Pennsylvania loves cybercharters even though study after study shows that they get terrible results.
The Keystone State Coalition points out in its latest newsletter that state records demonstrate that none of the state’s 18 cybercharters meets state academic standards.
Do taxpayers care?
Not one of Pennsylvania’s cyber charters has achieved a passing SPP score of 70 in any of the five years that the SPP has been in effect. All 500 school districts are required to send taxpayer dollars to these cyber charters, even though none of them voted to authorize cyber charter schools and most districts have their own inhouse cyber or blended learning programs.
School Performance Profile Scores for PA Cyber Charters 2013-2017
Source: PA Department of Education website
http://www.paschoolperformance.org/
A score of 70 is considered passing.
Total cyber charter tuition paid by PA taxpayers from 500 school districts for 2013, 2014 and 2015 was over $1.2 billion; $393.5 million, $398.8 million and $436.1 million respectively.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Do taxpayers care?
Do all taxpayers vote and if so do those voters care or have they just been fooled by the flood of lies from the subversive privatizers of everything public?
If someone pays taxes and doesn’t vote …
I hope this data is published in the mainstream media since I doubt most people go to that website. I’m sure the charters use deceptive practices in advertising their programs, and too many people believe in the integrity of any organization that calls itself a school. If they have glitzy, professional marketing campaigns, what chance do the public schools have?
The cybercharters collect far more money than they need or deserve. Owning one is like having the keys to a bank. They use some of their excess Molly for false advertising.
One of the recommendation of the NEPC’s report on virtual schools was they should collect in proportion to cost and not be given the full overly generous per student amount that Pennsylvania pays. These reimbursement schedules are creating a huge deficit in the commonwealth, and PA can’t get rid of on-line schools because the legislature owns so many legislators.
Correction: the charter lobby owns so many legislators.
Knowledge is power. Pass this on far and wide. Thanks, Diane.
I brought this up at one of Sen Eichelberger’s town hall meetings. He gave the typical spiel about choice and liberty and government schools and then lied saying he has had many phone calls from parents in brick & mortar schools who were unable to contact their child’s teachers. GGGRRRR.
Luckily, he lost his primary bid for US Congress so he will be out of office soon, but not soon enough!
Th Kos, Alice, that’s good news. If voters ousted every stupid elected official, that would be a good start towards reviving respect for government.
Well I do not yet know about the replacement so I am cautiously optimistic.
If the voters ousted “every stupid elected official”, well, there wouldn’t be hardly any left. Something about political power that saps/drains/kills off any intelligence that a politician might have.
I have pro-form responses from two US senators on the matter of charter schools. As you may guess, the Republican is all in for choice to save the kids from “failing schools.” As you may not know, Democrat Sherrod Brown is wishy washy, and largely uninformed about the corruption discussed in this blog, or even in the longstanding corruption in Ohio. I will spare you quotes from the letter, but someone with clout should get to his staff and to him for not holding out with a strong voice for public schools and not fulling condemning the obvious and well-documented frauds in charters, especially online, but not limited to online outfits.
I doubt Sherrod Brown is “uninformed”. I spent four years thinking that about Obama. It turned out “willfully ignorant” was closer to the truth. I’m going to guess the same about Brown. Good luck getting to him.
What do you think causes that “willful0 ignorance”?
Wouldn’t have anything to do with $$$$?
“Pennsylvania’s auditor general on Wednesday blasted Aspira Inc. of Pennsylvania’s management of four Philadelphia charter schools and a cyber charter, likening the organization to a “fox guarding the henhouse” as he called for changes in the state law governing charter schools.
Under Aspira’s management, the combined fund balance of the five schools — two of which are facing nonrenewal — dropped from $7.7 million in fiscal year 2014 to minus-$419,000 in fiscal year 2016, according to an audit released Wednesday by Eugene DePasquale that began last year. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately run.
Meanwhile, the schools’ management-services payments to Aspira, a nonprofit entity, shot up from $7 million, in 2015, to $13 million the following year. “We saw no justification for why that happened,” DePasquale said at a news conference at Philadelphia City Hall.”
The state auditor in Pennsylvania issues these notifications of massive fraud about every 6 months in Pennsylvania.
They do nothing. Pennsylvania’s charter laws are as bad or worse than Ohio’s. It’s just a matter of time before they have a state-wide scandal, like Ohio has now.
He does his audit, flags all the charter fraud, it gets newspaper coverage, and then nothing happens. Year after year after year. It has to be hundreds of millions of dollars by now.
I don’t understand why the state doesn’t prosecute.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/auditor-general-blasts-aspira-pa-charter-school-law-20180523.html
Pennsylvania had a massive cybercharter fraud.
The founder of the state’s first cyber charter was convicted of stealing millions of dollars from the school. It was collecting $10,000 per student for 10,000 students, $100 million a year, and providing little more than a computer, textbooks and online instruction. What was he to do with all that loose cash? He has not yet been sentenced.
