Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Background/Footnotes: On June 12, 1997, Pennsylvania's charter school law, Senate Bill 123, was signed by then-Governor Tom Ridge.[1] Under this legislation, charters can be formed by teachers, parents, colleges and universities, museums, and a number of other entities. A public school can convert to a charter school with the support of 50 percent of the teachers and 50 percent of the students' parents. Charters are granted for five years.[2] Local school boards grant charters, and the state has placed no cap on the number of allowable charter schools.[3] The charter school law includes an appeals process, initiated in 1999, whereby charter applicants who have been denied by their local boards can take their cases to the state Charter School Appeal Board.[4] Students attending a charter school in their district are provided the same transportation services as other public school students. At least 75 percent of charter school teachers must be certified. Charters are funded on the basis of their district's average per-pupil expenditure during the previous school year.[5]

In June 2001, State Representative Dwight Evans (D-Philadelphia) proposed the creation of a network of 16 charter schools in Philadelphia's Martin Luther King Cluster of schools.[6] Although this proposal was not enacted, Philadelphia schools began a turbulent process of converting school management to private entities later that year.[7]

On February 12, 2001, by a vote of 9 to 0, the Norristown Area School District approved the state's first K12 Internet-based charter school.[8] The Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School (PAVCS) opened in September 2002 and uses curricula provided by K12, the virtual charter school company created by former U.S. Secretary of Education William J. Bennett. In this educational program, a parent or guardian supervises a student's work, and an approved PAVCS teacher contacts each student regularly to monitor progress.[9]

Although more than 2,700 students were enrolled in Pennsylvania's "cyber schools" in 2001, not all virtual charters have been successful.[10] In 2001, two districts rejected E-Academy Charter School's application.[11] One of the chartering authorities, the New Hope-Solebury school board, said that by assuming that students can have a parent or responsible adult supervising them during the day, virtual charter schools were discriminating against low-income families.[12]

Voucher proposals have been unsuccessful in Pennsylvania. In 1995, Governor Ridge proposed two different voucher programs.[13] "Kids I" would have given $1,000 vouchers to families with incomes under $70,000. In complicated proceedings, the legislation died in the House. Later that year, Governor Ridge proposed "Kids II," which would have created a five-year pilot program to give vouchers worth $1,500 to students in 120 districts.[14] Kids II was also unsuccessful. In 1999, Governor Ridge again attempted to establish a pilot program, but legislation was not introduced.[15]

In 1998, Delaware County Judge Joseph F. Battle ruled against the school district's plan to give students vouchers worth up to $1,000. The district had designed the voucher proposal to ease overcrowded classrooms.[16] The $1.2 million plan would have given $250 vouchers to kindergarten students, $500 vouchers to students in grades 1 through 8, and $1,000 vouchers to high school students.[17]

Despite the failure of Pennsylvania's voucher legislation, a privately funded scholarship organization, Children's Scholarship Fund-Philadelphia, has been in operation in Philadelphia since 1998.[18] CSF-Philadelphia functions under Children First America, a nationwide privately funded scholarship program, and matches the funds that parents pay for their children's private school tuition.

Governor Ridge was also a proponent of education-related tax credits. In 2001, legislators passed House Bill 996, Governor Ridge's plan to give corporations a tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations or school improvement organizations.[19] Under this legislation, businesses can receive a credit against their state taxes of 75 cents for every dollar they invest up to $200,000, or 90 percent of the donation if the business agrees to give the same amount the next year.[20] Under this legislation the total tax credits given by the state in any year could not exceed $30 million ($20 million for scholarships and $10 million for organizations).[21]

In 2001, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) challenged three Pennsylvania districts for requesting "unauthorized information" and incorrectly communicating state law to home-school families.[22] The Bangor Area School District and the Perkiomen Valley School District were found to have misled parents regarding a request for student portfolios, and the Wyalusing Area School District assumed authority, not granted by state law, to "examine all textbooks and curriculum materials for home-schoolers."[23] No suit was filed, but the HSLDA responded to complaints from parents and contacted each district.

