An Outbreak of Common Sense in the Commonwealth?

AYP? Ummm, NOT SO MUCH: Once the federal government
required all charter schools 

to analyze their test scores
the same way as traditional public 

schools, there were no more
smiles or banners for cyber-charters; 

zero of which actually
made Adequate Yearly Progress.

So apparently all hope for sanity in Pennsylvania, hanging by the thinnest of threads, is not lost.

It was announced in Tuesday's papers that Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Ron Tomalis Monday rejected all eight applications for new cyber-charter schools.

You can read Elizabeth Chute's article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette here; the Harrisburg Patriot-News article here; or the article in The Philadelphia Public School Notebook here.

Or, if you're an originalist, you can read PDE's press release here.

As this blog sputtered on about Sunday, it seemed ludicrous that the state would be considering allowing eight more cyber-charter schools -- a 50 percent increase -- when not one of them had met the federal benchmarks set out under the No Child Left Behind law.

There is still a small chance that some of the eight cyber-

charter schools rejected by Ron Tomalis, shown here, will

ultimately be approved.

But Tomalis did not cite this statistic among the reasons for his rejection.

This is what he did say:

“The proposals submitted by the applicants lack adequate evidence and sufficient information of how prospective students would be offered quality academic programs. In addition, the financial plans presented call into question each applicant’s ability to maintain a long-term, viable educational program for the benefit of Pennsylvania students.”

While this may seem like a sudden epidemic of common sense, it is probably proper to add a pinch of caution here, as Benjamin Herold of Newsworks did in his Notebook article.

Rhonda Brownstein

Herold quoted Education Law Center executive director Rhonda Brownstein, who said: "as we saw last year, the department rejected seven applications in January, only to approve four of those applicants in June after they re-applied.”

This year’s applicants may also resubmit their applications, or choose to appeal their denials.

All of this news comes as the House Republican Caucus announced an ambitious  set of proposals to reform several aspects of Pennsylvania's charter school laws.

The suggested changes deal only with funding, which is indeed a hot mess, and not with the actual success of charter schools, only 30 percent of which make the Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, required by the federal law; or cyber-charters, none of whom made AYP.

Pa. Rep. Mike Reese (R)

And GOP dogma does require the following statement from Rep. Mike Reese (R-Fayette/Westmoreland): "Pennsylvania’s charter schools and cyber charter schools have generally worked well and have benefitted many Pennsylvania families, particularly those students in low-performing school districts."

How 30 percent and zero percent equates to "working well" is a kind of math we'll have to address some other time, because the proposed funding changes are worth considering.

Here are the key provisions:

• Special Education Funding. Re-introduce legislation to create a commission to address inequities in the special education funding formula. The commission will be charged with determining how the Commonwealth should fund charter and cyber charter special education students.
• Pension/Doubledip. Introduce legislation to allow deductions for school district pension payments prior to calculating payments to cyber charter schools. This one change will save approximately $165 million for school districts over the next five years. Blogger's Note: (This was the subject of an Aug. 19 post in this space.)
• Cyber Funding Reforms. Reese will introduce legislation to make the following additional changes to the current cyber charter funding formula for non-special education students: 

1. A new “Cyber Program” deduction to spur on competition between school districts and cyber charter schools. School districts will be permitted to deduct 50 percent of the costs of any cyber program they offer to their own resident students. Blogger's Note: (This would affect cyber-charter schools begun in the Pottstown, Spring-Ford and Boyertown school districts to directly compete with the outside schools.)
2. Districts would be allowed to make additional deductions in calculating their payments to cyber charter schools; these deductions represent costs that occur in a brick-and-mortar setting, but not necessarily in a cyber setting. The proposed new deductions are:
3. The “Extracurricular Activities” deduction will allow districts to deduct 50 percent of the costs they incur for extracurricular activities. This deduction will not change the availability of extracurricular activities to cyber charter students who choose to participate in their home school district’s activities.
4. The “District Pupil Services” deduction will allow districts to deduct 100 percent of the costs associated with certain services that are offered in a brick-and-mortar setting but are not necessarily offered by cyber charter schools. These deductions will include student health services, food services and library services.

Those are the changes the traditional public school districts would probably like, as it addresses some of the complaints they have made over the years.

"There are some promising pieces in it that could benefit school districts across the commonwealth," the Pennsylvania School Boards Association wrote in a release reacting to the proposals.

"PSBA has been in favor of eliminating such items as the pension double dip and creating a funding formula that more accurately aligns with the true costs of operating cyber charter schools, both of which promise to be addressed in future legislation," the organization said.

