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UNCHARTERED TERRITORY: The charter school movement is withering in Pennsylvania, and Governor Ridge is the reason
By Bruce Barron, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2000

        This spring Governor Ridge, seeking national visibility as he aspires to higher office, traveled to North Carolina and touted his leadership in education reform. Unlike North Carolina's charter school law, he boasted, Pennsylvania's has no cap on the number of charters that can be granted.

        What he didn't tell his Southern audience was that-outside the two school districts most widely viewed as dysfunctional (Philadelphia and Chester-Upland) charter school development in Pennsylvania has never flourished and is now virtually at a complete halt. And the Ridge administration is directly responsible for that result.

        Charter schools, while popular throughout the nation and strongly backed by President Clinton, have faced unrelenting opposition from the public education establishment. This is understandable, because charters threaten school boards' monopoly control of public school governance and unions' stranglehold over teacher bargaining agreements.

        To provide a shield against these powerful opponents, the strongest state charter laws permit applicants to seek charters from universities, the state department of education, or an independent board. In Pennsylvania, however, Governor Ridge was unable or unwilling to achieve this goal.

        Instead, the law he signed in June 1997 required all applicants to seek charters from school districts. In most cases this provision functions much like asking Burger King to get its franchises approved by McDonald's. The ray of hope was that, beginning in July 1999, applicants denied by a school board could proceed to a new Charter School Appeal Board to be appointed by the Governor.

        During the next two years, things went, predictably, pretty much the school boards' way. Outside Philadelphia and Chester-Upland, 19 charters were approved. About half of these were "symbiotic" approvals, where the charter school offered to take students the district was happy to unload -- juvenile delinquents or seriously disadvantaged youths.

        Of the remaining handful, several were due to unusual circumstances. Wilkinsburg's charter was awarded by a lameduck board; State College approved two 48-student charters and used the action to justify a tax hike. Almost invariably (Pittsburgh's four excellent charter schools being almost the only exceptions west of Philly), applicants that would compete with the district for students were shot down.

        Then came the Governor's appeal board, designed to open the doors for charters. Instead it has been a walking disaster, mainly because Governor Ridge appears to have appointed its members carelessly or for political convenience.

        Everyone understands why he honored a request from State Sen. James Rhoades (who as Senate Education chairman controlled the confirmation process) to nominate a Penn State professor generally unfriendly to charters. But no one knows why the Governor, with 4,500 school board members to consider, chose the president-elect of the Pennsylvania School Boards Association -- the leading opponent of charter schools.

        The Governor's other four selections (joining Secretary of Education Eugene Hickok, who chairs the board) were a businesswoman, recommended by the African-American Chamber of Commerce, who has had a poor attendance record; a teacher (and personal friend of Ridge) from Erie who attends meetings by phone; a just-appointed State Board of Education member; and an unsuccessful charter school developer about to move out of state.

        The results would be comical if they weren't so dismal:

• After the Department of Education promised quick action in July 1999 on appellants hoping to open that fall, the appeal board failed to deliver. 
• One qualified applicant was denied solely because it could not identify a facility location nine months before it proposed to open. 
• Secretary Hickok was forced to recuse himself from one case because his department released a letter endorsing the appellant. 
• A 3-3 vote on one appeal was initially reported as a defeat for the appellant. The board then decided that four votes would be needed to decide any appeal, and the "Friend of Tom" changed her vote nine days later to let the school proceed.

        The charter proposal with which I was associated, William Bradford Academy in Pittsburgh's southern suburbs, suffered particular indignity. Our appeal was rejected despite support from two former public school superintendents, four state legislators, and even Secretary Hickok himself. Teaming up to defeat us were the two anti-charter members (Sen. Rhoades's nominee and the PSBA president) and two who did not attend our oral arguments and appear to have voted largely in ignorance.

        Lacking substantive reasons to justify the denial, the appeal board took 90 days to figure out what to put in writing. It finally settled on two technicalities: lack of facility (we had one, but the appeal board said we should have had a firm commitment eight months in advance) and outdated paperwork on two possible teacher candidates.

        The appeal board refused to let us seek reconsideration until the written ruling was out, but delayed releasing its decision until last November 16. When we tried to resubmit (as permitted under the law), the same four appeal board members ruled that we had missed the November 15 deadline for new applications.

        That's right -- the appeal board wouldn't tell us what we did wrong until November 16, then blamed us for not reapplying by November 15. I guess one prerequisite for running a charter school in Pennsylvania is mind reading.

        The appeal board has approved a total of just six schools statewide (none in western Pennsylvania), of which three are still fighting for their life in Commonwealth Court. Discouraged by high legal expenses and the board's fickle performance, few are even bothering to appeal. Except for seven Philadelphia applicants that got an expedited process because the district missed the deadline for voting on them, the appeal board's docket is currently empty.

        Outside Philadelphia, just four charter applicants for fall 2000 have been approved in the whole state. Of these four, one is for troubled and delinquent youths, one is for 24 children with disabilities, and one is a cyber-school created by the Beaver County school district that buses its students to Ohio.

        Such schools may have value, but they hardly constitute education reform or meaningful public school choice. Toward these goals, the charter movement will contribute exactly one school this year (in Chester County) in a region of 10 million people. School boards are continuing their anti-charter stonewalling, and the daunting impact of the board's unpredictability and its unfriendly precedents -- especially the requirement to secure a facility so far in advance -- seems irreversible.

        All this from a "pro-charter" governor. As a result, the Pennsylvania charter movement is all but dead.

        Don't pity me; through my charter denial I have discovered the joy of homeschooling my three high-performing children. The losers are the thousands of families across the state who cannot afford homeschooling or private school, and who were tantalized by another tuition-free option only to lose it due to the gaping disconnect between Governor Ridge's rosy rhetoric and his policy implementation.

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Bruce Barron, who writes frequently on public policy and education, was a founder of William Bradford Academy Charter School. He lives in Mt. Lebanon.

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