2022 Fordham Sponsorship Annual Report - Letter from the Vice President for Sponsorship

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Sarah

Letter from the Vice President for Sponsorship in the 2022 Fordham Sponsorship Annual Report reviews how sponsored schools navigated the pandemic’s academic, social, and emotional aftermath from 2019 through fall 2022. It summarizes Ohio assessment trends, chronic absenteeism pressures, and learning recovery priorities including high-dosage tutoring, enrichment, mental-health services, and summer school. The letter also highlights enrollment growth, revisions to the accountability framework, and a new alternative framework used to evaluate building-level performance.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time1 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

Letter from the Vice President for Sponsorship

Who we are

Our Mission

What we do

Portfolio performance

Directory of schools

Appendix: Academic and organizational accountability plan

Sources

Letter from the Vice President for Sponsorship Friends, In preparing to write this letter every year, I look over the most recent two or three annual reports to get a sense of where we were, the issues and challenges that we confronted, and our successes and victories, and I reflect on how we navigated it all. My cover letter for the 2019 annual report focused on the state budget, funding, charter-specific legislative changes, and shifts within our portfolio of sponsored schools. The 2020 letter was filled with uncertainty, following spring 2020 school shutdowns and very tenuous fall 2020 school reopening plans—most of which were delayed or riddled with additional closures throughout the year. In 2021, schools were open and grappling with substantial student learning loss, unreliable transportation, gaps in the food supply chain, and large-scale student chronic absenteeism rates due to new coronavirus waves and quarantine guidance at the time. Here we are now in the fall of 2022, out of the depths ofthe pandemic but still contending with its academic, social, and emotional repercussions. As my colleagues at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute reported in September, spring 2022 Ohio assessment data were a mixed bag and show that while students are still behind where they would have been prepandemic, some gains are happening, especially in English language arts and mostly in lower to middle grades. Students fared substantially worse in math, in which subject they are generally half a year to a full year behind. The schools in Fordham’s sponsorship portfolio were not immune from these challenges. Most of our schools had chronic absenteeism rates above 40 percent last year and, like most schools throughout the country, had more students absent for longer than usual to comply with federal, state, and local health department guidance. We expect absenteeism numbers to decline this year—though that depends on districts getting their acts together in terms of providing reliable transportation, as required under Ohio law. Results from our own portfolio largely reflect what we’re seeing statewide: achievement remains stubbornly low, though some of our schools showed impressive progress in terms of Ohio’s growth and gap-closing measures, all detailed in the pages that follow. Learning recovery and student social and emotional support remain priorities for the schools that we sponsor. Most have continued to consistently implement strategies such as in-school and after-school high-dosage tutoring, enrichment activities, mental-health services, and summer school. Three other developments are worth mentioning. First, school enrollment portfolio-wide has steadily ticked up, from 5,500 students in last school year to just over 6,100 in October 2022. Second, we revised our accountability framework to reflect Ohio’s new star rating system; it is included in the appendix of this report. Finally, four of our schools now have an alternative accountability framework included in their contracts. The alternative framework was developed during the pandemic, and the 2022–23 school year is the first that we’ll be collecting and analyzing the data. The purpose of the alternative framework is to have measures of school performance that differ from those on Ohio’s report card. Primarily, this was developed because we have several schools that have a single sponsorship contract, a large student population, and more than one facility. Under Ohio’s current accountability system, all the data across all locations roll up to a single report card, making it difficult to determine building-level performance; using the alternative framework allows us to do that. As with any new and large project, we expect we’ll keep somethings and change some things, but we’re excited to see the framework go from concept to reality. Stay tuned. 1 | 2022 FORDHAM SPONSORSHIP ANNUAL REPORT To close, I want to thank our colleagues who are teaching, leading schools, providi

FAQs

How did the report describe conditions facing sponsored schools from 2019 to 2022?

It traced shifting challenges across those years, culminating in fall 2022 outcomes shaped by the pandemic’s ongoing academic, social, and emotional repercussions.

What did the letter say about student performance in Ohio assessments?

It reported that students remained behind pre-pandemic levels, with stronger relative gains in English language arts and weaker outcomes in math, where students were generally about half a year to a full year behind.

What accountability changes did the letter highlight for the 2022–23 school year?

It noted revisions to reflect Ohio’s new star rating system and the introduction of an alternative accountability framework in some school contracts to better measure performance beyond a single roll-up report card.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Sarah