This story was produced by Chalkbeat and reprinted with permission. Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter.

Sameerah Abdullah sends her three school-aged kids to a cyber charter school for some of the same familiar reasons that other families across the nation do, including the flexibility and personalization. For financial literacy class, they go to the bank to open an account. For science class, they head to a museum. On nice days, they try to get out of the city and into the woods.

But her motivations are also deeply personal, cultural, and, in some ways, unique to Philadelphia. Abdullah was an intern for a school guidance counselor in West Philly before having children and was struck by the exhausted teachers, the unappetizing cafeteria food, and the students’ cursing and bad behavior.

The city’s gun violence epidemic has only strengthened her resolve. Her nine-year-old son, Musa, was separated from his father during a mass shooting in a West Philly park during an Eid al-Fitr celebration in April and has struggled with loud sounds ever since.

Another reason, Abdullah thought, to keep her kids home. 

“The shooter actually brushed through him when he was running,” said Abdullah, whose children attend Reach Cyber and Commonwealth Charter Academy. “At that moment, it made me realize, I had to teach my kids what to do in a crisis situation.”

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Abdullah is part of a growing number of Black, brown, and low-income Philadelphians turning to cyber charters because they see them as a safe and flexible educational option for their families. Nearly 15,000 of Philadelphia’s more than 197,000 students attended a virtual cyber charter school last year — a 55 percent increase since the 2020-21 school year. 

In fact, Pennsylvania has quietly become the “cyber charter capital of the nation” according to a report from the education advocacy group Children First PA. Nearly 60,000 students statewide were enrolled full time in cyber charters in 2023-24, according data from the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Children First researchers found Pennsylvania enrolled more full-time cyber students than any other state — including ones like California, Texas, and Florida with much larger K-12 student populations. 

Like traditional charter schools, cyber charters are publicly funded but independently run schools approved by the state Department of Education. There are 13 cyber charter schools operating in Pennsylvania, as well as a smaller virtual academy run by the Philadelphia school district for the past decade. School districts across Pennsylvania collectively send those 13 schools an estimated $1 billion a year, including almost $270 million from the Philadelphia school district last fiscal year.

Philadelphia families like Abdullah’s told Chalkbeat they are increasingly choosing virtual schools for the schedule flexibility, smaller class sizes, and safety and bullying concerns at their childrens’ traditional schools. Gun violence fears in particular have driven some of the demand for online options, according to families who spoke with Chalkbeat.

While gun violence overall is down in Philadelphia, 40 percent of gun violence victims this year were younger than 18, according to city data. Though the majority of Philadelphia’s gun violence does not take place on school property, as the Trace recently reported, five Philadelphia schools were among the top 10 nationwide in experiencing shootings near their buildings in the last decade.

But as more families in Philadelphia withdraw from the traditional district in favor of these cyber charter schools, the charter operators have come under fire from public education advocates for failing to improve student performance. The state has acknowledged in its decision letters renewing several cyber schools’ charters that some of the organizations are not performing up to their standards, but has stopped short of revoking their charters.

With cyber charter enrollment rising as traditional district enrollment shrinks, education advocates say the state should be taking a more hands-on approach to ensuring the operators are delivering a quality education – and holding accountable those that don’t.

“These schools are failing to ensure that the kids they bring in are learning and will be able to graduate, ready for a productive career or higher education,” said Susan Spicka, executive director of the public education advocacy group Education Voters PA. “That is a huge problem.”

Related: How for-profit charter schools are selling parents on staying virtual

Remote learning was thrust into the public eye during the pandemic, when school closures shuttered buildings and students across the country learned online. But parents like Shawna Hinnant enrolled their children in cyber charter schools long before COVID.

A resident of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia — a community that has grappled with a thriving open-air drug market and concentrated gun violence – Hinnant said she didn’t feel comfortable having her kids walk to school on sidewalks littered with discarded needles and other drug paraphernalia.

Additionally, her two sons had experienced bullying at both traditional public schools as well as brick and mortar charter schools.

“That’s why I decided to go with the online school because I felt like it was safer,” said Hinnant.

Hinnant said she was also drawn in by the resources the cyber charter schools offered: Free printers, gift cards to Target for school supplies, and computers.

