Four months ago, it seemed that charter schools were performing quite well in Pennsylvania. But after state education officials were forced to reexamine test scores, it turned out the charters performed worse than regular public schools.

Forty-nine percent of the state’s 156 charter schools originally met the benchmarks that were based on student test scores from 2011-2012. Hearing this news, the Pennsylvania Association of School Boards last fall complained that the calculations had been adjusted to make it appear charter schools were doing better than they actually were.

Sure enough, after the education department revised its numbers based on the same federally-mandated criteria used to measure publicly-run schools, only 28% of charter schools met the benchmarks. And none of the 12 cyber charter schools providing online in-home instruction to students met the benchmarks.

Meanwhile, 50% of traditional public schools met the criteria established by the state to determine if a school has made “adequate yearly progress” under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The change in charter school performance will likely fuel an ongoing debate over education funding, “which pits school districts against publicly funded charters,” wrote Martha Woodall in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

With New Rules, Pa. Charter School Performance Plummets (by Martha Woodall, Philadelphia Inquirer)

No Cyber Charter School In Pennsylvania Made Adequate Yearly Progress (by Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)