PA Charter Change Talking Points

The Public Cost of Charter Schools

The burden of paying charter and cyber charter school tuition falls entirely on school districts and local taxpayers.
The charter school funding formula has not been changed since it was created 25 years ago. It’s time to update the law.
Charter school tuition payments are based on the school district’s expenses and not on the actual cost of educating students at a charter school, resulting in overpayment.

The spiraling costs of charter schools on school district budgets continues to grow. Eight cents of every dollar school districts spent in 2020-21 went to paying charter school tuition (cyber and brick-and-mortar).
In 2020-21, charter school tuition payments were more than $2.6 billion. $1 billion of that total was tuition to cyber charter schools.

$2.6 billion of taxpayer money spent on charter school tuition could pay the average salary for 37,100 PA public school teachers.

School districts are overpaying charter schools for special education. In the 2020-21 school year, school districts paid charter schools over $185 million more than the charter schools reported spending on special education costs.

Measures of academic proficiency of students enrolled at cyber schools are significantly lower than traditional public schools.
A national study of Pennsylvania’s charter school performance found that students enrolled in cyber schools post significantly weaker academic growth than the average student in a traditional public school.
On average, charter school proficiency on state testing is more than 20% lower than traditional school districts.
Each year, cyber charter students lose the equivalent of 106 days of learning in reading and about 118 days of learning in math compared to traditional public school students.

Graduation rates of cyber charters are consistently and substantially below school districts. In fact, 4-year graduation rates at cyber charter schools are more than 27% lower than school districts.
The average school district has about 88% of its students graduate in 4 years, while the average cyber charter school has only about 60% of its students graduate in 4 years.