Temple University law professor Susan deJarnett studied Pennsylvania’s 16 Cybercharters and found that they make huge profits while providing few services.
“Parsing the tax documents for the 12 cyber charters for which information was available, she found that cyber charters carry large surpluses and spend what she considered a disproportionate amount of Pennsylvania tax dollars on advertising, travel expenses and contracts with outside management and service providers.”
Fewer teachers. No custodians. No heating bills. No savings.
The money for the Cybercharters comes out of each district’s budget, depending on its per pupil expenditure:
“If a regular-education student from Lower Merion school district attended a cyber-charter in 2011-2012, Lower Merion (which then had a per-pupil expenditure of $22,140.70) sent the cyber charter about $17,000.
“If a regular-education student from the Philadelphia school district attended the same cyber-charter, Philadelphia (which then had a per-pupil expenditure of $12,351.74) sent the cyber charter about $8,500.
“Same cyber school. Same cyber-education. Outrageously different price tag.”
An obvious incentive to poach students from rich districts.
Two of Pennsylvania’s best known charter founders are under indictment. With so many millions in play and no supervision or regulation, bad things can happen.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Running a cyber-charter in PA is as good as printing money. No oversight and a system that completely ignores the actual costs of the system. If the Commonwealth of PA went shopping for used cars the same way, it would walk onto the lot and tell the salesman, “Here’s twenty grand. Pick out any car for me that you want, and keep the change.”
Can you believe the taxpayers have let this happen? Why?
This should be illegal. The cybercharter collects $17,000 or $8,500 per student from different districts. What is the real cost of the cyber education? Leaving out advertising, executive salaries, consulting fees, and profit, how much are the cybercharters actually spending per pupil on legit expenses like teacher salaries?
Where are the politicians and public officials who are supposed to be the stewards of our tax dollars? Have they all been bought off with campaign contributions?
And, again, charters are part of a system, so when they spend tons of ed money on advertising, public schools have to compete on that playing field. You could weep if you live in one of these ed reform states, because first you see the charter ads and then you see the public schools running ads. It ripples.
The damage isn’t limited to these schools. It spreads to ALL schools. Every public school student in that state is being adversely affected by this. Every single one.
I worry sometimes that we get no media coverage of these scams in Ohio because they’re pouring money into media companies for advertising. Schools are now an advertising revenue source.
I live in CA and my blood is running cold as I read this!!
We have cybercharters in CA. They’re just not as visible.
Charlotte,
Indeed so. The majority, I think, of the country’s “cyber charters” are run by for-profit online juggernaut K12 — look to California Virtual Academy (CAVA) for the franchise in your state.
K12.com, which recently rebranded itself as “FuelED” (perhaps to avoid the growing criticism and closer looks brought into focus by the recent NYT article), has online schools in every state in the union, although it is sometimes difficult to recognize them as such.
One wonders why on earth K12.com would rebrand after $26 million spent on advertising last year; they must have done the math and calculated that they’d be saving more money in the long run by distancing themselves from the brand, even with the advertising. More on junk bond king and convicted criminal Michael Milken’s relationship with K12.com at http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2011/06/convict-who-stole-public.html.
Maybe if schools weren’t debating transgender bathrooms and spent more time focusing on the “marginalized” students that are “low-hanging fruit” for the cyber schools… We, as a society, would have seen no need for educational alternatives.