Yet another study has been released that shows how cyber charter schools damage the education of Pennsylvania students and waste Pennsylvania taxpayer dollars.
There’s no question that for some students with particular academic and social challenges, cyber charters are a useful solution. But for the majority of students and their families, cyber charters are a bad deal. And that damage is felt disproportionately by certain groups of students in the commonwealth.
A 2019 study by Bryan Mann (University of Alabama) and David Baker (Penn State) looked at cyber charter data from 2002 (the year they became law in Pennsylvania) and 2014 found that after some initial cyber-enthusiasm, word began to spread that cyberschools did not educate very well. Wealthier communities backed away from cyber charters, but enrollment in poorer communities stayed up, meaning the communities that could least afford the loss of revenue for their public schools took the biggest hits.
And Mann and Baker note that “a steady stream of recent, scientifically sound, national evaluations reveals that cyber charter students tend to score lower on year-end tests and also have lower growth in learning over time than regular public school students. The same is true in Pennsylvania, where there is even evidence of knowledge loss (negative growth scores) from 4th to 8th grade in reading and math, literature, algebra, and biology among many cyber charter students.”
OPINION: Pennsylvanians Need Another Cyber Charter School Like A Hole In The Head
Last year, research showed problems even beyond the actual years of schooling. “Virtual Charter Students Have Worse Labor Market Outcomes as Young Adults,” a 2023 working paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, showed a correlation with several undesirable outcomes:
“Virtual charter students have substantially worse high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, bachelor’s degree attainment, employment rates, and earnings than students in traditional public schools.”
The study found that virtual charter attendance was associated with a lower likelihood of high school graduation or GED, lower likelihood of college enrollment, and a lower likelihood of employment up to six years after high school—and those employed made, on average, 17 percent less than students from public schools.
Cyber charters’ many issues have been well-documented. Academically, they fall far short of public schools. When the General Accounting Office studied them in 2022, they found a system of schools that resists oversight, presents “increased financial risks” to states, and produces poor student results. Even leaders in the charter school movement have found “well-documented, disturbingly low performance by too many full-time virtual charter public schools” and called for a radical overhaul (more than once).
Pennsylvania, the cyber charter capital of the country, bears the greatest weight of cyber-failure. And a new report from Good Jobs First, “Pennsylvania Cyber Charter Schools Fail Black and Brown Students,” show where much of this failure lands while laying out the many problems of Pennsylvania cyber charter schools.
Excessive funding
As pointed out by a 2022 report from the PA Charter Performance Center of Children First, of the 27 states that have cyber charters, none fund them as Pennsylvania does. While other states use a variety of formulas and oversight methods, Pennsylvania simply and generously funds cyber charters as if they were bricks and mortar charter schools. And while other states may require cyber charters to win approval from school board members elected by taxpayers in local districts, Pennsylvania cybers need only win approval in Harrisburg.
In 2019, the Philadelphia Inquirer found that a whopping 10 out of 15 cybers were operating without a current state charter. In December 2020, an investigation by the Scranton Times-Tribune found that six of the 14 cyber charters had never been reviewed by state auditors, and others had been audited only once (charters report their own audits to the state). Nor are there any standard metrics for how the schools count attendance (like a single log-in per day or per week? X number of hours spent on the program?).
The result is a cyber charter industry that is awash in money. Cyber charters have spent tens of millions on advertising and marketing. Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA), the 800-pound gorilla of PA cybers, spent $19 million for advertising over just two years. They paid for a huge Jerrold the Bookworm float in a Philadelphia parade, and if you’re headed to see the Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins, you and your group can get tickets for the CCA Ice Level Lounge.
Education Voters of Pennsylvania has diligently and repeatedly gone to court to force transparency on the cyber school businesses. In addition to the information about money spent on marketing, Ed Voters found that the top four cyber charters in Pennsylvania have amassed a tremendous pile of assets.
An Education Voters of PA report from earlier this year shows that the four largest cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania in 2018 had net assets and fund balances totaling $566,858; in 2022, that total had grown to $486 million, including every-growing real estate empires. CCA alone owns 40 buildings with a collective assessed value of roughly 43$ million.
