Good day for school choice in PA
The Commonwealth Court ruled that Chester-Upland school district could not limit the number of students enrolling in charter schools. Read the Philadelphia Inquirer story. About 40% of Chester-Upland student opt for charter schools, in large part due to the abysmal performance of the district-run schools.
On the other side of the state, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a story about Penn Hills School district potential working with VLN Partners to provide online offerings to students. The district hopes to attract many of the students who have been leaving for cyber schools. This is exactly how districts should be responding - offering new and better services to students and compete with cyber schools - rather than lobbying for limitations on cyber school funding. This is just another example of the benefits of school choice and competition.
2 comments:
Don't get too excited about "school choice" becoming better with the districts starting to opt into the charter/cyber areas,what happens is you still have the same horse with a different dress. The education may not be better, it just stops the money from going to schools that may educate.
Perhaps what we truly need is to revamp the entire antiquated PDE with their control and allow others more qualified to tecah our children. Seems to me that administrators and political appointees become too comfortable in their positions and qualifications are overlooked when the appointments are made. And by the way, why should the legislature have any say in where or how I educate my child-Rep Byers?
If there is one thing we've learned from cyber charter schools it is that cyber education isn't going away... and (with all due respect cbrvar) you are assuming that the VLN Partners model is the same as the models used to present instruction in cyber charter schools. The fact of the matter is that VLN Partners' model is much more sophisticated and it allows districts to offer lessons that are more appropriate for their students than the lessons presented in cyber charter schools.
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