In recent days, Imagine Schools – a for-profit charter school chain in Ohio – have come under increased scrutiny for questionable business practices in their lease agreements. An analysis of data that can be found at dev-oea-kyc.pantheonsite.io shows that Imagine Schools are not performing well, and in fact compare poorly with Ohio’s lower- performing charter schools.

Background and Funding

Imagine Schools are for-profit operations. They have 16 schools in Ohio – the 5^th largest operator of charter schools in the state, and the third-largest for-profit operation. In the 2012-2013 school year, 15 Imagine Schools received $43,834,002 from Ohio taxpayers. A relatively small portion of those public dollars, $6,893,202, came from school districts that performed worse on the state’s report card than the Imagine Schools. Nine of the 15 schools didn’t take any money from lower performing districts.

Performance

The overall performance of the Imagine Schools is near the bottom of the struggling Ohio charter school sector. Nearly 70% of all Imagine Schools’ grades are D or F on the 2013-2014 state report card. Imagine Schools receive a slightly higher percentage of Fs and Ds than charter schools overall. They also earned a slightly smaller percentage of A’s than other charter schools.

However, compared with traditional public school districts, the performance of the Imagine Schools is truly inferior. The average Performance Index Score in Imagine Schools is 73.8 – about 5 points lower than even the average charter school. That score is lower than all but one school district. The average district score is 99.1. The difference between the Performance Index Score for the average school district and the Imagine Schools is the equivalent difference between the state’s top scoring school district and the 573^rd highest district. There are 612 school districts in Ohio. Meanwhile, more than ½ of all school district grades are A or B. Nearly 70% of all Imagine grades are D or F.