PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER Editorial: ….The [Center for Rural Pennsylvania] study found that more than 80 percent of the students who leave a traditional public school to attend a charter school enroll in one whose performance on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests is inferior to the school they left. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good charters in Pennsylvania; it means the good ones aren’t being replicated enough.
Either parents aren’t aware of that, or they don’t care, perhaps because they prefer the charter environment. Charter school enrollment has mushroomed, growing 54 percent statewide between the 2006-07 and 2010-11 academic years, to 90,000 students. Cyber-charters grew 75 percent during that period, to 28,000 students. Only about 5 percent of Pennsylvania public school students attend a charter, but that’s the seventh-largest charter population in the nation.
The state stopped providing a subsidy for charter school students about four years ago, leaving funding almost entirely to local districts. But the districts typically see no decrease in maintenance, personnel, and other costs, because the reduction in students per traditional school hasn’t been significant enough… (more)
