One charter school in the Chester-Upland district in Pennsylvania enrolls 60% of the district’s elementary schools. It is owned by one of the richest men in the state, a lawyer who was Republican Tom Corbett’s biggest campaign donor. That charter school, the Chester Community Charter School, has asked the county to turn all of the district’s elementary students over to charters.
CCCS is not just any charter. It has received special treatment, despite its poor performance.
More than 4,300 students in kindergarten through eighth grade are already enrolled in Chester Community Charter, which is managed by CSMI. The for-profit education management company was founded by Vahan Gureghian, a Gladwyne lawyer and major Republican donor. It manages another charter school in Atlantic City that was placed on probation by the New Jersey Department of Education this year. A third charter in Camden was previously closed due to poor academic performance.
In an earlier post, I described how CCCS made a deal in 2017 to win authorization until 2026, which is an unprecedented extension for any charter. In that post, I noted:
Its test scores are very low. Only 16.7% were proficient in English language arts, compared to a state average of 63%. Only 7% were proficient in mathematics, compared to a state average of 45%.
By most metrics, this charter school is a failing school, yet it gets preferential treatment. The scores in the charter school are below those of the remaining public schools in the district.
CCCS promised not to open a high school if it received a new extension. The decision was made by the court-appointed receiver for the district, which had been pushed into near-bankruptcy by CCCS; the receiver had been treasurer for the Corbett campaign. Just a coincidence, no doubt.
The Chester-Upland school district was hammered by a court decision that requires it to send large payments for students with special needs who enroll in cyber charters, even though the cyber charters provide minimal or no services to those students; the cyber charters are a voracious aspect of the state’s landscape, gobbling up full funding while failing to produce any academic gains for students or to meet any state standards.
Brick-and-mortar CCCS is so aggressive that it buses in students from Philadelphia, little children who ride a bus 2-3 hours each way to attend a failing charter school.
This latest move will strip the Chester-Upland District of more funding, leaving it with only a high school.
The charters are akin to a vulture, hollowing out the district and drawing students to low-performing charters with promises.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Kind of cuts into the whole “choice” talking point, don’t you think?
So much for that. Now it’s just pure crony capitalism and privatization, for the sake of privatization.
Pennsylvania has some of the worst charter laws in the country. Add it to Ohio and Michigan on the list of ed reform disasters. A great swathe of the Great Lakes.
Exactly.
The one forbidden choice: a public school.
SICK!
In the early days of privatization many states passed laws giving private charters preferential treatment, enacting trigger laws to hasten takeovers and paying overly generous reimbursements to for-profit companies. Pennsylvania’s expensive payments to charters have threatened the economic standing of the commonwealth. Now that many states and communities realize that privatization is an economic shakedown for little to no gain. Now that people understand that privatization undermines public education, fewer of them are supporting the elaborate scam known as privatization. Tax payers are accountable for the wasteful squandering of public money of previous administrations.
Correction: Now that many states and communities realize that privatization is an economic shakedown for little to no gain, now that the people….
Do you think that’s really true? Do PA voters care a whit what happens in this majority-AA district? Looks like the state is the actor here, not the locals.
There are really too many examples to list of the complete disregard for public schools and public school students in ed reform- it’s so pervasive it defines “the movement”- but read this ed reform from the perspective of a public school parent and see if you can spot it:
“Compared to last year’s list, the new list is…well, huge. In 2018, there were around 500 EdChoice-designated schools. Now over 1,200 of the state’s 3,186 traditional public schools are designated. In one year, the list has more than doubled in size. But its length isn’t the only thing that’s generating attention. It’s also who’s on it. For years, EdChoice largely identified schools in higher-poverty communities.”
Ed reformers reclassified hundreds of schools as “failing”. Same schools, new measures, result? Hundreds more failing schools.
All that means to ed reformers? More vouchers! Mission accomplished.
Not any concern or interest re: the public school students who are now in public schools that have been reclassified failing. None.
These public school kids are literally sitting for standardized tests that are used only to expand vouchers. There’s no value to them at all. They spend thousands of hours taking tests to provide data for use by the charter and voucher lobby.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/commentary/three-things-know-about-ohios-new-edchoice-school-list
“And, of course, there are anti-choice folks gearing up to argue that the list is just another example of how the state uses accountability policies to “punish” traditional districts.”
That actually isn’t what public school supporters and families argue. What they argue is the ed reform crafted “accountability” schemes offer no positive value to students in public schools. It isn’t really debatable. Public schools and public school students spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars on these tests and the only thing they will get out of it is a new designation that triggers vouchers.
There is no value to public schools or public school students. They don’t even bother offering any. The absolute best they can offer is they won’t deliberately harm students in public schools. I don’t know why I’m paying thousands of state employees to not deliberately harm students in public schools while in zealous pursuit of their ideological goals. I would hope I would get “no harm”. Is this the offer from ed reform? Hand over the voucher demands and we won’t deliberately destroy your schools? Wow! Thanks!
There is no value to public schools if we have a climate that encourages its destruction. The vultures will consume public schools as they are doing in the Chester-Upland district while they suppress any democratic input. It is no accident that this is happening in a largely minority school district. The tax payers should ask why they pay taxes, but have no voice. This is a perfect example of separate and unequal education for black and brown students.
Here’s the crux of it: “Part of the problem is a state appeals court ruling that overturned a 2015 order forcing cyber charter schools to accept reduced payments from Chester Upland for special education students, as the district’s brick-and-mortar charters had agreed to do. Barsz called that ruling, which was retroactive to 2015, “a serious financial setback” that cost the district about $4 million, and could cost it $1 million annually going forward… Based on the Commonwealth Court ruling reversing Chester Upland’s reduced payments to cyber charters, Tribble said, the district owes Chester Community Charter $54 million. He also said the district has $30 million in “urgent capital needs.”
The idea that PA’s cyber charters can appropriately serve SpEd students is ludicrous on the face of it. Now the appeals court ruling is crushing the district’s budget. Presumably they ruled based on some other cockamamie aspect of PA charter law that’s all about catering to big$ campaign-coffer-stuffers w/no regard to equal access to adequate ed in poor minority districts. PA is just another FL, MI, IN, OH, et al red state dedicated to reaming poor districts to keep the taxes low…