Corbett's right about schools
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I have a difference of opinion with some of the views expressed regarding public charter schools in the Oct. 14 Post-Gazette editorial, "Corbett's Choice," on Gov. Tom Corbett's education plan.
Charter schools in Pennsylvania are funded under a formula based on the average cost to educate a student in a school district, minus deductions in 21 categories that a school district can take before paying the charter. The responsibility to educate the child transfers to the charter but a school district retains, on average, 30 percent of the average cost per child.
In Pittsburgh, the amount retained by the school district in the current school year is 42 percent, which is the highest we can find among the more than 400 districts in the state that have students enrolled in charter schools.
It's too simplistic to say that charters are educating children for 58 percent to 80 percent of the cost to educate children in traditional public schools, but it is also too simplistic to say that public charters are draining money from traditional public schools as implied in the editorial.
The proposed legislation does not remove the power to authorize charter schools from school districts, as stated in the editorial. What it proposes is to add an additional state authorizer and permit the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education to become authorizers if they so choose.
Many charters have great relationships with their authorizing school districts and that should not be changed. But some districts do everything they can to kill even the best charters within their purview and, for the sake of the children, that should not be tolerated.
The proposed legislation also mandates statewide consistency in methodology, processes, forms and criteria that pertain to charter schools, which does not exist today. The legislation is much more stringent and results-focused than current practice, and we welcome that.
The statement that allowing parents to have a choice relegates "... the neediest students to the poorest schools" is beyond my comprehension, because what it really says is, let all of our children fail. Why must my child be condemned to an unsafe or poor-performing school and a bleak future simply because of the ZIP code in which I live or the fact that I am not fortunate enough to have the money to send my child to a private school?
First Published October 19, 2011 12:00 am