Last year, says the Good Jobs First report, working from Department of Education figures, public schools held an unassigned reserve balance of 9 percent of expenditures, compared to cyber charters which held 21 percent – meaning cybers were sitting on one in five dollars in their operating expenditures.
That’s taxpayer money collected for the purpose of students’ education.
Thud for the buck
Well worth it, supporters may argue, if Pennsylvania taxpayers are getting bang for their bucks. Unfortunately, cyber charters deliver a dull thud.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CREDO) and Mathematica Policy Research are two organizations that generally support school choice and charter schools. Yet their 2015 study of national cyber charters rang huge alarm bells, declaring that cyber charters didn’t just fail to live up to the work of other brick and mortar schools, but have an “overwhelming negative impact.”
That holds true in Pennsylvania. In 2018-2019, the last COVID-free year, none of the cyber charter schools beat the state average of 62.1 percent proficient for English or 45.2 percent for Math. A couple were almost in the neighborhood, but some were not remotely close. Agora Cyber was 34 percent proficient in English, 10.6 percent Math. Insight PA Cyber was 28.5 percent proficient English, 7.6 percent Math. And Commonwealth Charter Academy shows a dismal 5 percent proficient in English, and 13.5 percent Math.
READ: Trump’s Agenda 47, Like Project 2025, Wants to Dismantle Public Education
In 2022, notes the Good Jobs First report, cyber charters had a graduation rate of 65 percent compared to 88 percent in public schools.
The report shows that these results disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic students.
Cybers have a greater share of those students. Across public schools, enrollment is 14.4 percent Black and 11.7 percent Hispanic. In cyber charters, enrollment is 19.8 percent Black 17 percent Hispanic.
Racial inequality in results
The Good Jobs First report compared the 13 cyber charters in Pennsylvania and to the 13 largest school districts in Pennsylvania, looking specifically at math/algebra and science/biology proficiency, based on data from the Future Ready PA Index.
The achievement gap in public schools is nothing to brag about. In math/algebra, white students are almost twice the rate of proficiency (27 percent) as Black and Hispanic students (just over 15 percent). But cyber charter numbers are far worse. The proficiency rate for White students is just over 13 percent, while Hispanic students show a rate of 6 percent and Black students just over 4 percent.
For science/biology, public schools again show a higher proficiency rate for White students (35 percent) compared to Black and Hispanic students (29 percent). Cyber charters actually do slightly better for white students (36 percent), but leave Hispanic students (22 percent) and Black students (18 percent) further behind.
Taxpayers funding poor performance and racial inequality
Cyber charter operators are going to argue that they receive students who are the most academically challenged, and that’s fair. But that is also the job they signed up to do, and they have had over 20 years to get good at it.
And it’s not as if they can complain that they are doing the best they can on a shoestring budget. If they wanted to invest more in what is supposed to be their core mission — educating students — they could simply redirect the millions they are spending on marketing and real estate, or tap their vast reserved balances, those reserves that represent one out of every five taxpayer dollars in their expenditures.
READ: Housing and Education Go Hand in Hand in Our Vision for a Healthy Pennsylvania
Those taxpayer dollars could also be invested in studying the question of why cyber charters have an achievement gap so much larger than that of public schools. Why are they so much worse at serving Black and Hispanic students? The frustration here is not just about how poorly cyber charters perform, but how many resources they have to do better—if they would just use them.
What next?
The Good Jobs First report offers four recommendations.
- The PA Department of Education should investigate why Black and Hispanic students do so much worse at the cybers.
- The cyber charter funding model should be reevaluated.
- The state should audit the cybers to see where those taxpayer dollars are actually going.
- The state should look into the real estate holdings to see if “such assets are consistent with their stated tax-exempt missions.”
The first goal is well worth doing, though the cyber companies would be best positioned to do the work. Taxpayers should not hold their breath.
The second and third are a familiar dream. Governor Tom Wolf proposed similar reforms, and a bill was in Harrisburg last year. Charter school reform even made it past the Democrat-controlled House.Somehow it never quite happens; besides real estate, marketing, and fat fund balances, all that extra money can also buy good lobbying. But nearly every school district in Pennsylvania passed a resolution calling for reform, marking growing bipartisan support for a change to the laws that are draining local taxpayer dollars while giving taxpayers little in return. Perhaps the tide will finally turn, but in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to call you local and state elected officials.
