Legislative Update: Charter schools

One more item from the advocacy conference in Harrisburg.

It was enlightening to hear from the respective chairs of the state House and Senate Education Committees, Rep. James Roebuck, and Senator Jeffrey Piccola.

Among others things, Senator Piccola is a strong supporter of the charter school movement.

When the Pennsylvania charter school law was passed in 1997, it was based on the premise that it would create opportunities for experimentation with educational innovation on a small scale, without the usual red tape. The result would be another option for parents, and if the innovation proved successful, perhaps a model for broader implementation.

(State College has a couple of good examples of this theory in practice: one charter school dedicated to project-based learning and the use of technology, another to foreign language instruction for elementary students.)  The objection of local school boards is not to the theory, but that charter schools are funded predominantly through the local budget, even though local boards have little control over what charter schools do.

So the comment that turned heads was Senator Piccola's assertion that "if a charter school is ineffective, the local school board has the right not to renew their charter." While that statement is technically true, what he left out was the fact that PDE (the Pennsylvania Department of Education) has to give its approval anytime a school board declines a charter school application, or fails to renew one - and except in the most egregious of situations, that never happens.

School boards understand that if the "I"s and the "T"s have been dotted and crossed, they have little recourse. State College has learned from experience that PDE will overrule their decision on appeal, so it's not worth the time and taxpayer money to fight it.

During the Q and A, a school board member suggested that local schools be allowed to create their own charter schools (under the same basic premise of encouraging innovation). To which the Senator replied, "you already can." When challenged, the senator repeated his statement.

The language of the charter school law doesn’t permit this, but it doesn’t explicitly prohibit it, either. So perhaps, it is technically possible, like the aforementioned approval process. But it seemed a bit strange that the chair of the Senate Education Committee didn't seem to understand how the charter school law works in practice.

But he did say he would look into it.

Postscript: And indeed, he has. Just this week Piccola announced the need “for a comprehensive rewrite of our commonwealth’s Charter School Law, which I have made clear is one of my legislative priorities.”  So we shall see.