Wasting taxpayer money

The Ohio school district "report cards" came out for 2004-05 yesterday. I'm going to be using the figures linked on the front page of www.ohio.com. The Akron/Canton area has 12 charter schools, of which 8 (66.7%) were given "academic emergency" ratings (the lowest rating available; the ratings being "academic emergency", "academic watch", "continuous improvement", "effective", and "excellent", in order from worst to best), and one other was given an "academic watch" rating. Only one received an "excellent" rating, andit has the lowest enrollment of all (25 students) and is in the suburbs of Canton.

As a comparison, among Ohio's "Big 8" districts (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown), only 3 (37.5%) are rated on "academic emergency" and two others on "academic watch". Akron itself is on "continuous improvement", and Canton on "academic emergency".

To refine the comparison, of the charter schools in the Akron area, 6 of 9 are on "academic emergency" while one is on "academic watch", one on "continuous improvement" and one on "effective". That means of 9 charter schools around Akron, only one had a better rating than the public schools did. For Canton, there are 3 charter schools. Of those, there is the one rated "excellent", and the other two are rated on "academic emergency", which means one is better than the public schools, and the other two are worse.

Why should our tax money be funding vouchers to send kids to these schools when they test WORSE than the public schools they're supposed to be superior to?