The commonwealth's charter schools are growing as funding conversations heat up in the state capitol. Lawmakers on both sides are considering charter reform.
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Modern education faces many challenges that can place students in difficult situations they're eager to escape.
Unfortunately, students in Pennsylvania public schools have few places to turn to if they are unsatisfied with their home district.
"This is a public education problem," said Brian Hayden, CEO of PA Cyber.
The state commissioned brick-and-mortar charter schools in 1997, followed by cyber charter schools in 2002, giving parents and students an alternative to traditional public schools.
Hayden said every student has a unique reason for choosing charter.
"It could be a bullying incident, it could be anxiety that they have about going to school, it could be the decisions a teacher makes," Hayden said.
"We also have students that come here from families that have busy lives," said Tim Eller, Senior Vice President of Outreach and Government Relations at Commonwealth Charter Academy.
Pennsylvania's cyber charter landscape is now the largest in the country, with at least 61,000 students enrolled in cyber charter schools - That's more than double the next closest state.
Commonwealth Charter Academy is the largest cyber charter school in the state, serving 27,000 students.
Eller said these schools are predominantly publicly funded.
"We're all public employees, our salaries are public," he said. "It's very frustrating that we keep getting tied in that we're a private entity being funded with taxpayer dollars. [That's] the furthest thing from the truth."
"Our students are public school students and our families are public school families," Hayden added.
Charter schools are public schools, but they receive funding a little differently.
They do receive some federal dollars, but when a student chooses to leave a traditional public school in favor of a charter, a portion of the money the home district would pay to educate that child goes to the charter school instead.
Just how much the charter school receives may vary and we heard a range of answers when we asked for an average amount.
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Commonwealth Charter Academy said charters receive about 70% of what a traditional public school would spend on the student, PA Cyber said it was closer to 75%.
The Commonwealth Foundation said charters receive 83% of what a home district pays, while the Pennsylvania School Boards Association reported that it's 88% on average.
"They actually get less per student," said Nathan Benefield, senior vice president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a conservative policy arm. "The district keeps money even when they don't have the student educated anymore."
"Our students should have the same rights to the education that they're paying for, regardless of what public school they're going to," Hayden added.
Proponents of traditional public schools see it differently.
In a recent Pennsylvania School Boards Association Survey, districts identified charter school payments as their top budget concern this year.
PSBA's Education and Policy Director Andrew Christ authored the report.
"When a student leaves a school district and enrolls in a charter school, they leave behind several stranded costs," Christ said. "Utilities, teacher salaries, all of those stay the same regardless of that student leaving the school district and going to a charter school, except now the school district has anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 less than they did before. I think there's definitely an incentive on the part of school districts to try to bring those kids back."
"It is a budget pressure for us, there's no question," added Jay Burkhart, superintendent of South Western School District in Hanover, York County. "I think most of my colleagues would agree that charter schools are a good option. People should have a choice, but in terms of what we do, in terms of the cost that we expend versus what we pay them, if the student enrolls, [where] the dollars go."
Whether a student chooses a brick-and-mortar charter school or a cyber charter school, the funding is the same.
While cyber school instruction is virtual, charter officials revealed that they still have facility costs.
Commonwealth Charter Academy said it operates 15 buildings for students to take tests and receive tech support.
PA Cyber said its 9 regional offices offer important in-person services.
"It's expensive to educate 11,000 students," Hayden said. "I think sometimes people forget that the technology is very expensive. No school district has as many tech people as we do."
"We have to ship every kid that attends our school laptop technology to access our system. Just because we're an online school doesn't mean we don't have tech support costs, we don't have state testing costs," Eller said. "I think where a lot of people don't seem to recognize where costs come in is when we have students with special needs where we provide in-home services."
Unlike traditional schools, charter schools are not regularly audited.
It's an oversight charter school representatives said is the state's responsibility, and not indicative of a lack of transparency on the part of charters.
Education Voters of PA released the details of right-to-know requests for cyber charter spending submitted for the 2022-2023 school year.
It shows Commonwealth Charter Academy spent over $8 million on advertising in a single school year, while PA Cyber spent more than $2.3 million.
Eller said advertising takes up just a small fraction of the academy's budget.
"We don't advertise to increase enrollment, we advertise because there's 14 of us across the state," he said. "We believe we are the top-performing charter school in the state. Attracting families to CCA instead of other cybers is what we would like. The family has already chosen to leave the district."
"Here at PA Cyber, we spend about 2% or 3% of our budget on advertising. That's it," Hayden said. "It's minimal. Far and away, the largest number of students who come here are based on family and friend recommendations. We think it's important that people are aware that we exist, but it's not pulling kids out of traditional public schools."
Democratic State Representative Mike Sturla questions charter schools' effectiveness and whether they're worth the expense.
"It's adding tremendously to the cost of education without any proven results," he said. "They can't show that those kids actually perform better. There is not a charter school in the state of Pennsylvania that has to-date reached the average student achievement of any public school in the state of Pennsylvania, and yet we send them millions of dollars a year."
Credit: WPMT
These are the results from the 2023 Pennsylvania System of School Assessments, or PSSA's, from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
The Pennsylvania School Boards Association took those numbers and broke them down by type of school.
In English language arts, the statewide total hovered around the 50% proficiency mark for grades three through eight.
The numbers show brick-and-mortar charter and cyber charter students were largely outperformed, dipping more than 20 percentage points in some grades compared to the entire state totals
Credit: WPMT
In mathematics, the numbers are worse across the board.
Only third-grade mathematics hit the 50 percent proficiency mark in the state totals and charters were behind again.
In eighth-grade mathematics, just 26% of students were proficient statewide, while brick-and-mortar charters registered just 13.3% proficient - Cyber charter students were just 8.7% proficient.
FOX43 asked Republican State Representative Greg Rothman about the numbers. He suggested the results require more context.
"I would compare it to the demographics and geographics of those kids. Is it that it's a child from the city of Harrisburg who's going to a cyber school as proficient at 17% compared to the city of Harrisburg school, [which has] that same demographic?" he said.
Cyber charter representatives contend the PSSA results don't accurately depict their students' performance.
Unlike in traditional public schools, Eller stated the majority of CCA students opted out of taking the test.
"We've heard from families that state testing doesn't matter to them," Eller said. "When you look at the actual students who came into CCA [and] took the PSSA's they're in the fifty percent area."
While cyber charter representatives told FOX43 that they're improving outcomes for attendees, cyber charter students often face more challenges than their counterparts in traditional schools.
"In a way, cyber charters are at a disadvantage because the bulk of the students that [attend] have been underserved [or] bullied out of their district, for a variety of reasons," Eller said. "When they come here, they're not at the grade level they're enrolling in."
"We're not proud of these numbers and we know that, regardless of when a kid comes here, we need to do our best job to educate them and make sure that they do better moving forward," Hayden said. "Our data shows if a student starts here in elementary school, their test scores at the Keystone levels are at, or above, their counterparts in traditional schools."
Check out all of FOX43's education funding coverage here.
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