The Ohio Department of Education put out their full report card data yesterday, without the bells and whistles, pending an ongoing, and increasingly suspect, investigation of data manipulation being done by the Ohio Auditor. The information release yesterday reveals that once again, charter schools are outperformed by their public school counterparts. Significantly. Just a few highlights:

• On the state’s performance index score, charter schools score an average of 78. That is a lower score than 92% of Ohio’s 3,070 traditional public school buildings that receive a performance index score. So the average charter school would rate in the bottom 8% of traditional school buildings and only 5, not 5%, 5 (or .8%) of school districts.
• Ohio’s traditional public schools graduate nearly 90% of their students, on average. Charter Schools graduate barely 30% on average.
• The average proficiency rate in an Ohio school district on the 24 subjects tested is 85% while only in 4 of the 24 subjects does the average School District have a proficiency rate below 80%. Meanwhile, charter schools score above 70% proficient in exactly 2 of the 24 tested subjects (they score exactly 70% on one).The average proficiency rate in a Charter School is about 60%.
• The average building in the Big 8 Urban districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) has a higher performance index score than the average charter. Again, proficiencies are linked almost perfectly with poverty, as demonstrated here and here. Yet the Big 8 is able to outperform charters, even though buildings in the Big 8 have significantly higher poverty rates.

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