State officials appropriated additional funds for charter schools in the 2002-2003 budget and gave districts, which had been responsible for funding all of their charter schools, a reimbursement equal to 30 percent of their charter schools' per-pupil expenditure throughout the previous year.[24]

On June 29, 2002, then-Governor Mark S. Schweiker signed H.B. 4 into law, transferring chartering authority for Internet charter schools from local districts to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The bill stipulated new administrative and supervisory details for the schools.[25]

In August 2002, Representative Samuel E. Rohrer (R-Berks County) introduced H. B. 2560 to loosen Pennsylvania's home-school law.[26] The bill would have allowed home-schooling parents simply to send a written notice to the state at least 30 days before beginning a program, easing existing regulations that require the authorization of several documents in order to home-school.[27] Representative Rohrer's bill was tabled.[28]

In 2002, businesses donated more than $455,000 to CSF-Philadelphia for student scholarships. This project enabled recipients to attend 205 private schools. In 2002, scholarship programs such as CSF-Philadelphia enabled 700 students to attend private schools for the first time.[29]

S.B. 384 was introduced in 2003 to allow home-school students to participate in extracurricular public school activities. The bill did not move out of committee.[30]

In 2003, the governor signed Act 48, which increased the tax credit cap to $26.7 million for scholarships and $13.3 for education improvement organizations. The act also established a tax credit for pre-kindergarten scholarship organizations capped at $5 million.[31]

In March 2004, the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition (GPUAC) released a white paper entitled "The Case for Partnership: How Charter High Schools Meet School District Goals in Philadelphia." The report compares test scores, dropout rates, demographics, attendance rates, enrollment, and rates of students receiving special education in Philadelphia charter high schools and traditional public schools. The report found "Philadelphia charter high schools are realizing many of the School District of Philadelphia's secondary education reform goals."[32] Specifically, the GPUAC reports that attendance rates are higher, dropout rates are lower, and the median score on all subjects for all grades on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests were higher for charter students compared with traditional public school students.[33]

Also in March, State Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) introduced the Special Education Mandate Relief and Options Act (H.B. 2445).[34] This bill would provide vouchers to gifted students or students with special needs that would cover a district's per-pupil cost. Parents could use the voucher to send their child to a school of choice.[35] Schools that do not provide needed services or do not have space will not be forced to accept students. The bill stalled in the House Education Committee.[36]

The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation graded school choice programs across the country in spring 2004 and gave Pennsylvania's Education Improvement Tax Credit program (EITC) a B+, ranking it third nationally among choice programs. The EITC received high marks for putting few restrictions on how private organizations distribute vouchers and few restrictions on participating schools.[37]

In June, the Philadelphia Phillies' mascot, the Philly Phanatic, joined the Children's Scholarship Fund of Philadelphia at a ceremony to distribute privately funded vouchers to 350 public school students for use in the fall.[38] The amount of each scholarship award was based on a student's household size and family income.[39]

A home-schooling family sued the Bristol Township school district in July 2004, seeking freedom from Pennsylvania's home-school statutes. The family is the first to use the Pennsylvania Religious Freedom Protection Act to challenge education issues in the state.[40] This act was passed in November 2002 and "allows a person to challenge any state or local law if it 'substantially burdens' that person's religious beliefs."[41]

State legislators changed the state's charter law in the summer of 2004, making it possible for charter schools to create new facilities for their use (previously charters could not use public funds for this purpose). The change came in the general education appropriations bill.[42]

Pennsylvania policymakers imposed additional regulations on scholarship organizations in 2005. In January, the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development began requiring scholarship organizations to report the number of scholarships funded by tax credited corporate donations. In addition, scholarship organizations must report each recipient's family income and how many recipients attended a public school during the year prior.[43]

In 2005, state legislators passed a budget that included an additional $4 million for the state's Education Tuition Tax Credit Program, bringing the amount set aside for tax credits for corporations' donations to scholarship organizations to $44 million. Thanks to the increased cap, some 2,000 additional students could benefit from the program in the 2005-2006 school year. Twenty-five thousand students received scholarships through the program in 2004-2005.[44]

In the 2006 legislative session, Rep. Mario Civera, Jr. (R-Delaware) introduced H.B. 2585 that would increase the cap on the state's education tax credit to $64 million annually.[45] Over 2,200 business currently take advantage of the credit, and some 27,000 students benefit from the program.[46]

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