, more accountability, more dollars in the classroom instead of bureaucracy will improve our schools, and we are going to have a significant reform agenda,” he said in his State of the State address in 2011.
Since then, the number of publicly funded, privately run schools has grown from around 325 schools to more than 370 today.
Those schools received strong financial support under Kasich’s latest budget proposal.
If the plan passes, high-performing charters would be able to tap into a $25 million fund to upgrade their facilities.
They could also partner with local public districts to get tax levy requests on ballots.
State charter spending would also hit almost one billion dollars a year--a point that doesn’t sit well with former Democratic state representative Stephen Dyer, who’s now with Innovation Ohio, a think-tank that’s been critical of low-performing charters.
“He’s certainly putting a lot of money into charters, and their performance has not warranted such generosity at this point overall," Dyer said. "Of course, there are high performers, but the increases to charters go to every charter regardless of performance.”
That issue of performance has been a controversial one during the Kasich years.
Thanks to a surplus of school sponsors and a lack of quality control standards, even groups that support charters have been critical of Ohio’s system, calling the state the “wild, wild west” of the country’s charter schools.
That’s something the governor acknowledged and pledged to fix earlier this year.
“At times Ohio hasn’t provided enough guidance and oversight for charters.," he said at this year's State of the State. "We’re changing that by cracking down on charter school sponsors who turn a blind eye to their failing schools. For the worst sponsors, we’re going to give their schools to better sponsors and we will ban them from sponsoring new schools if they’re not doing the job."
When it comes to charters, Kasich wants to crack down more on sponsors instead of schools directly.
Earlier this year, a charter review system went into effect, and under the governor’s plans, those who are rated “poor” or “ineffective” could possibly lose their schools or be barred from sponsoring new ones.
This kind of plan isn’t exactly revolutionary, says Rick Hess, an education policy analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think-tank.
“It seems to me that saying ‘we want to crack down on schools that are doing poorly’ is usually something that you can sell pretty easily," he said. "Especially if at the same time he’s talking about more funding and more support for charters that are serving children well, that certainly seems like a winnable fight.”
Over the past year in speeches, Kasich has repeatedly voiced his support for school choice but he hasn’t provided much detail beyond that.
“We need charter schools. We need ‘em, okay? Yep, we need ‘em," he said at this year's State of the State address.
"Some people don’t want any choice, okay, I get that, but I’m not going to create a system that eliminates choice because I think choice is healthy for our kids," he said at a visit to a Cleveland charter school.
“You have to have good schools," he explained while asked about his school choice views at a Washington D.C. luncheon in May. "I think choice helps it, and we engage in it, and, you know, it’s working pretty well.”
As the governor eyes a possible 2016 presidential run, he’s been testing the waters by making appearances in early primary states, including New Hampshire and South Carolina.
So far, his mentions of charter schools on the campaign trail have been limited.
Analyst Hess said that in a strong field of possible Republican candidates with a history of education platforms, Kasich may struggle to distinguish his views from the rest of the pack.