Charter High Schools In Philadelphia – Pan American Academy Charter School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Natalie Reitz/Temple University’s Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting)
The charter school issue is one of the biggest debates in the education landscape in Philadelphia and nationally.
Charter High Schools In Philadelphia
Charters have been on the rise in the United States since the 1990s, adding fuel to the question of whether parents should have more choices about how school fees are distributed and where to send their children.
West Oak Lane Charter School
The influx of charters, which now comprise about a quarter of schools operated by the School District of Philadelphia, has complicated the decision-making process for parents choosing between neighborhood public district schools, magnet schools with citywide access and guidance. Private schools. Schools.
Local policymakers have long debated how many charter schools should operate in the district, how they should be monitored and how they should be funded relative to public schools. A new charter has not been adopted since 2018, when the Philadelphia Board of Education temporarily wrested control of the district from the state, which took over Philly schools.
In partnership with the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting and Philadelphia, Billy Penn launches a series examining how charter schools impact educational disparities in Philadelphia. Among other things, we will examine how charters are managed, how they fare against the city’s public schools, how fair their admissions are, the politics behind their funding, and what the experience of teaching in a charter is like.
To begin, we’ll consider 10 key questions about charters and how they differ from other school models.
Mastery Charter School Thomas Campus
Charter schools are best understood as hybrids between public and private schools. They receive good government funding and are held to the same operational standards as public schools, but are privately managed. In Pennsylvania, they are run by non-profit organizations.
Although most Pennsylvania schools are exempt from the law, charters must maintain the same employee criminal history, open meetings, health and safety policies, special education programs, civil rights and open records as public schools. Charter schools must follow the same state assessment system, including PSSA and Keystone test administration.
Charters must offer core courses (think math, science and English) that align with state and federal standards, but can design their own curriculum. Charters are also allowed to offer their own electives and academic programs or “tracks,” such as Spanish immersion programs or programming around the arts or sciences.
For the 2022-23 school year, the Philly school district has about 58% of its nearly 200,000 students enrolled in public schools, 33% in charters, 7% in online charter schools and the rest in other schools.
Educational Programs, Philadelphia, Pa
In Pennsylvania, local school districts follow a state formula for sending charters a payment per student from their taxpayer budgets. Exactly how much depends on each district’s cost per pupil, so it varies a lot across the Commonwealth.
For non-special education students, the amount of funds varies per student for charters in the 2023-24 school year from $8,600 in Luzerne County to $26,500 in Bucks County. Philadelphia falls on the lower end of the scale at about $11,500 per non-specialist students.
The costs of special education are much higher, usually at least twice as much per student. In Philadelphia, the district sends charters for more than $36,000 per registered special education students.
To open in Pennsylvania, a nonprofit must first apply for and obtain a charter from the local school board that outlines the requirements and standards under which the school will operate. (Online schools obtain their charters directly from the state.) The board must hold at least one public hearing on the application.
Simon Gratz High School Mastery Charter
If a charter school is rejected during the process, the nonprofit behind it can review the application locally and resubmit or appeal the decision to a six-member board appointed by the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education and the governor.
The school district must renew its charter at least every five years. If a local school board has questions about the school’s performance, it may choose to renew the charter with the understanding that additional academic data will be used to determine whether to further renew the charter.
Since starting in Minnesota in 1991 and arriving in Philadelphia in 1997, charter schools have been a hotly debated topic.
Proponents claim they improve student achievement in the long run. They often believe that the existing public school system does not serve all students well for a variety of reasons, from systemic inefficiencies to internal biases. Advocates of charters say their existence creates necessary competition between schools and increases the overall quality of education by forcing schools to innovate in curriculum and access.
Franklin Towne Charter High School
Some charter schools do very well; Some don’t. In 2023, 21 of US News and World Report’s top 100 high schools were charters (none in Pennsylvania). The list ranks schools based on performance on standardized tests, college readiness and graduation rates, among other factors.
Charter opponents believe they hurt public schools by diverting money from an already underfunded public school system to private entities with less oversight than the district as a whole.
Former charter school CEOs and other administrators in Philadelphia and elsewhere have been accused of misappropriating or embezzling millions of dollars in funds.
Opponents argue that charter admissions can be unfair because of bias or mismanagement, or because an applicant is overly selective based on sensitive information they must provide when applying. For example, Philadelphia’s charter watchdog found in 2012 that 18 schools imposed “significant barriers to entry,” with one school requiring a typed book report and proof of citizenship.
Franklin Towne Charter Hs
A significant portion of the charter schools survive. Nationally, more than 25% of charters close within five years and 40% close within 10 years of opening, according to a 2020 analysis by the public school advocacy group Network for Public Education.
Between 2013 and 2020, 16 charter schools in Philadelphia closed, according to the school district. Currently, 87 charter schools operate in the district versus 217 public schools run by the districts.
According to a 2017 U.S. Department of Education report, statewide averages found no “measurable difference” in fourth- or eighth-grade reading or math scores.
Recently in Philadelphia, there was little difference between the state’s minimum test scores for charter and public schools. In science, about 33% of charter school students scored “below basic,” compared with 34% in public schools, according to an analysis of 2022 PSSA data for schools in the district.
2024 Best Charter High Schools In America
In English, 25% of charter school students scored below the elementary level, compared to 30% in traditional public schools. The math results were roughly the same. 65% of students in both charter and traditional public schools scored below elementary school.
According to an analysis of district data, the average four-year graduation rate for Philly charter schools was 85% in 2021, while the average graduation rate for traditional public schools was 75%.
Charter schools, like all other schools, are legally prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, gender or other forms of identity. But all students can sign up for a charter, and if more students apply than the school can teach, students are accepted in a lottery system.
These charter school lotteries are not administered by districts and have sometimes been criticized for discrimination.
Mastery Charter School At Lenfest
Last spring, for example, the superintendent of Franklin Towne Charter School in Philadelphia claimed the lottery was rigged to keep certain students from enrolling and that many of the rejected students were from predominantly black zip codes. The school district investigated and found sufficient evidence to recommend revocation of the charter. The School Board of Philadelphia voted in August to send a public notice to the city of Franklin, beginning a process that could take years to resolve.
Principals, assistant principals or chartered assistant principals must have an administrative certificate. Must also hold appropriate and valid certificates for special educators, school nurses, school psychologists, speech and language pathologists and any other profession defined in the Individuals with Disabilities Act.
Charter school teachers can be part of a union. Philly’s Alliance for Charter School Employees, organized by PA-AFT, allows individual charter school employees to join their union even if other members of the school are not elected.
In 2010, Philadelphia Schools Superintendent Arlene Ackerman launched the “Renaissance Schools Initiative,” which aims to improve the lowest-performing public schools by moving them to for-profit charters.
Mastery Charter School’s Entire Network, Including More Than 20 Philadelphia Schools, Are Facing An It Disruption, Officials Say
These schools became charter schools with one difference: Instead of open enrollment, they must continue to serve students in their “home zones” or neighborhoods.
At first, seven district schools were converted to charter forces, and others were converted under Superintendent William Haight. But since its inception, four of those schools have either been closed or returned to the district as public schools. During the 2023-24 school year, 18 renovation contracts were completed.
Cheryl Parker, the Democratic candidate for Philadelphia mayor who is heavily favored to win the race to succeed Jim Kenney in November, has defended her comments about the district’s current charter school system. (Pillis mayors do not directly oversee the schools, but appoint school administrators.)
Parker has said she supports “good places,” no matter what kind of school
Green Woods Charter School
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