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Don’t use the word ‘reform’ for charter school bills

If you weren’t worried about the rising cost of public education before now, you should be. If the Legislature passes the charter bills currently in the Senate, expect more of the same; higher school taxes and disappointing news on school performance.

The PA House recently passed a set of bills proffered to “fix” Pennsylvania’s charter school law. However, none of these do what needs to be done to protect taxpayers or help students achieve.

In fact, a proposed amendment to the package that would have required a rigorous charter accountability system failed by a vote of 100-99. Harrisburg, what are you thinking?

Recently, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) released a study on charter school performance in Pennsylvania that should be sounding alarms in the minds of legislators across the state. Despite decades of investments, Pennsylvania’s charter school students aren’t showing the results promised or hoped for. Student reading performance is similar for charters and traditional public schools, and in math, charter school students are doing worse than their public-school peers.

To be sure the report finds that black, Hispanic and elementary school students in brick and mortar charter schools have made some gains in reading. Those gains are modest, not uniform, and my guess is they were made at the expense of students in public schools because school districts must pay for every new seat in a charter school, which means they have less money to spend on their own students.

Of all the bad news in this report, none is more alarming than the fact that students in cyber charter schools fare far worse than any other students in the state. Compared to students in traditional public schools, on average, cyber charter students perform as if they’ve had 106 fewer days of reading in school and 118 fewer days in math class. Keep in mind, there are only 180 days in a school year.

Statewide, in 2016, school districts paid $1.5 billion dollars in charter school tuition payments. Charter schools receive this funding regardless of whether their students are making the grade. Worse yet, they are paid over $200 million more for special education services than they are spending on these services for our students. That’s why more than five years ago, the bi-partisan legislative commission, which I co-chaired with Sen. Pat Browne, unanimously recommended reforms to how schools are paid to deliver special education services. Those reforms were enacted and apply to our traditional public schools, but the powerful lobby that is employed by the charter school operators has ensured those reforms never apply to charter schools.

Moreover, because Pennsylvania’s charter school law does not differentiate between tuition rates for brick and mortar and cyber charter schools, districts pay the same amount per student whether they are taught in a building or at home at a computer. That’s $463 million that went to cyber charter schools. Five school districts in Greater Philadelphia alone paid more than $85 million of that cost.

Yet, Pennsylvania House Representatives voted against amendments that would institute a stronger system of accountability for charter schools and protect taxpayers, school districts and students from failure. Worse yet, they have failed to address the wasteful, unaccountable method of funding charters. As a result, local taxpayers must shoulder the burden of these bad decisions with higher property taxes every year.

As I have always said, good charter reform isn’t anti-charter; it’s pro-taxpayer.

I urge my fellow citizens and members of the Pennsylvania Senate to reject the House’s so called “charter reform bills” until there is package of bills worthy of the word “reform.” At a minimum, that package would support high quality charter schools, end the corruption of cyber charter payments, only pay charter schools for special education services rendered, offset the impact of charter payments on public traditional school students and close cyber and bricks and mortar charters schools that consistently show poor performance.”

Bernie O’Neill is a former Republican state representative from Bucks County.

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