Air-fryers? Yes!
Smart watch – yes please!
New collar for Chloe the Yorkie?
Cyber charter school education? What?! No…just… no.
Cyber charter schools are anything but a good value!
We are getting ready to release 500 school district fact sheets and a report about cyber charter performance in Pennsylvania that will provide an overview of the cost of cyber charter schools- both in dollars — and — in (non)sense! (Fact sheet preview: cyber charters are very expensive and very low performing)!
They waste *a lot* of money.
Just this past weekend, one of Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools showcased an enormous inflatable to promote itself during the Philadelphia Thanksgiving parade. That’s right. A cyber charter school with a 56% graduation rate spent money on this instead of using it to, say, help students in their school actually succeed and earn their diplomas.
In January we will be issuing:
- 500 fact sheets that detail how much each school district would save if the Pennsylvania legislature approves commonsense reforms that have bipartisan support, and
- A short report on student performance in Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools.
Your donation will help us get these into the hands of parents, community leaders, and school boards in communities throughout the commonwealth so that they can see for themselves how the Pennsylvania legislature’s flawed system for funding cyber-charter schools impacts their own communities and property taxes.
This year, more than $1 billion school property tax dollars will be taken out of our local school districts and used to pay cyber charter school tuition bills. Millions of these dollars will be wasted on advertising, promotion, excessive executive salaries, real estate purchases, private management fees, and so many other things that do not benefit students.
To win this fight we need people in every corner of the commonwealth to understand the problem and take action to demand that state lawmakers enact legislation that will end the waste, fraud, and abuse in the charter school sector.
Please donate today so we will have the resources we need to be fully engaged in this fight in 2022.
Contributions of $25 or more will receive a 5 inch “Support and Defend Public Education” magnet!
More Information
Charter school tuition rates are not based on what it costs a charter school to educate its students, but on the per student expenditure of the school district from which the students come.
In our 2019 report, we showed that charter school tuition for regular (non-special) education ranges from about $7,800 per student to upwards of $18,500 per student. Charter school tuition payments for special education ranges from about $15,900 to well over $40,000 per student.
In cyber charter schools – where the costs are less than $5,000 per student, far less than the cost in traditional public schools or brick and mortar charter schools – this wastes over $290 million in tax money each year, statewide.
School districts must raise property taxes, cut programs or services, or forego new investments in students in order to pay cyber charter tuition that is spent on multimillion dollar advertising campaigns, excessive executive compensation, private management fees, and more.
Despite cyber charter schools being paid more money per student each year, academic outcomes in cyber charter schools remain abysmal. Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools graduate just 31%-70% of their students. A recent Stanford University study found that cyber students lose 106 days of learning in reading and 118 days of learning in math each year when compared to their counterparts who remained in district schools.
Setting a single, statewide tuition rate for both regular and special education students in cyber schools that matches tuition to the actual costs of educating students at home on a computer would eliminate wasteful spending and save Pennsylvania taxpayers $290 million each year
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