Washington, D.C.- Today, Governor John Kasich signed into law Senate Bill 216 (SB 216), a bill that will bring more transparency and accountability to full-time virtual charter schools in the Buckeye State. Among other provisions, SB 216 requires full-time virtual charter schools to automatically un-enroll students who miss a certain number of consecutive unexcused hours and creates a legislative committee to make recommendations on a performance-based funding model for virtual charter schools. A report from that committee is due in late 2018.
National Alliance President and CEO Nina Rees released the following statement in response to Governor Kasich signing SB 216 into law:
“We applaud the Ohio legislature and Governor Kasich for taking these important steps to ensure full-time virtual charter schools are more transparent and accountable. The underperformance of too many full-time virtual charter schools calls for state lawmakers to take bold action to improve the performance of these schools. SB 216 is an important step in that direction. It is important to keep at the forefront of our focus the students whose individual needs can be uniquely served by full-time virtual charter schools and ensure that these options are of the highest quality.”
About Public Charter Schools
Public charter schools are independent, public, and tuition-free schools that are given the freedom to be more innovative while being held accountable for advancing student achievement. Since 2010, many research studies have found that students in charter schools do better in school than their traditional school peers. For example, one study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University found that charter schools do a better job teaching low income students, minority students, and students who are still learning English than traditional schools. Separate studies by the Center on Reinventing Public Education and Mathematica Policy Research have found that charter school students are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, stay in college and have higher earnings in early adulthood.
About the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools is the leading national nonprofit organization committed to advancing the public charter school movement. Our mission is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter sector. For more information, please visit www.publiccharters.org.