It is absurd that Pennsylvania is being extorted by the legislature to keep over paying for repeated failure. This is a cautionary tale for states that have not jumped on the virtual bandwagon. Do not do it!
The charter lobby will move in, buy representatives and keep demanding more money.
Do these reports take into account that charter schools can have as high as 39% of their students falling under the umbrella of special needs…. which is often the draw to the alternative school in the first place because it allows the student to work around their illness, doctor appointments, or varies therapies?
Charter schools typically exclude students with disabilities.
There are many many schools that have a much higher percentage of students with special needs that are doing far better
Well my perspective is a bit different. I have 3 children in CCA also known as Commonwealth Charter Academy. Yes, it is a cyber school. Why did I enroll them? They had attended both public and private schools prior to enrolling. I paid my taxes to my local district in both cases and in both cases both institutions failed my oldest of the 3 in his quest for an education. Both were willing to pass my son into the 3rd grade without being able to read as well as being unable to comprehend what he was reading. His skills were poor at best. When it was discovered he had cognitive learning disability, they offered a whopping 45 minutes extra help a week. In the grand scheme of things with all all of the money I was shelling out in both taxes and private tuition at the one school, I felt that wasn’t even close to being enough to help him. Enter CCA. I heard of it through word of mouth. I attended an information session and really was impressed by what I learned there. They actually paid for my son’s testing with a child psychiatrist, pediatrician as well as an occupational therapist. Our local district didn’t do that. They just labeled him”slow” without any explanation as to why. CCA provided the means, at no additional cost to me, (maybe now you have an idea of where some of the money does go in the respectable schools) and uncovered his dyslexia as well as a memory disorder. Since enrolling with CCA and being assigned a 1:1 “Learning Support Teacher” He has not only learned to read, but is now an excellent writer and Honor Roll student. He entered CCA in the 2nd grade. He will be entering high school next fall. I just enrolled his younger brothers out of convenience but many families have 1 student in the cyber charter, while other siblings may attend the local school or attend a parochial school. So it isn’t like we are out there protesting our local districts. Our taxes still go to the local schools regardless of where our kids attend classes. Also important to consider is that our school is statewide in scale. That is thousands of students. Comparing that institution to a local district is very skewed. CCA does in fact have a lot of transient students that move frequently as well as a disproportionate group of students with special needs; so the compliance scores are lower just based on that alone. Many of the families opt out of state testing for numerous reasons ( we are not one of them, I feel the testing is a good benchmark for the students) So the scores you see above aren’t the performance scores of individual students nor even the scores of grades by classroom or ability. Rather that percentage is the “compliance report”. Did all of the students take the exam? Did all of the students take it on grade level? Did all of the students take the exam without learning support accommodations? In most cases CCA’s answer is no. Hence the lower percentages. It is difficult to get every family to comply with everything all the time. Anyway all of that said, I am equally horrified by those few who have abused the potential for cyber charters. I am not naive enough to believe it is an educational choice for everyone either. However, If I am paying taxes as well to my local district and they aren’t even willing to test my child to see what his abilities or difficulties are, then I feel as though my son’s needs aren’t being met. Just as with any business, I vote with my money and my feet. If one place isn’t doing the job I will take my business to someone who can. Additionally, Again I am not vilifying our local school, simply stating they didn’t meet our needs. CCA has. I think the ‘problem’ is in the numbers game that is being played. When I, and many of us, we did take benchmark tests sure. They weren’t used to determine federal or state funding though. They were tools used by the school at the local level to see which children needed interventional assistance. Instead of bashing cybers on the whole perhaps adjust the testing algorithms to accommodate for size and demographics. Then weed out the bad. I have no problem with better oversight. I just have a problem with people misrepresenting the numbers and what they actually mean.
A few observations
1) grade retention is often harmful to students in many ways so promoting your student to 3rd grade was not necessarily the wrong thing to so
2) In the schools I have worked in and with, there was never a generic “Slow” definition of a student with an IEP. The schools do provide ( pay for) the testing and services both to obtain and IEP and to support the student and the results in a lengthy document, as required by law. It seems strange that this was not the case in your district.
3) As far as conditions for taking the test, they are to be the same regardless of the school because of the “Standardization” part. Students with IEPs have their accommodations and the school must test a minimum percentage of their students. CCA has about the same demographics as my own school for FRL and IEP and my schools score is much higher so it is not the test conditions or the demographics.
My main objection to cyber is that it goes against everything we know about how people learn. People learn from people with the give and take of questions and conversations. That is simply not possible in a wholly cyber pro programmed environment. I am glad your son is doing well. It is probably because of your own interventions once the problem was decoded rather than the cyber environment. That is why the overall cyber data is so important – it looks at a whole rather than a single child. Parents look at their one child (rightly so) by there are so many factors that larger data sets are needed to look for trends.
Good luck with your children!
Wendy,
You are a lucky parent.
