In the ongoing saga of Pennsylvania’s Chester Upland School District, revisionist historians are growing louder, asserting that “privatization” and the emergence of the Keystone State’s largest charter school have hastened the district’s much-publicized and impending death. First, a quick review: The school district says it’s broke; Gov. Tom Corbett has promised aid, but without a clear source; now the New York Times has pointed a finger at the Chester Community Charter School, which claims it’s owed nearly $7 million by the district and the state. Enrollment at the charter has risen to 45 percent of the district’s students, and its presence has led commentators to declare that school choice is partly to blame for Chester Upland’s financial woes. Unfortunately for critics (including but by no means limited to the NEA), the problems at Chester Upland preceded the launch of the charter by several years, and many entities, public and private, have gotten their hands dirty; the state had to take over the district’s finances between 1994 and 2010, Edison Schools tried and failed to turn the district around, and the board lost about $18 million in revenue between 2010 and 2011 alone. It might be politically expedient to accuse charter operators of treating Chester’s public education as “a treasure chest ripe for plunder,” but that miscasts a charter that has successfully scaled up to educate nearly 1 in 2 students in a community ravaged by poverty and which has met its federal benchmarks for the last three years while outperforming its host district and neighboring charter schools. A lot of negative forces contributed to Chester Upland’s present circumstance, and it will take an equal or greater number of positive forces to turn it around. That should include a successful charter school.
Sabrina Tavernise, "Pennsylvania Schools’ Financing Fight Pits District Against ‘Charter on Steroids’" The New York Times, January 4, 2012
