I don’t begin to understand the complexities of Pennsylvania’s formula for allocating dollars to public schools and charter schools, but this article explains how the formula cripples public schools.
Chester Upland School District keeps raising taxes to overcome its deficit but it can’t keep up.
Chester Upland spends about $16,000 a year on average for each special ed student in its traditional district schools. But the state’s formula has forced it to pay more than $40,000 per student to charters, regardless of the child’s level of disability.
Those payments crippled Chester Upland so badly that Gov. Tom Wolf and the courts stepped in.
But this is far from just an issue in Chester Upland. Newly analyzed state data show that a combination of quirks in the charter law have caused a statewide problem, because charters across Pennsylvania are enrolling a greater share of the least needy, least costly special ed students.
The special ed funding formula’s intricacies are infamous. But the problem in a nutshell is this: when the neediest students concentrate in district schools, that drives up the per-pupil payments that districts must pay charters.
It’s a paradox that can drain the budgets of traditional school districts while infusing charters with cash. And it creates incentives for districts like Chester Upland to do what they can to keep special ed students from migrating to charters and cyber-charters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pennsylvania’s charter reimbursement formula is so flawed over $200 million dollars in subsidy is paid to charters that serve classified students. A former teacher stated that special education students are “a cash cow for the charter and cyber schools.” Meanwhile, the public schools with large numbers of classified students that leave the district are on the verge of collapse. As a result, districts are trying to bring classified students back to district schools, which will cost the district a lot less money. Pennsylvania is guilty of allowing money to leave district schools without truly understanding the consequences, and cyber charters that offer cheap, sub par instruction have made out like bandits.
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Complexity is often a means for special interests – charter schools, in this case – to hide their doings and the special favors they receive.
The default assumption should be that if a piece of legislation seems opaque or needlessly complex, then someone, not you or people like you or the general public, is making out like a bandit.
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Because no one even considered what would happen to the public schools. They were given absolutely no value.
I bet they weren’t even mentioned in the charter debate.
Sounds like public school kids in Pennsylvania are in dire need of an adult in state government who works on their behalf.
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The funding formula is independent of charters. Fix the formula and also make sure charters serve all students
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