Most cybercharters are complete frauds.
The founder of the Pennsylvania Cybercharters is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to stealing millions.
The founder of two other cybers pleaded guilty of same but avoided jail because if her age.
I do acknowledge I am lucky. Addressing some of the observations mentioned above: As for how people learn,Do you have the same opinion concerning our colleges and universities offering online classes to obtain advanced degrees in such majors as Nursing and yes, Education? Also, there are 4 types of learners, I suggest reading on Bernice McCarthy’s development of the 4MAT learning model. Many of our public schools do acknowledge students learn in different ways.
As for the practicality , Discussion ( at least in our school) occurs through Skype and other real time software and so the students and teachers interact. My children are in Live Lessons daily with their teachers. They see the faces of their teachers and classmates on a daily basis and there is a real flow of conversation, not just typing, but actual speaking to each other.
Now I know not all cybers have such a platform for learning and I would agree that is really akin to homeschooling then and should just be considered a correspondence school instead of a cyber charter. As for the IEP for my son, We experienced something vastly different from our school district. I would like to say they did their job, but they did not. Our local district just didn’t see the need. “Children learn at varying rates” we were told and there was “no real need for concer”..
Studies may show that children in general are not harmed by retention of a grade. However, my concern was for my child, not the general population at large. I didn’t want to hear about studies then. I wanted my child to receive help. He didn’t get it from our district, so we went elsewhere. I think it is a sound choice to do so if a parent weighs the pros and cons AND has viable alternatives. For us it happened to be a cyber charter.
There are poor districts just as there are poor cybers and standard charters. I am just as disgusted by the actions of some who posed to educate but instead committed fraud. My post was really the intention to simply share my experience. Instead of pooling them all together as bad, perhaps we can agree there should be stronger oversight. Obviously I like to know where my money is being spent as a tax payer.
To make it clear, I have one child that went to public K-12. (He did well) I had 2 that went to private then public school from K-2 and my 4th has only known the cyber charter. I would argue he is probably the most articulate of the 4 partly because of his cyber educational experience. I say partly because honestly no matter the method of the education being delivered, it is really about the effort put in on the part of the student, parents and teachers as a team. I think we can all agree on that.
Wendy,
There have been many studies of online schools. All concur that such “schools” have high attrition, abysmal graduation rates, and low-quality Instruction. The NCAA stripped accreditation from 24 K12 Inc. online schools.
They are a fraud and a sham. Some adult education online may be effective but as a general rule, both children and adults have difficulty remaining motivated when they interact with a machine, not a human. I certainly would not want to be treated by a nurse who received her education online, never touching a living patient.
Wendy
All teachers know that students learn differently, but they probably are not familiar with that particular product. There are many “system” out there. What I am talking about is more fundamental and involves constructing knowledge based on prior experience and langiage. When I said cyber did not do this, I did not mean seeing faces. I meant spontaneous and multiple opportunities to talk with others and write. Both of these involve free flowing feedback and reworking of ideas including the listening and incorporating/refuting the multiple ideas of others. That really cannot happen well via Skype and the students cannot not turn and talk to each other.
And yes I do have the same opinion about online college courses. The stats on them are also abysmal However, given the passive lecture format in most colleges there is not always that much of a difference. Many colleges are moving to a more dynamic model but it takes a lot more time and faculty. Most learning at university occurs outsode of class as students struggle with the problem sets and papers. A highy motivated adult can gain something from purely online learning and courses that are based only on a small skill or knowledge set may work or rote memorization of knowledge are more likely to work.
I know, as a parent, you are really only concerned with your children and I understand the urge to rely on your own personal experience. But your child’s growth can be due to many factors and that is why studies are regarded. It is akin to saying I did not get cancer from cigarette smoking so the studies linking smoking and health effects does not matter.
I would prefer cybers are reserved for very special cases where students cannot attend in person.
Okay but you aren’t comparing those scores with the public schools scores i think you all may want to look at those first the are no better.
Online charter schools are a money pit and a fraud.
Good idea! And you will find brick and mortar schools with the same demographics usually have better scores!
The cyber schools are set up to not do as well on these tests. My kids had a total of 3 (1/2) days back to back to take the tests vs. the local district that gave 3 full days for each section of the test with each section in a different week. How does these circumstances spell an equal comparison? My son took all 3 Keystones at the local school the year after his last failed PSSAs (taken with the cyber school). He passed all 3 the first time, but he had more time for 1 test than the cyber schools are allotted for all 3. My daughter failed the only time she had to take the Keystones at the cyber school mostly because she didn’t have enough time to even properly finish the test. Yet, my son is always having her help him with his homework because she understands the concepts easily and he doesn’t. Tell me how she passed the Math/English placements tests at the college at a high enough level to get bumped up into higher classes and pass them with As in the same year she bombed the Keystones, but bombed the standardized testing. Maybe, they need to make the testing a fair and equal comparison before pointing fingers.