Pennsylvania’s system for funding cyber charter schools sucks money out of public schools and deposits it in vast reserves for private online academies that simply do not work. Reforming this system is essential to any school funding reform in the commonwealth, and Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposal is a good place to start: Cap cyber charter funding at $8,000 per pupil.

Currently, cyber charter schools are funded at the same rate as brick and mortar charter schools, an absurd arrangement that has allowed the online schools to amass comically huge reserves: over $250 million across the 14 organizations, and that was in 2022. The schools have seen massive growth since the COVID pandemic as parents reject traditional educational models, and with combined spending of nearly $17 million on advertising in 2021 and 2022, it’s clear they’re competing with each other, and with other schools, for lucrative students.

The state’s funding scheme, passed in 2002 and clearly obsolete, is also based on each pupil’s school district’s per-student spending. The idea is that public schools should be neither helped nor harmed by students choosing a charter school. But it also creates incentives to poach kids from districts that pay better - and not to take kids from those that don’t.

The two largest losers, unsurprisingly, are the school districts in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But relative to their enrollments, PPS shells out a lot more to cyber charters than Philadelphia. That’s because, despite its atrocious outcomes, PPS is by far the best funded urban district in the state - and thus pays handsomely to charters who educate Pittsburgh pupils.

In PPS, all charters are taking a substantial $146 million cut of the public school budget this year - but if cyber charter funding were slashed to $8,000 per child, the district would retain about $13 million per year. That’s good, but it’s hardly enough to fix a budget that’s staring at negative reserves - that is, default - in 2025.

Meanwhile, across the rest of Allegheny County Mr. Shapiro’s $8,000 proposal would bring another $14 million per year back to public school coffers.

Generous funding of cyber charter programs might make sense if they produce substantially improved outcomes, but the opposite is true. Proficiency rates in cyber charters lag those in traditional public schools by 20% or more in every discipline and at every grade level. While cyber charters may work for some students, schools also learned during the COVID that, broadly speaking, online education is almost never an adequate alternative to in-person instruction.

Some charters do claim that the $8,000 proposal would cause them to close their doors. This is unlikely, given their vast reserves, but candid negotiations may result in a modest increase in the per student funding cap. That’s fine: The purpose isn’t to end cyber charters entirely, but to allow them to fulfill their limited purpose without unfairly burdening the system.

Right now, however, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Reform is necessary.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette