When you say "those schools", do you means specifically the schools that closed? Or do you mean charter schools in general, that are still operating, and still producing better educated kids than public schools?
Again... *I HAVE BEEN* to those schools. I knew they exist, because I was there. I've talked to kids who at that time were learning stuff 4 years ahead of the public school, and I know this because I was in the public schools at that time.
As for tax payers being on the hook... remember we're talking about the parents of the students, who want their kids in better schools than the public.
Is the tax money those parents paid in, their money or not? Do you think parents should have a choice in where their kids go to school, or not? Should those parents be allowed to choose where their money goes, or not?
And just for a second, let's talk about the charter schools that closed.
You call that a failure. I call that market success.
You don't seem to understand how the market system works. A market system, doesn't promise that no business ever fails. What it promises is that bad business falls out of the market, and good business is promoted.
In the socialized government school system, no public school can fail and close. That's a failure for society. We continue to fund, massive amounts of tax money, into school systems that have absolutely horrendous education.
I would much rather have a few charter schools that did a bad job, fall out of the market and go out of business, than funding for decades on end, public schools that fail to educate.
Those charter schools that are gone, will never suck another dollar out of my wallet. Your object failure public schools, have been, and will continue to, suck dollars out of my wallet for decades. Entire generations of kids have been poorly educated thanks to your system, and at my expense.
n 2010 at age 17, Al Tonyo dropped out of a vocational high school in Cleveland but still wanted a diploma.
So, he enrolled at Life Skills High School of Cleveland, one of 77 publicly funded Ohio charter schools that markets itself as a flexible alternative to traditional public schools.
Then, he dropped out again.
Tonyo was no exception.
Charter schools such as Life Skills, operated by Akron-based White Hat Management and targeting dropouts, are sending Ohio spinning off in the wrong direction. Dropout rates nationally are on the decline, but Ohios rate is on the rise.
Granted, some dropout charter schools graduate nearly half of their students on time, a notable feat considering students enter these programs at least a year behind their peers in traditional high schools.
But thats not the norm.
Many dropout charter schools, including White Hats chain of Life Skills centers, consistently report single-digit graduation rates. Over the course of last school year, more students dropped out of Life Skills than attended on the average day.
Together, they are dragging down the states overall rate.
After charter schools received the largest funding boosts per pupil in the most recent state budget, state legislators are toying with the idea of giving them more money to fix Ohios dropout problem at a time when charter schools are reporting record-high dropout rates.
Unmotivated students
My parents had high hopes for me, Tonyo, now 22, said. But I wasnt able to grasp the bigger picture.
Tonyo said he lacked motivation, and it didnt help to be surrounded by fellow dropouts who shared his lack of enthusiasm.
It was a whole big negative experience. I didnt even want to be there, he said of his time at Life Skills.
Sixteen years ago, drop-out recovery charter schools didnt exist. Now they enroll roughly 14,000 teenagers and young adults, mostly in cities with high poverty and unemployment.
These students may be prone to dropping out. But charter schools especially struggle to retain and graduate them.
The state counts a dropout as an event, not as a person. If one student drops out three times in one year, that is three dropouts. It happens, a lot.
In the 2012-13 school year, more than 5,300 dropouts a quarter of all Ohio dropouts that year attended one of two online charter schools: the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow or Ohio Virtual Academy. Collectively, these two charter schools have a dropout rate 45 times higher than traditional public schools, and 10 times higher than the states eight largest city school districts.
Another 6,829 students * about a third of all Ohio dropouts attended charter schools designed specifically for dropouts, among them Invictus and Life Skills. Last year, these dropout charter schools enrolled one percent of Ohios public school students but accounted for roughly the same number of dropout events as did public district schools, which enrolled 91 percent of Ohios students.
Ohio?s charter school dropouts soar, push state in opposite direction of U.S. - Local - Ohio
That free market? It ain't free.
That's the follow up to the 2009 study. It shows the small gains. 
