The Pennsylvania House Education Committee has scheduled a series of hearings about cyber charter schools in the commonwealth. At the first two hearings, some folks brought receipts, and some brought excuses, while the cyber charters themselves declined to appear at all. The performance of our elected representatives was a very mixed bag. Is there actual cyber charter reform in Pennsylvania’s future?
Receipts
Dr. Sherri Smith, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, had the numbers underlying the concerns of public school administrators. Math and ELA proficiency rates are not only low, but declining. Among the nine largest cybers in Pennsylvania, the two best rates for math proficiency were 25.5 percent and 27.4 percent. The rest were 12.5 percent or less.
Part of this is driven by participation rates. These rates were also dropping, with Commonwealth Charter Academy dropping to around 25 percent participation rate for test taking. Smith expressed concern about the low rates, reminding everyone that taking the test is a state requirement. It also raises a question about CCA specifically; they’ve invested millions of dollars in field offices, so why are they having so much trouble getting students to a test-taking site?
Smith pointed out graduation rates for cybers are also way below the state rate for public schools.
Attendance rates for the cybers vary wildly, from a high of 94 percent down to 59 percent. Often “attendance” is simply logging in for the day. Smith questioned why schools with high attendance still have low results, and in cases of low attendance and results, questioned why they are being allowed to stay in the program.
And if you prefer anecdotes to data, Smith brought one alarming story from one of her districts. A CCA student’s official transcript showed failing grades and a GPA of 0.5, while it also lists his class rank as 501 out of 3,656. “Apparently there are 3,000 ninth graders at Commonwealth Charter Academy who have worse grades than that.”
Smith also pointed to an issue with cyber-school students who move out of their original district, yet that district keeps paying their cyber-tuition. Michael Dadey, Greater Johnstown School District’s Assistant to the Superintendent, would later testify to the same issue, saying he believes some families seem to think that once they are in cyber school, they can do that from anywhere and don’t realize there’s a financial impact for the district.
Susan Spicka, executive director of Education Voters of PA, pointed to the many financial excesses of cyber charters shown in both organization’s reports and the recent report from the auditor general.
Tens of millions of dollars for marketing. Target, Starbucks and other gift cards for students. A $400/month stipend for employees to drive to work. High salaries for executives along with platinum memberships at the Hill Society in Harrisburg, a fancy private club (as their website says, “Celebrate the good stuff. Wine. Food. Whiskey.”)
Spicka argues that cyber charters have lost their way, that increasing revenue and enrollment “appears to be a much higher priority than ensuring the students entrusted to their care are actually learning” and preparing for adult life.
Further critiques on the second day came from Dadey, who pointed out that increased cyber charter costs have become unsustainable. This is exacerbated by the number of transient students; Johnstown saw 741 new enrollees and 465 withdrawals in one year, many of them via cyber charters.
Dadey also marked the spending unveiled in the auditor general report. While “watching millions of dollars flow to cyber charters with little transparency or oversight,” the district is “left to make painful budget decisions.” Dadey noted that the district would love to be able to give families gift cards, but they can’t, and are meanwhile trying to help families in the district meet basic needs, an effort that depends on voluntary donations.
There was no testimony feistier than that of Robert Gleason. Gleason’s GOP credentials are deep: he has served the state in various capacities under governors Thornburgh, Casey and Ridge. He campaigned for George Bush, who appointed him to the Commission of Presidential Scholars. In his first term, Donald Trump appointed Gleason to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. He was the Pennsylvania GOP chair from 2006 to 2017; these days he is president of the Westmont Hilltop School District board.
And he really does not care for charter schools at all.
At one point in the hearing, Gleason asserted that cyber charters simply should not exist; he later walked that back. But he was still forceful in asserting that cyber charters strip districts of too much money, and do a vastly inferior job of both educating and supporting the students. Like others, he pointed to the cyber charters general fund balances of $619 million, “a number that the average school board member can not even comprehend.” The excess of money over actual costs, said Gleason, “is criminal.”
Excuses
As State Rep. Peter Schweyer noted multiple times, representatives of the cyber charters had, once again, been invited and had declined. “I wish I had subpoena power,” Schweyer said. But he does not.
However, that does not mean that cybers did not have defenders. While declining, CCA suggested Maurice Flurie, who currently runs a consulting firm (The Flurie Solutions Group), but who was the president and CEO of CCA for almost 11 years. He’s long been a reliable source of pro-cyber testimony and resistance to any proposal changing regulation, oversight, or revenue. In 2019, a bill was proposed that said any district that offered in-district cyber school would not have to pay a third party cyber charter. “I think cyber charter schools would no longer exist,” said Flurie. In 2016, he was one of the voices opposing Governor Tom Wolf’s proposal to reform charter law. And he was true to form at this hearing.
Flurie went after low-hanging fruit by going after the state testing system (PSSA/Keystone), a system that every person at the first day of testimony, regardless of party or cyber-stance, was willing to attack. The assessments are not aligned to standards, said Flurie. Also, for cyber students to travel to a strange location and take a strange test around strange people was just too anxiety-provoking. Participation rate? Lots of parents don’t want to and the school “is not going to browbeat parents.”
Thirty percent of cyber students are “off cohort” when they enroll, Flurie says, so it takes some six years to get through (Smith’s numbers include 6-year graduation rate, and it’s not good). This is a common cyber charter defense: “The students we get are already struggling with school, which is why we get them.” It’s a valid concern, but it begs the question—after 20-some years of enrolling these sorts of students, why aren’t cyber charters better at helping them succeed?
