Cyber charter school enrollment soared by 22,618 students during the pandemic and Pennsylvania now has the highest cyber enrollment in the nation. In 2020-21, school districts paid over $1 billion in tuition for students enrolled in Pennsylvania’s 14 cyber charter schools, a $335 million increase over the prior school year. Research for Action’s (RFA) new brief from the Pennsylvania Clearinghouse for Education Research (PACER) Project, “The Negative Fiscal Impact of Cyber Charter School Expansion in Pennsylvania Due to COVID-19,” estimates the impact of that expansion.
In a 2017 study, RFA found that districts are unable to realize substantial savings when students depart for charter schools, leaving the vast majority of tuition as a “stranded cost” or negative fiscal impact on district finances. In this brief we apply the findings of that study and estimate that, in just year-one, stranded costs of cyber charter expansion due to the pandemic ranged $290 to $308 million dollars statewide.
We also describe the broader context of cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania, including evidence of poor student outcomes and financial waste, and highlight legislation before the Pennsylvania Senate and House that would reduce inefficiencies and financial incentives for cyber school expansion and lessen the negative fiscal impacts on school districts by creating a uniform statewide cyber charter school tuition rate for all districts that is better aligned to actual costs.