Other significant parts of the proposal include:

• Direct Payment of Charter Schools. Recognizing the concerns of charter and cyber charter schools not being timely paid by school districts, the Commonwealth will provide their funding directly.
• Longer Charter Terms for Predictable Financing. The term of a charter will be lengthened from the current three years for an initial charter and five years for renewals, to five years for the initial charter and 10 years for renewals. Longer terms will allow charter schools to more easily secure predictable and consistent bank financing; the shorter terms have made private financing difficult for a number of charters in the state.

Both of these seem reasonable on the face of them.

And don't think that the irony of this flurry of charter and cyber-charter school news coming during "Pennsylvania School Choice Week" has been lost on the Digital Notebook staff.

Eighty-four events to mark the week have been scheduled across the Commonwealth.

Pennsylvania Embracing Failure

Albert Einstein is perhaps our most famous
theorist. Turns out, the evidence has proven
him right. Win.

Lately, I have begun to espouse a new philosophy which is distinctly non-philosophical -- "show me that it works."

Both liberalism and conservatism are replete with theories about the way we should live and run our governments and our societies.

Some theories -- trickle-down economics for example -- have lived long beyond the time they should have been abandoned for the simple reason that have failed to produce the results they promised.

(For my entire adult life, I've been waiting for tax cuts for millionaires to ensure me a comfortable middle class lifestyle. Next.)

Failure of this theory is no joke.

Perhaps nowhere is theory more prevalent these days than in the field of education.

And so, although dubious, I was willing to give school choice a chance under the rubric that if it works, let's go with it.

After all, as someone who is the product of public schools, has a child in public schools and reports on traditional public schools on a daily basis, it was hard to argue that public schools don't have their problems.

The answer to those problems, we were told, was a new beginning; charter schools; cyber-charter schools; vouchers; starting from scratch.

Although I've always believed its better to fix the car than to buy a whole new car, I acknowledge that sometimes the car can't be fixed, or that fixing it would cost more than the value of the car itself.

So OK school choice, show me this works.

Fail.

As traditional public education advocates have been shouting from the roof tops for the past week or so, newly re-calculated test results that actually compare apples to apples between charter, cyber-charter and traditional public schools show that fewer than 30 percent of charter schools meet national benchmarks.

By way of comparison, at least 50 percent of traditional public schools run by districts met the benchmarks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no advocate for standardized tests being the only barometer of school effectiveness. They should be a part of a larger assessment.

But its the school choice people who have shoved those test scores in our face as evidence that traditional schools are failing and who used the skewed results as evidence of their success.

Ooops.

So what's good for the goose is good for the charter school I say.

Remember, the state slapped Pottstown High School with the dubious honor of being a "failing school" for missing one math benchmark and otherwise having grades much better than most charters and ALL cyber-charters.

The 'level playing field' Pennsylvania envisioned for

comparing traditional public schools and charter schools.

Surely, in the interest of "the level playing field" we all claim to want, that label will now be carefully applied to all 12 of Pennsylvania's cyber-charter schools, none of which made the "Adequate Yearly Progress" required under the federal No Child Left Behind Law.

Surely, in the interest of providing parents with as much information as possible to make informed choices, that label will now be slapped on the 61 percent of the 80 brick-and-mortar charter schools that did not make AYP.

Surely you're joking.

This is Pennsylvania people.

Consider that the reason those scores are new, is that until the feds stepped in and said no, Pennsylvania had one way of calculating scores for charter schools and a whole different (much harsher) way of calculating them for traditional public schools.

In other words, as I wrote about in August, there was a double standard.

Shocking I know.

"How could this happen?" You ask.

It's Pennsylvania people.

The better question to ask is how could it not happen?

Charles Zogby talks about Pennsylvania's pension crisis
during a meeting with Digital First Media journalists on Jan. 10.

Well, however it happened in the Byzantine halls of Harrisburg, I feel confident in the belief that just because former Secretary of Education Charles Zogby was subsequently a highly paid executive with a for-profit company with ties to the largest of Pennsylvania's cyber charter schools in no way ensured that a way would be found to make those companies look good and attract more investment.

Because that would be wrong.

By way of a little history, Zobgy served as education secretary under Republican governors Ridge and Schweiker from 2001 to 2003, and as the Director of Governor Ridge's Policy Office from 1995 to 2001.

Before returning to government service as Tom Corbett's budget secretary, a happy coincidence if ever there was one, Zogby, served as the Senior Vice President of Education and Policy for K12 Inc.

