The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) delivered an early holiday gift to Pennsylvanians. On Monday, November 30^th, PDE denied the revised application of the Virtual Preparatory Academy of Pennsylvania (VPAP) Cyber Charter School.

VPAP is a new project of Ron Packard, former mergers and acquisitions specialist at Goldman Sachs and founder of K12, Inc., the nation’s largest for-profit online charter school operator.  Packard left K12, Inc. after a shareholder lawsuit alleged that it violated securities law by making false statements to investors about cyber charter school students’ poor performance on standardized tests. He is now the CEO of Accel Schools, a for-profit management company that is buying up low-performing charter schools in Ohio. Packard hopes to expand his portfolio—and his profits—by opening a new cyber charter school in Pennsylvania as well.

We provided testimony at a public hearing on November 5^th urging PDE to deny VPAP’s application. In our testimony, we documented Accel Schools’ proven track record of running failing charter schools in Ohio. The online school in Ohio that is run by Accel received an “F” grade for every measure of student achievement included in the Ohio Department of Education’s school report card for 2018-2019.  Of the 35 Accel charter schools in Ohio with state report card data from the Ohio Department of Education for 2018-2019, 26 received either a “D” or “F” grade.

We also highlighted that in its application VPAP made clear that it intended to join our 14 existing cyber charter schools in ranking among of the lowest-performing schools in the state. VPAP’s projected four-year graduation rate for the 2023-2024 school year a stunningly low 70%.

And VPAP proposed to pay nearly half of its revenue for 2021-2022 to Accel management company in flat fees. There was no detail about how much taxpayer money would be used to provide educational services to students and how much would be used to pad the profits of this corporation. Read our full testimony here.

PDE’s decision evaluates VPAP’s revised 2685-page application against five criteria in state law detailed flagrant deficiencies in the application in all five. Some highlights:

• VPAP continues to provide unclear, incomplete, and contradictory information regarding revenues, expenditures, and long-term financial planning. (p.4)
• VPAP’s curriculum is incomplete for some subject areas—and totally absent in others. (p. 11)
• VPAP proposes inadequate, inappropriate practices for vulnerable student populations. (p.13)
• VPAP’s academic and other goals would perpetuate—not reduce—outcome and opportunity gaps. (p. 17)

This process is a case study in why the Pennsylvania legislature needs to enact a moratorium on new cyber charter school applications.

PDE’s denial comes after department employees spent hundreds of hours reviewing the school’s initial application, which was denied on January 27^th and hundreds of additional hours reviewing the school’s 2,685-page revised application.

Thirteen of Pennsylvania’s fourteen existing cyber charter schools have an unlimited number of seats available to students, so there is no need for a new cyber charter school. And every single cyber charter school in Pennsylvania has been designated as among the lowest-performing schools in the state.

Instead of having to waste valuable time evaluating egregiously sloppy applications, holding public hearings, and writing decisions for new cyber charter schools Pennsylvania does not need, PDE should be able to focus their energy on holding current existing cyber charter schools accountable for providing tens of thousands of Pennsylvania’s children with a quality education.

What’s next?

In spite of the fact that VPAP is doomed to fail, the school could still get a charter to open in Pennsylvania. The commonwealth’s broken charter school law allows schools whose applications are denied by their authorizers to appeal the decision to the Charter Appeals Board (CAB), an appointed bureaucratic body that has the power to overturn decisions made by local authorizers. We don’t know if VPAP plans to appeal to the CAB, but will keep you updated.