Article: Charter schools not thorough and efficient

Columbus Dispatch, December 17, 2005

Here we go again. The Dispatch is signaling the Ohio Supreme Court on how to rule on the charter-school case. This case, like the DeRolph schoolfunding case, invokes the "thorough and efficient system of common schools" clause of the Ohio Constitution. The Dispatch tried to instruct the court in the DeRolph case that the determination of thorough and efficient is the sole prerogative of the legislature.

In the Monday editorial "Innovation on trial," The Dispatch warned that the court once again may be tempted to dictate education policy. The court did not dictate education policy in De-Rolph. The court reviewed the evidence and found: "All the facts documented in the record lead to one inescapable conclusion: Ohio’s elementary public schools are neither thorough nor efficient." The court ordered the state to give the school-funding system a complete systematic overhaul. That is a far cry from dictating education policy.

The Dispatch says that the Constitution is silent on the meaning of thorough and efficient. The delegates at the 1850 and 1851 Constitutional Convention set forth not just a system of common schools, but a "thorough and efficient" system. The proceedings of that convention indicate that the debates regarding the provision for education were enthusiastic and explicit regarding the role of the state and the kind of system intended. Words were carefully and thoughtfully chosen. A dictionary in use in 1851 defined thorough as perfect.

Currently, thorough is defined as absolutely complete and efficient is defined as effective. Hence the system must be unconditionally complete, effective and, as perfect as can be devised — a stark contrast to the current unconstitutional system.

Ohio has the reputation and the reality of having one of the most inequitable systems of public schools in the United States. The gross inadequacies in the system are indisputable. It is unconscionable that the legislature, as the editorial stated, "declined to meet the court’s mandate and, lacking any recourse, the court reiterated its demands, then declared the DeRolph case closed." The legislature’s contempt of court should be condemned, not applauded, by The Dispatch. If the court rules any or all of the charter-schools statutes unconstitutional, would The Dispatch encourage the state to decline to meet the court’s mandate?

The DeRolph decisions gave the legislature the perfect opportunity to make a quantum leap toward a thorough and efficient system. But, instead of overhauling the school-funding system for the benefit of all the children of all the people, the legislature enacted legislation, through the 1998 and 1999 biennial budget, to privatize part of the system by creating charter schools. Ohio’s privately operated, publicly funded charter schools are outside the parameters of the one thorough and efficient system of common schools envisioned by framers of the Ohio Constitution.

The patchwork of schools functioning in the early 1800s had no semblance of uniform standards of governance and operation. This situation spurred the framers of the 1851 constitution to mandate a uniform statewide thorough and efficient system. The current charter-school experiment has the potential of fragmenting schooling to the point it was during the pre-1850s era. The quest for a thorough and efficient system of common schools may well give way to the same kind of chaos and confusion of early schooling in Ohio. The current well-documented academic deficiencies of charter schools will be extended to multitudes of Ohio schoolchildren.

The publicly funded, privately operated charter schools have not shown to be innovative. They often merely have taken shortcuts that compromise educational opportunities. Therefore, The Dispatch’s concern that a ruling of unconstitutional "would put a damper on innovative attempts to reform or challenge public education" is unfounded. State government should focus on fixing the one system for the benefit of all rather than establishing questionable alternatives. WILLIAM L. PHILLIS Executive director Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding Columbus