Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Charter school futility in Ohio  
September  2, 2011 

The state has to find a better and more timely way to put poorly performing charter schools out of business. 

As it stands, Marcus Garvey Academy in Cleveland is to shut down -- but not for the shoddy bookkeeping, questionable spending or phony test scores that state education officials previously uncovered at the school. And it’s not closing until June 30 of next year -- for poor test scores on recent Ohio report cards. 

Also facing shutdown at the same time, and for the same reasons, are Elite Academy of the Arts, also in Cleveland, and Lighthouse Academy in Akron. 

The timing is atrocious, leaving students to fend for themselves for an entire academic year in a failing school slated to close. 

Ohio school officials get report card scores early in August, weeks before school begins. Surely they can move faster to quarantine the worst schools and give parents options before the school year starts. 

Neither state nor federal law requires early warnings to parents that their schools didn’t make the cut, but if education officials don’t address the problem themselves, the law should be changed to force them to. 

Parents at the three doomed charters should head for the exits now and get their youngsters into better schools -- and state and local officials need to facilitate those efforts. 

Garvey’s new leader, Stanley Miller, vows to “fight like the dickens” to keep the school alive. Maybe he can improve it before the lights go out, but according to the state, this charter has run out of chances. 

Yet the state will allow it to prolong the academic agony for a full year, and to what good purpose? A bonus year for a school with no future is an indefensible waste of resources and of students’ precious time. 

Read it at the Cleveland Plain Dealer