READ: Report Exposes How Charter Schools Are Doomed to Fail – at Taxpayers’ Expense
In response to the notion that cyber costs are hurting local schools, Flurie pointed at pension costs as the real culprits, much like a car thief telling you that your real problem is the guy stealing your wallet. He also repeated the industry talking point about the huge fund balances, which consists of A) “they are not” and B) “public schools do it, too.” This always involves pointing at the combined fund balance for all public schools, because it would be hard to find a single district that matches CCS’s hundreds of millions of dollars.
As Schweyer pointed out on the second day, CCA set $196 million aside for construction, while Pennsylvania set aside $100 million for the entire state.
Asked to explain why Pennsylvania has a different cyber-charter tuition rate for each of 500 school districts, Flurie tried two approaches. One was to suggest that many districts are filling out the form that determines tuition rates incorrectly. Another was to reflect the blame for the difference onto the public schools themselves by carefully noting that the rates are based on what the public school district “chooses” to pay.
Noting the huge discrepancies in cyber charter tuition rates for districts next door to one another, Rep. Danielle Otten asked if he could justify that difference, and if the student who came with a higher tuition rate got more services than low-rate students. Flurie unleashed many words that didn’t really answer the question.
But Flurie didn’t have to defend cybers alone. Several representatives were willing to go to bat for the virtual school business.
Representative Barbara Gleim said it was not fair to pick on dropout rates for cyber charters when Philadelphia schools have so many problems. Representative Roman Kozak argued that cyber funding should be more equitable, that 70 percent of the public pupil costs are not enough.
Representative Marc Anderson was particularly supportive. On the first day, he declared he was tired of all this fighting and asked Smith if she had ever sat down with cyber charter leaders, as if he were the first guy to think of this. She said she had, and suggested that the problem was that the legislature had put public and charter schools in the position of fighting over the money. “Fix the money, and the fighting goes away.” Anderson ignored that and offered to personally facilitate a meeting.
Anderson also led the rebuttals of the comments about Ed Voters and the auditor general’s findings of the many ways cybers use their extra money by arguing that public school superintendents also take trips, sometimes to fancy places. This ignored the many other uses of money, like gift cards to parents and gas allowances to employees and the massive fund balances. It also ignored the point that the various uses of money are evidence that the cyber charters literally have more money than they know what to do with, a clear sign that Pennsylvania taxpayers are being overcharged.
MVPs
Schweyer pressed Smith on the question of results. Would principals who had cyber charter-style results face some consequences?
Representative Napoleon Nelson showed a keener understanding of cyber charter issues.
In response to the standard “my tax dollars should follow my child” argument, Nelson pointed out that when students leave a public school, they take the tax dollars from a whole neighborhood, including households with no children. “Parent choice commits other taxpayers on that block to that choice.” That’s why school boards are put in place, he noted, to exercise control over how taxpayer dollars are spent, including negotiating contracts. Dollars leave the community, but the community has no way to address that.
Better Ways
The hearings danced around the idea of an $8,000 flat fee for cyber tuition, but they also heard from schools that run an in-house cyber school. Gleason and Dadey both spoke to in-house models, and there was testimony from Melanie Upton of the Conestoga Valley Virtual Academy.
CVVA is notable for the level of support that the district supplies, from guidance and mental health assists to close family contacts. “We know our kids, we know our families, and we can build what they need.”
READ: This Election Actually Showed Americans Still Love Their Public Schools
CVVA has a dedicated space in the school and offers full or blended virtual schooling. If a student starts to fall behind, that triggers extra contact from the school to get the student support (and to make sure everything is okay at the home).
Asked if she ever councels families not to take the cyber option, Upton says she “rarely” uses the word “no.” Cyber is not for everyone, but they have the option to try. Upton said if the family is uncertain, they can dip their toes in with just a course or two. And if the student turns out to be a bad match for cyber school, they can be pulled back into bricks and mortar school.
In-house cyber school can provide greater success at a lower cost to taxpayers.
Final reminder
The second day’s testimony was from a cyber-school parent who was clearly a real parent and not a polished spokesperson, and her story was a reminder that for some students, cyber-school is a life saver. Her testimony prompted Schweyer to reassure her that their goal was to lift up districts that are behind, not hurt those that are doing well. “We are not out to hurt any student or family.”
Where is all this headed?
There is widespread belief that Pennsylvania’s decades-old cyber charter law needs to be revisited. More than 450 of Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts have passed resolutions calling for reform.
Those calling for reform seem ready for conversation. Nobody seems deeply attached to the $8,000 tuition amount, and while there are many calls for transparency and oversight, nobody seems to be pushing for a particular hard and fast vision for cyber charters in the future.
On the other hand, as seen in these hearings, cyber charter supporters are not giving an inch. They are not willing to admit that they are collecting a penny more form taxpayers than they need or deserve ( and some argue they should be paid more). They have shown no willingness to take responsibility for less-than-stellar results. And parents like the woman who testified have been worked into a state of fear by cyber leaders insisting that the state is out to get them. Any compromise or concession is painted as an existential threat.
Under these conditions, it’s not clear how legislators can work out a solution that involves both sides, but it’s not clear that legislators have the stomach to impose a solution on cyber charters. Meanwhile, local taxpayers are being soaked as cyber charters hoover up large piles of money, forcing local school boards to either cut programs or raise taxes. How much longer can Pennsylvania taxpayers suffer through such an impasse?
