Share:
Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | February 24, 2023 09:40 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Lindsey M. Williams |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | Reforming Pennsylvania’s Privately Run, Publicly Funded Charter Schools |
| One cannot talk about education funding in Pennsylvania without acknowledging the devastating impact that privately run, publicly funded charter schools have on our education landscape. Pennsylvania’s Charter School Law was enacted in 1997 to create incubators for innovative teaching practices that could be replicated in traditional public schools. But that is not what the law has sown. Instead of fostering an environment of mutual benefit – the ensuing 25 years have been rife with antagonism and attacks on public education and educators – all while privately run, publicly funded charters have left a track record of failing academic performance, fraud and waste, and rising costs to Pennsylvania taxpayers. A growing share of Pennsylvania’s K-12 students are being educated in charter schools, yet student learning is not keeping pace. Regardless of subject matter or grade level, the performance of charter schools on state academic assessments are consistently and substantially below the level of traditional school districts. On average, charter school proficiency is more than 20% lower than traditional school districts. Even more concerning, every one of Pennsylvania’s 14 cyber charters has been identified as needing some level of support and improvement under the state’s accountability system. This comes at great academic cost for our students and great financial cost for Pennsylvania’s taxpayers. Tuition for privately run, publicly funded charter schools is not tied to the actual cost of educating students – and many make more than they spend. There’s no requirement that excess funds be invested in improving academic outcomes or returned to the taxpayers. Rather, loopholes that allow charter schools to charge highly inflated tuition for students with disabilities remain unchecked and exploited. Particularly egregious is what cyber charters do with this money – spending millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising and executive salaries, all while carrying high fund balances and enticing families with the promise of “free” money. Our failure to enact even basic measures of transparency and accountability has come at the expense of our neighbors facing rising property taxes while cyber charters sit on a growing stockpile of public funds. The Auditor General has recently shown a rebounded interest in auditing certain school districts and these reserves deserve his attention too. Since 2019, more than 450 of the 500 school districts have adopted resolutions demanding the General Assembly step up to address these long-standing problems, but we have consistently failed to act. With the recent landmark court decision confirming what students and educators have long known – that Pennsylvania is unconstitutionally failing to fully and fairly fund our public schools – it is beyond time to enact commonsense charter reforms and fix this key piece of the puzzle. |