PA’s cyber charter schools failing Black and Brown students, new report shows

A recent report shows that Black and Brown students in Pennsylvania’s top cyber charter schools are falling behind their public school students in math and science. 

With the school year underway across the commonwealth, a new report highlights how Black and Brown students in Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are falling behind their counterparts in brick and mortar public schools. 

The report by Good Jobs First found that Black and Hispanic students at public schools are 3 and 4 times as likely to be proficient in math and 1.5 times more likely to be proficient in science. 

It also found that students enrolled in the commonwealth’s cyber charter schools are less likely to graduate from high school. According to the report, Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools have a 65% graduation rate while traditional public schools have an 88% graduation rate. 

“Education is the best type of economic development investment. Yet in Pennsylvania, public school districts are required to pay low-cost cyber charters at the same level per student as bricks-and-mortar schools,” said Siobhan Standaert, a research analyst with Good Jobs First and the report’s lead author. “The cyber charters, in turn, produce poorer results while spending a lot of money in ways that don’t seem directly relevant to student success.”

The report calls on the Pennsylvania Department of Education to investigate why Black and Brown students in cyber charter schools are falling behind their peers in public schools and for the state to conduct a forensic audit of the cyber charter schools to determine what they actually spend their public funding on. 

Pennsylvania pays the same per-pupil tuition rate of $21,895 for students in public schools as they do for students in cyber charter schools, and advocates are calling for the state to reevaluate how that money is spent. 

Earlier this year, Pennsylvania House Democrats passed House Bill 2370, a historic public education funding bill that calls for capping cyber charter school tuition at $8,000 per student. The bill hopes to save Pennsylvania school districts $500 million per year. 

State Rep. Joe Ciresi (D-Montgomery) has been advocating for reforming Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools, and he said in an interview that he wasn’t surprised by the findings of the report.

“The way that cyber charters work, it is a money grab and we’ve seen it over and over again as a commonwealth,” Ciresi said. 

“We are only hurting our students who need the most help and this is a problem. It’s a problem that continues. It’s a problem that won’t go away until we have people who will take the bull by the horns and say, “yes, we need to do this.” We need to put these charter schools under the microscope and make them more accountable for what they’re not doing for our students.”