Despite sponsor, Sen. Lloyd Smucker’s insistence that the amendment “provides assurance…that we are committed to seeing Pennsylvania students receive a top-notch education regardless of the venue,” many groups, including The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, have spoken out against it. Opponents have rallied around a particular provision allowing charter schools to be authorized and renewed by independent entities, such as universities. At present, only the state and school district are authorized to oversee charters.

According to Susan Spicka, co-founder of the public school advocacy group Education Matters, the bill would also allow students from all over the state to enroll in any charter of their choice, even those several districts away. This would require the local school district and taxpayers to bus students to and from the charter school, on top of paying for tuition. She added that the bill would create taxation without representation, and a mandate that taxpayers pay for a system of privately operated charter schools in addition to the traditional public schools they already fund.

On Oct. 29, the Education Law Center also released a report agreeing that the bill “would ultimately gut local control over charter school authorization and growth, encourage unfettered expansion of even poorly operated charter schools, take already underfunded school districts to the brink of financial collapse and remove important accountability tools that school districts can use to ensure charter schools are performing well and equitably serving all kinds of students.”

In response, a group including StudentsFirst, The Black Alliance for Education Options and Philadelphia Charters for Excellence, published a position paper outlining their support for SB 1085. The group admitted the bill needs refining, but stated that it conceptually supports the proposed university authorizers, educator evaluations, removal of enrollment barriers and caps and other provisions. The group calls SB 1085 “a thoughtful and comprehensive step in the right direction.”

Proponents also point to a provision that could save the state roughly $30 million through the prevention of “double dipping” in pension funds and reimbursements, and requires charter schools to return all excess tuition funds to their districts. Together with other funding changes, SB 1085 could save Pennsylvania school districts roughly $150 million over the next two years.

Pennsylvania is currently home to 174 physical charter schools, and an additional 16 based online. More than 40,000 students statewide are currently on charter school waiting lists.

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According to the report, two-thirds of the states received a “D” or “F” (11 states were given the latter) and no state earned an “A.” Each grade is based on three areas: whether a state’s policies elevate teaching, empower parents with data and choice, and spend wisely and govern well.

The states that earned better grades, Louisiana and Florida for example, received them based on reform legislation they’ve enacted over the past five years that StudentsFirst supports. Such policy changes include creating a variety of choices for parents (by expanding charter schools and creating opportunity scholarship programs or parent trigger policies), introducing the use of standardized test scores in performance evaluations and overhauling teacher tenure.

Standardized test scores played no role in the report, even though Rhee is a well-known supporter of test-driven accountability for students, teachers and principals. And states such as Maryland and Virginia, which are consistently ranked as high-performing states, received a “D”-level grade.

Rhee has a long history with school reform — the most controversial being when she led Washington DC schools from 2007 to 2010 and faced allegations that the progress students made during her tenure was due to cheating on standardized tests. During that time, she linked teacher evaluations to student test scores, later firing more than 100 employees and closing more than 20 schools when test score advancement wasn’t made.

StudentsFirst was created in December 2010 and has since been involved in a variety of states’ reform efforts and had a large presence in the primary and November elections. However, several states oppose the policies that the organization represents.

In response to California receiving an “F” rating, Richard Zeiger, the state’s chief deputy superintendent, said it was a “badge of honor,” calling the organization one that “frankly makes its living by asserting that schools are failing,” in a statement.

He said, “I would have been surprised if we had got anything else. This group has focused on an extremely narrow, unproven method that they think will improve teaching. And we just flat-out disagree with them.”

StudentsFirst plans to release the State Policy Report Card annually, showing the progress that states make in shaping their policies to improve education. According to the executive summary of the organization’s report card, the public should “expect to see more states putting students first over the coming year.”

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