The non-partisan group Education Voters of PA released a report this month on Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools. Here’s what the report says in a nutshell: Cyber charter schools don’t cost nearly as much to operate as traditional brick and mortar schools, yet they continue to siphon off more than their fair share of tax dollars from local school districts. What’s worse, cyber charter schools have an abysmal educational record, with lower outcomes than the overall state average and far worse than the outcomes produced by East Penn School District schools. These problems have been well known and well documented for years, but our representatives in Harrisburg continue to do nothing to fix them.
The report calls for just a modest change in how cyber charter schools are funded, so that their cost to local taxpayers matches the actual cost of educating a student from a home computer. Just this small change would save state taxpayers $250 million annually.
Here in East Penn, we’ll send almost $1.5 million local tax dollars to Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools this year to educate the approximately one hundred students in the community who choose these schools. The modest reform proposed by Education Voters PA would save more than half of that. Just to put these figures in perspective, that would be enough money that the East Penn School District could offer a tax cut this year.
I’m sure that, at least for a small number of students, cyber charters are the right choice for their special needs. But we’re paying far too much for far too little. Local taxpayers should not be required to pad the bottom line of the large corporations, like Pearson, that some cyber charter schools have hired to administer their programs, nor pay for the waste and mismanagement that has characterized cyber charters throughout the state.
Cyber charters are not accountable to the local community; they receive their licenses directly from Harrisburg. And– incredibly– they all continue to operate despite the fact that two thirds of them have expired licenses.
What can you do? First, consider asking your state lawmakers to finally enact cyber charter funding reform. After this, the most important thing you can do is vote in the next election for state candidates that will make a priority of fair education funding. Local and state elections have real consequences, and the inability or unwillingness of our current representatives to fix our broken educational funding system is just one great example of this. The problem is quite literally costing our community millions.
While it is important to verify that schools do what they’re supposed to be doing, I’m also a fan of all public school options. One of them, a cyber school, likely changed (saved) the life of an extended family member, who was a former EPSD student, by allowing him/her to graduate. I bet (s)he was below the median state average, both before and after transferring, but this allowed them (sic) to gain a much needed credential. Fortunately, this allowed this person to start college recently, which likely is something that no one would have expected. It would be good to understand exactly why disaffected people choose to be served by other schools whilst staying to live in EPSD.