Pennsylvania has 16 full-time cyber charter schools. Of the twelve that have been around long enough to report on test scores, only one made AYP this year. Last year, two made AYP. Eight are in corrective action status. None has ever been closed. The other four were authorized earlier this year.
Last summer, the offices of the state’s largest cyber charter school was raided by the FBI, which apparently had many questions about where the money is going in an enterprise that collects more than $100 million every year. The board of that school fired its top staff but the investigation continues.
A review of the cyber charters by CREDO at Stanford University concluded that they get terrible results: their students have low scores, low graduation rates, and high attrition rates. A spokesperson for CREDO said: “whatever cyberschools are doing in PA is definitely not working and should not be replicated.”
But the cyber charters just keep growing, as they spend more and more money to recruit students and more and more money to lobby legislators.
So what does the future hold for cyber charters in Pennsylvania in light of evidence that cyber charters get poor education results and need greater oversight?
Eight more cyber charter schools just applied to the state for authorization.
The state auditor complained that the cyber charters overbill the state.
But aside from his report, has the governor or legislative leaders or the state commissioner of education expressed concern about the growth of the state’s lowest performing education sector?
Are you kidding? This is not about improving education. It’s not about “the kids.” This is the edu-business.
Charter schools are not the answer. Charter schools are just another magic pill, a promise of a fantasy that will continue to allow the average parent to be absent.
There is a three part equation that explains the education process.
1. Teachers teach (and students can learn from even boring teachers)
2. Students learn by paying attention to the teacher, asking questions when needed, doing class work, reading in class and at home, doing homework, studying, etc.
3. Parents support #1 and #2 by making sure the student has time and a place at home to study, read and do homework. That means leaving off the TV, no mobile phone, and limiting access to social networking on the Internet and probably banning it Monday through Friday. In fact, parents should set a standard at home that requires children to read to earn TV time. If a child reads thirty minutes, then he or she has earned thirty minutes of TV time and the reading must be monitored by a parent that reads too.
However, in America today, that equation is mostly broken. Most students do not read much of anything that is worth reading, do homework, study or even do class work and the average parent is not part of the process at all. Instead the average parent is the problem because they have removed themselves from the equation. Studies and surveys from reputable sources show that the average parent talks to his or her child less than five minutes a day while the average child spends ten hours of his or her day outside of school dividing that time up between watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, hanging out with friends, sending text messages, visiting social networking sites on the Internet, etc.
I won’t even start ranting about food and drink that parents allow children to consume. I could go on for thousands of words, pages, maybe even a book length manuscript.
The diet of the average American child is horrible and reputable scientific studies show this also has an impact on a child’s ability to learn and think. I taught from 1975 – 2005 and for most of those years I asked a simple question at the beginning of each year: How many of you eat breakfast and what did you eat? Less than five hands went up in each class (three was average of thirty-four students) and few of those that ate breakfast ate nutritional food. You know, brain food. The main ingredient was fat, starch and sugar. Then I asked, “What’s the first thing you drink or eat?” the answer was usually sodas, French fries or a slice of cheese pizza. Many of my students drank a liquid lunch because the school sold a 60 ounce Pepsi for one dollar along with that one dollar slice of cheese pizza. There was fruit available. For about 3,000 students there was one large bowl with apples and bananas in it and that bowl of fruit did not sell out by the end of the day.