Bill Phillis, leader of the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition, is a dedicated advocate for equitable funding of public schools. He reports here that charter schools–many of which are very low-performing–receive nearly $1 billion a year.

He writes:

Total payment to charter schools is $903,344,671.24 as of the January 2014 report. This is a one-year figure.

You may wish to examine the State Report Card at http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/School-Search.aspx. You must enter a charter school name in the search box on the right hand side.

Ohio has spent $1.4 billion on charters that never received a C or higher on the report card and/or scores below the average performance index score for Big 8 Urban buildings.

Initial estimates show that Ohio has spent about $1 billion on charters that have closed for a variety of reasons since the 2002-2003 school year, only 25% of that can be attributed to charters that were…