PA: Cyber Charter Sues State To Maintain Truancy Loophole

Late last year, Pennsylvania's lawmakers finally passed some much-needed cyber charter reform. Commonwealth Charter Academy, the 800-pound gorilla of PA cybers, has sued to try to escape some of the consequences of those new rules. 

One of the long-time dodges of cyberschool in PA has been as a dodge for chronically truant students. Is your kid skipping so much school that truancy officials and the court have gotten involved? Just sign him up for a cyber charter, where the attendance rules were loose (students didn't even have to appear on screen) and requirements for enrollment were frictionless. Just sign up and voila!-- that nasty truancy problem magically vanished.

Anecdotally, I can tell you this was a regular occurrence-- a student who was frequently absent with parents getting annoyed at phone calls from school would disappear entirely, until word would come that they were now doing cyber. That rarely ended well for the student, which was not a surprise-- take a student who can't muster the motivation and discipline to handle traditional school shifts to a model that depends entirely on the student's discipline and motivation to succeed? The vast majority of my cyber-departures either returned a year later, woefully behind, or simply never finished school at all. There are many problems that can contribute to chronic truancy, and cyber charters solve almost none of them.

The new rules add friction. Now a student with chronic truancy issues may not enroll in cyber school unless a court rules that such enrollment is in their best interests.

CCA went looking for this fight. In March their board voted to go ahead and enroll over 600 students marked "habitually truant" by their districts and two weeks later filed the suit, claiming that the law is unconstitutional. But now they get to generate press releases about how 600 students are "in limbo" while waiting for a decision even when the actual story is that CCA violated the law by admitting those students in the first place. 

As reported at PennLive by Oliver Morrison, other cybers are more heavily affected than CCA. But CCA is the big gun and has the financial weight and advocacy staff to take the state to court. So now the court will get to decide whether or not to reinstate the cyber charter truancy dodge.