That for-profit company is an online school curriculum developer and provider with ties to Pennsylvania Virtual Academy and Agora, two of Pennsylvania's largest cyber charters.

This makes K12 seem like a perfectly nice company.

In July, K12 Inc. offices were raided by federal agents and the firm is also under investigation on Wall Street for lying to investors and in Florida for using non-certified teachers.

Surely, given the lobbying, the money, the poor performance, one would think it's time for some detailed examination of this school choice experiment.

Surely, given that not a single cyber-charter school demonstrated adequate effectiveness in educating our students to a state-wide standard, we would have a halt on any new cyber-charter school applications until we could figure out how to do better.

Surely, I've mentioned this is Pennsylvania right?

More money, worse results?

Let's have more of that.

Well in Pennsylvania, when there's doubt about the effectiveness of an entity using public money to do a sub-standard job, we respond by saying: "let's have us some more of that."

Yup, in a move that strains credulity, Pennsylvania is now considering approval of eight new cyber charter schools.

That's a 50 percent increase in the investment of public money in a model now shown to be failing.

Not satisfied with that depressing statistic, see if you can guess who would be contracted to run one of these eight new cyber charter schools -- you guessed it, K12 Inc.

That's how we roll in the Keystone state.

This year, Pennsylvania taxpayers will spend about $400 million so that roughly 35,000 students can be taught through cyber charters instead of traditional public schools.

By 2017, we the taxpayers would be spending an additional $108.3 million to educate another 9,800 students in cyber schools if these new proposed cyber-charters are approved.

Talk about throwing good money after bad. 

WHYY's Newsworks reported on Dec. 5 that:

Rhonda Brownstein

In their review of the Philadelphia School District's operations, the Boston Consulting Group described the quality of Pennsylvania's cybers as "notoriously low."

The consultants recommended that the district start its own online program to draw students back.

And Rhonda Brownstein of the Education Law Center wants a freeze on all new cyber charters.

"With all of the dismal academic performance, we think that the Pennsylvania Department of Education should slow down, take a look at what the problem is, and not go on to approve additional [cybers]," she said.

But, according to Newsworks, the Pennsylvania Department of Education is doing the exact opposite.

Carolyn Dumaresq, PA's deputy secretary of
education sees "value" in a schools model that
fails to meet standards 100% of the time.

After all, it is the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

It's not like its some non-partisan public entity dedicated to giving the Commonwealth's children the very best education for the lowest price.

So, Carolyn Dumaresq, Pennsylvania's deputy secretary of education, showed up at the hearings "touting the value of online options," according to the Newsworks report. 

Perhaps she went to a cyber-charter school herself. I'm having trouble understanding how more money and poorer results defines the word "value."

"The beauty of the cyber charter is that any child, anywhere in Pennsylvania can participate," said Dumaresq. "I think they serve a unique role in providing additional opportunities for students."

Which of course, brings us back to theories versus actual evidence in the real world; where the "opportunity" to participate in a failing enterprise from anywhere in the state, is a value greater than a public school where your chances of academic success are greater.

A decision on the new charters is expected tomorrow. Anyone want to bet they all get approved?

Corbett listens to a question from Phil Heron, right, the

editor of the Delaware County Daily Times during a Jan. 10

meeting with editorial staff from Digital First Media.

When I joined a group of Digital First Media editors and reporters to meet with Gov. Corbett so he could highlight the crisis of pensions in Pennsylvania (see today's Mercury for an in depth-analysis of that problem) I asked him about the results for school choice.

As I wrote in a Jan. 13 post, Corbett's affection for the theory allows him to by-pass the facts.

I started by asking him about the "voucher lite" program, that uses a business tax break to divert what would have been tax receipts that could have funded public schools (you'll remember them as the ones that are doing better than charter schools). Instead, the money goes to foundations that offer scholarships to private schools.

According to an analysis I did in August, by an overwhelming margin, the program favors schools with a religious affiliation.

So I asked Gov. Corbett if using the state to facilitate religious education bothered him.

"Are you asking me if I'm against school choice? No, I'm not against school choice. Competition is always good," Corbett replied, completely ignoring the question I had actually asked him.

When I pointed out, as we've shown here, that test scores at charter schools, cyber and otherwise, are in general worse than those in traditional public schools, he was untroubled.

Smiling, he said these experiments in choice are "just getting started" and will have to "do better."

Faith in the theory that "competition is always good" trumped evidence that this is not always the case.

I would have hoped that a former prosecutor would be more moved by evidence.

But that's just a theory.

After all, this is Pennsylvania.