DN editorial: State charter-school system could not be any worse

THE CHARTER-SCHOOL system is supposed to provide quality alternatives to traditional public schools. Many individual schools do just that. Some don't, including four schools that the Philadelphia School District announced Thursday it is not recommending for renewals.

But as a system, the network of charter schools around the state is structurally unsound.

This observation is not new. But a new audit of the oversight of Philadelphia charters released this week by the auditor general's office illuminates just how broken the system is, with gaps in oversight and monitoring, as well as unfair and irresponsible practices from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

The original state law that created charters in 1997 hasn't been reformed since. The practical outcome of the law is that an alternative education system was built as quickly as possible, with few controls and no extra money to fund or manage it. Since that law was passed, 176 charter schools educating 120,000 students have opened; 86 in Philadelphia. And yet, the structure for proper monitoring and oversight is virtually nonexistent at the state level, and, according to the audit, very minimal at the local level.

Philadelphia charters educate 68,000 students, and yet its charter office during the time of the audit had six people. It now has nine. (The Pittsburgh School District has 116 administrators for 25,000 students.)

The state mandates that the district authorize charters, and prevents them from imposing enrollment caps. And since every new charter student costs the district, every charter approval gives it less and less control over its own budget. In an attempt to control costs, the district attempts to cap enrollment in charter agreements. And here's where real insanity takes root: If a charter exceeds that number, it can appeal to the PDE for the money . . . and usually gets it, no questions asked. The department takes the charter payments out of the operating funds for the district without consulting the district or giving it a hearing.

Since 2012, the department has withheld $15 million from the district's state funding and given it to charters. According to the audit, 65 disputes the district filed with the state on these payments have been ignored.

The audit also pointed out that the cigarette tax that the Legislature authorized mandated that the SRC had to review and approve charter applications, with no bearing on its ability to pay for them.

When the SRC does not approve charter applications or renewals, charters can appeal, but paying legal costs for that appeals process falls on the district's shoulders. In three years, for example, the district had to pay over $1 million for those appeals.

What happens when you create a new system within the old one, provide no extra money or oversight, and do everything you can to force the district to expand this new system, even to its own financial detriment? That's the educational equivalent of a perfect killing machine.

Or as Auditor General Eugene DePasquale calls it, "the worst charter school law in the United States."

Those who suffer from these failures are not only students in underperforming charters - like the thousands who will be impacted by Thurday's nonrenewals - but those students left behind in the traditional, shrinking, funding-starved school system. We have to do better.