As we’ve reported many times in a number of ways, charter schools have siphoned off millions and millions of public education dollars without producing the results long promised by advocates—and the profiteers behind them. In the Public Interest has reported on the real estate/charter school industrial complex and the fiscal impacts of charter schools on school districts, among other topics. We’re happy to share with you a new report from our friends at Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center that promotes corporate and government accountability in economic development.

Pennsylvania Cyber Charter Schools Fail Black and Brown Students is the sixth in a series of quarterly reports the organization has produced that “looks at the relationship between race, ethnicity, and economic development.”

It found Pennsylvania’s publicly funded and privately owned fully online cyber charter schools, which enroll 60,000 students—the highest number in the country–have lower graduation rates and performance measures across most subjects. The discrepancies are especially severe for Black and Brown students.

With that share of Pennsylvania’s student population–currently 4% of the state’s K-12 students get their public education virtually—the figures are troubling.

“In 2022, the state’s cyber charter schools had an overall graduation rate of 65% compared to 88% across all traditional school districts” the report states. “Measures of student performance also follow this trend: students at public schools, including Black and Latino ones, are more proficient in math and science than those at cyber charters.”

These cyber charter outcomes exist despite such schools having the same per-student funding as brick-and-mortar schools.

Among the report’s recommendations:

• The Pennsylvania Department of Education should investigate why Black and Brown students are so much less likely to be proficient in biology, math and science when they attend cyber charter schools;
• Public payment rates for cyber charter schools need to be reevaluated to acknowledge the cheaper cost of educating students virtually and to reflect the actual cost of operations;
• The state should perform a forensic audit of the cyber charter companies to determine what they actually spend their public funding on and specifically what they are doing with their physical-plant savings to address their students’ poor achievement rates;
• The state should investigate the real estate holdings of the cyber charter companies to determine if such assets are consistent with their stated tax-exempt missions.

Visit the website of Good Jobs First to learn more and read the full report.