Report: Virtual Charter Schools Run For Profit Grew During Pandemic
Over at Forbes, I’m looking at some choices cuts from the new Network for Public Education report, starting with a look at how cyber charters got a boost during the pandemic years.
NPE reports that in 2020-21, 141 virtual charter schools were run for profit, accounting for 61% of the students enrolled.
And those enrollment numbers exploded during the pandemic. Between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, when charter school enrollment was growing, NPE found that over 70% of that growth was going to virtual charters, bringing cyber enrollment up to over 483,000 students.
Virtual charters are hugely profitable. A General Accounting Office report in March 2022 noted that student-teacher ratios are higher in traditional public schools and that while a district school spends just under $14,000 per child on instructional staff, virtual charters spent only just over $8,000 per child. That’s a hefty margin for a school that doesn’t have the building or infrastructure expenses of a bricks and mortar school, particularly in a state like Pennsylvania, where cyber schools are funded at the same per pupil rate as a bricks and mortar school.
GAO investigators also found that virtual charters take considerable liberties with counting those students. Their report noted that some schools only require a student to log onto the portal; some virtual charters only took weekly or even monthly attendance. Yet for a student who only logged on briefly once a month, the cyber-charter still gets a full helping of tax dollars.