Charter school reform proposed by Legislature

Published: Tuesday, August 23, 2011

By TIMOTHY LOGUE tlogue@delcotimes.com

State Rep. Tom Killion did not point to a study, survey or test scores when asked if he believed Pennsylvania's charter schools are outperforming traditional schools.
"There are 40,000 kids on the waiting list to get into charter schools in the city of Philadelphia and half the kids in Chester Upland are in charter schools," said Killion, R-168, of Middletown.
"That's all I've got to see."

http://www.delcotimes.com/articles/2011/08/23/news/doc4e530c24c23f4972053139.txt

Charter School Reform - Education Law Center Analysis

New charter school bills before the General Assembly (S.B. 904 and H.B. 1348) would repeal Pennsylvania's current charter school/cyber charter school law in its entirety and replace it with language that permits the unfettered expansion of charter schoolsthroughout the state, reduces accountability, and effectively removes all local control of charters, while continuing to redirect millions of dollars of public funding away from traditional public schools – when charters have been shown, on the whole, not to improve student performance any more than traditional public schools and in many charters, students have fared worse.

http://www.elc-pa.org/charterreformanalysis.html

The following three items were submitted to the Senate Education Committee for this hearing as written comments on behalf of the Keystone State Education Coalition:

Commentary: In a rush for more charter schools?

http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.blogspot.com/2011/06/commentary-in-rush-for-more-charter.html