Gov. Wolf calls for constraints on Pennsylvania charter schools at school administrator meeting
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said Friday that the state’s charter and cyber charter schools are overfunded at the expense of traditional public schools and largely immune from public scrutiny – accusations that he intends to address through what he calls a “charter school accountability plan.”
Speaking at a meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators, the governor renewed his claims that Pennsylvania’s charter school law is one of the worst in the country and argued that reforms are needed to put traditional public schools on more solid footing and to avoid the annual drumbeat of property tax increases
Wolf, a Democrat in his second term in office, insists that implementing his accountability plan will result in $280 million being redirected annually from charters to traditional public schools. To justify such a move, Wolf pointed to a Stanford study that showed that some cyber charter schools are underperforming.
“Every student deserves a great education, whether in a traditional public school or a charter school, but the state’s flawed and outdated charter school law is failing children, parents, and taxpayers,” Wolf said in a statement. “Pennsylvania has a history of school choice, which I support, but there is widespread agreement that we must change the law to prioritize quality and align funding to actual costs.”
The Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, in a news release following Wolf’s remarks, noted that many traditional public schools have a track record of underperforming, too, which has been one of the drivers of interest in charter school options.
“The families of more than 143,000 students have chosen to send their children to a public charter school,” Ana Meyers, executive director of the coalition, said in the news release. “There are more than 30,000 students waiting to get into a charter school in Philadelphia alone. Why? Because their school district was not meeting their child’s needs. If Governor Wolf gets his way, these students will be trapped in a school district building based on their zip code – not based on the educational needs of the students.”
Among the deficiencies that Wolf sees in the existing charter school system are the fact that charters do not have an elected school board, that the companies that run them aren’t CONTINUE READING: Gov. Wolf calls for constraints on Pennsylvania charter schools at school administrator meeting | News | mdjonline.com
