Classical Charter School Under Fire… for Teaching All Kids to Read
As one of the most powerful political lobbies in the country, the education establishment excels in coordinated attacks to stifle competition. Now they are so threatened that they are taking aim at a new classical charter school in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I proudly serve as board president of Cincinnati Classical Academy, a thriving school in its second year located less than a mile from the Cincinnati Public Schools district. Our school was recently attacked by the Network for Public Education (NPE), an anti-charter advocacy group, alongside numerous public school unions, activist groups, and Democratic politicians, including Congressman Greg Landsman. These anti-choice factions are pressuring the U.S. Department of Education to rescind a competitive $2.0 million federal grant that was awarded to Cincinnati Classical this year.
Their reasoning? The NPE's letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, which was promoted and amplified by The Washington Post, absurdly accuses Cincinnati Classical of falsifying test scores and neglecting underserved students.
But their real gripe is likely the exact opposite: the fact that underserved students thrive at our school. The truth is that all students excel at Cincinnati Classical and benefit from our teacher-led instruction, content-rich curriculum, and strong school culture. All students are given such an advantage—no matter their circumstances—that Cincinnati Classical Academy ranked top in the state in academic achievement in its first year of operation.
Cincinnati Classical is located just a couple miles from socioeconomically and ethnically diverse neighborhoods and school districts in Hamilton County. However, contrary to the NPE’s claims, the exact location is trivial and accidental when the enrollment geography is considered. Evidencing the high demand for public classical education, the school draws its current 600 students from 60 different ZIP codes, 35 school districts, and six counties – far beyond Cincinnati Public Schools and Hamilton County. As a public school, we accept and serve all Ohio residents who apply, if seats are available, including those who are economically disadvantaged and those who require special education. Yet, with over 400 students on the waiting list, school capacity has not kept pace with demand.
Hence, to expand capacity and serve more students (the purpose of the grant mechanism), Cincinnati Classical prepared an 885-page application in a matter of weeks and secured this monumental $2.0 million reimbursable award in September. In a high-stakes competition with grants awarded to only 14 schools, Cincinnati Classical earned the highest score among all recipients – the best in the country.
The NPE tries to undercut this success with the lazy but serious accusation that Cincinnati Classical falsified test scores to obtain the grant. Simple fact-checking, which they ironically accuse the reviewers of neglecting, would have shown the opposite to be true: the application underestimated the school’s performance. It reported preliminary data from the Ohio Department of Education with higher proficiency rates not just for the school, but also for the state averages.
For example, the finalized data reported by Ohio shows that the 3rd-grade reading proficiency was 92.5% for Cincinnati Classical, compared to 62.3% for the state. That’s a 30-point gap, much wider than the application’s report of 94% vs. 78%.
Data later released by Ohio further confounded the NPE’s story. They show that, in fact, Cincinnati Classical ranked #1 of all 259 public charter schools in Ohio in early literacy and #3 in overall achievement. The school even topped most district public schools in early literacy, ranking #4 in southwest Ohio among all public schools. Indeed, these results are seemingly unbelievable for a school in its first year of operation!
Yet results don’t lie. Cincinnati Classical has achieved what anti-charter activists fear most — success. So, instead of learning from the school’s success, the education establishment kicks into gear to defend its political power and crumbling monopoly on public education. They re-double efforts to defend their professional adult interests, instead of advocating for families and students.
And this highlights the worst part of the assaults by the NPE and Post: they are disingenuous. The authors imply that Cincinnati Classical should serve more disadvantaged students, yet their factions have no interest in our doing so.
The local public schools have repeatedly thwarted our school’s attempts to secure a permanent campus (we currently lease), and now Congressman Landsman, the Cincinnati NAACP, and others are asking that education dollars (meant to benefit their constituents!) be returned to Washington, DC. If they want to help underserved students, they should be promoting classical education or volunteering to help us establish more schools. Instead, using projection as a political tactic, they accuse us of a crime that perhaps they have committed: failure to serve disadvantaged students.
When threatened, entrenched interest groups react in predictable ways. They deflect attention from the problems they’ve created and then project their own deficiencies onto others. They deploy emotional and fact-free arguments against those who challenge their power and institutions. This case is no different.
The Post’s article, which The Cincinnati Enquirer later echoed, was supposed to be an attack on Cincinnati Classical Academy. But it has had the opposite effect of highlighting the school’s success and kick-starting our open enrollment season. We are grateful that these anti-charter activists have finally succeeded – inadvertently – in advertising public classical education to ever-wider audiences. We remain steadfast on the side of families and students, grounded by the words of Sojourner Truth, as written in the school auditorium: “The Truth Is Powerful and It Prevails.”
