04/30/2008

Panel Lauds Cost-Efficiency Cyber Charter Schools

By: Bradley Vasoli , The Philadelphia Bulletin

Harrisburg - Education experts yesterday spoke at the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation (CF) in favor of cyber charter schools, arguing that construction costs often sap traditional public schools of financial resources.

"For decades, there's been this myth that if you spend more on schools, they get better," Robert Maranto, a professor of political science and public administration at Villanova University, told the audience. "We spend money in the wrong ways on the wrong things."

Mr. Maranto co-authored a study with CF policy research director Nathan Benefield and Villanova graduate student Jason O'Brien titled "Edifice Complex: Where Has All the Money Gone?" examining the expenditures made by traditional brick-and-mortar public schools. The authors assert that the physical structures in which children learn have superseded other items as budgetary priorities.

Messrs. Maranto, Benefield and O'Brien note that between the 1986-87 and 2005-06 school years, Pennsylvanians' overall spending on public schools rose 72 percent, from $6.6 billion to almost $22 billion. Yet Pennsylvania students' average composite SAT score fell 0.3 percent in that time period. Pennsylvanians' average SAT score ranks 47th compared with all other states.

The study suggested that school officials could free up funds by focusing less on constructing elaborate buildings and more on meeting instructional costs. Between the 1996-97 and 2005-06 school years, public school spending in Pennsylvania rose 59 percent. Instruction spending went up 51 percent, school bureaucracies got an increase of 62 percent and construction and debt spending went up 103 percent. In that time period construction spending went from 8.7 percent of all public education spending to 11.3 percent.

Mr. Maranto said one lesson lawmakers can draw from the report's findings is to support cyber charter schools, public institutions allowing students to learn via computer at home. The Pennsylvania Department of Education estimates a total enrollment of 20,000 students in cyber charters for the 2007-08 academic year.

He noted that online public schools are not as lavishly funded as traditional public schools, getting an average $8,137 per pupil each year in contrast to the latter's average $11,485 per pupil. But because cyber schools need not spend nearly as much on facilities, they spend a greater proportion of their funds on instruction than do their brick-and-mortar counterparts. According to CF, Pennsylvania's aggregated 11 cyber charter schools met 64 of the state's 78 Adequate Yearly Progress academic standards for the previous school year in contrast to many public school districts.

"[Cyber] schools are not the drain on resources that school districts like to say they are," said Greg White, former Gov. Tom Ridge's education policy director, noting that school districts typically fund cyber charter students' education to the tune of three-fourths what they spend on their students who stay in public schools. Roughly one-fourth of each cyber student's expense is then reimbursed to the school district by the state.

House Bill 446, a bill authored by Rep. Karen Beyer (R-Lehigh), would restructure the state's financing formula for cyber charter schools, drastically cutting their funding.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), which supports HB 446, asserts it does not seek to halt the operations of cyber schools.

"PSEA is not opposed to the concept of cyber charters, we just want to see financial accountability," spokesman Wythe Keever told The Bulletin.