Many Spanish-speaking Philadelphians are also choosing cyber charters run by Latino-led organizations because of gaps they say persist in the traditional district’s language and cultural services. And Muslim families like Abdullah’s likewise are moving online to incorporate more spiritual, cultural, and religious teachings alongside the traditional curriculum.

“Now that the whole COVID thing has dwindled down a little bit, it’s kind of like, ‘hey, you know what, my kids did really well,’ or ‘I liked having my student at home’ … or ‘I’m not home and I don’t want my child to walk to school.’ It’s a safety issue,” said Lisette Agosto Cintrón, principal at the district-run online school, the Philadelphia Virtual Academy, and a former principal at ASPIRA bilingual cyber charter school in the city.

Related: Communities hit hardest by the pandemic, already struggling, fear an enrollment cliff

Agosto Cintrón said she has also worked with families of students with chronic illnesses or are homebound. Her students also come from households that have been disrupted due to domestic violence, refugee situations, or threats of gun violence against families stemming from “neighborhood beefs.”

“Transiency doesn’t matter in my world,” Agosto Cintrón said. “The school travels with the child.” 

Though families told Chalkbeat they’re mostly happy with the education their children are getting online, cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania have reported lower standardized test scores and graduation rates than all schools statewide. According to a Chalkbeat analysis of 2023 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test score data, 36.8% of cyber charter school students scored proficient or better in English language arts, compared to 53.5% of students statewide, and 13.7% scored proficient or above in math, compared to 33.4% statewide. (Their results are mixed when compared to the Philadelphia school district’s scores — 34.2% proficient or better in English and 20.4% proficient or better in math.) 

Sarah Cordes, an associate professor and education researcher at Temple University, has researched cyber charter high school students and found that they tend to have worse test scores and higher rates of chronic absenteeism than traditional public school students, even when controlling for the differences in student population. Students who enroll in a cyber charter school are 9.5 percentage points less likely to graduate in four years, Cordes found, and are 16.8 percentage points less likely to enroll in a postsecondary institution.

“What really stood out is just how consistently negative the results were, and that it was across populations,” Cordes said. “It didn’t seem to matter if you came from an urban district or a rural district or a suburban district, it seemed pretty equally bad.” Cordes said her results were consistent across race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, “which is unusual in education research.”   

The state has considered cyber charters’ lagging test scores when authorizing or renewing the schools, but, in most cases, has stopped short of revoking their charters.

Take Reach Cyber, the school that Musa and his brother Dawud attend. In July, Pennsylvania Education Secretary Khalid Mumin wrote in a letter to the school that for the past few years “students in all grade levels and all subjects have significantly underperformed on the PSSA and Keystone Exams, specifically when compared with traditional public schools.”

Still, despite these concerns, the education department granted Reach a five-year charter renewal.

The state education department included identical language in the renewal decision letters for PA Distance Learning Charter School and Insight PA Cyber Charter School.

To be sure, test score data comes with complexities. Unstable home situations don’t often create ideal test taking environments, cyber charter operators have said. What’s more, many families who choose cyber charter schools because of their nontraditional outlook on education are more likely to opt-out of standardized testing.

And cyber charter operators argue that students perform better on state tests the longer that they attend the schools, but their student populations tend to move in and out of virtual learning. (Cordes’ analysis, though, didn’t back up that assertion at the high school level.)

Jane Swan, CEO of Reach Cyber, said in an email that “cyber charter school student scores can’t and shouldn’t be compared to brick-and-mortar school scores.” Swan said the school conveys the importance of state tests to families but “many families invoke their right to refuse testing due to philosophical, health, or logistical reasons.” She also noted that students arrive at the school “significantly below grade-level proficiency.”

Parents like Abdullah said they look beyond test scores and overall school performance when choosing cyber charters. 

“I think that with my children, the testing is important, but at the end of the day, character building is important, being responsible is important, being a good neighbor. Community work, that’s important as well,” she said. Abdullah is also an experienced educator herself and is pursuing her doctorate in education online with a focus on student safety and mental health.

Beyond performance, critics of cyber charters accuse them of drawing vital funding away from struggling traditional public schools, since district schools send cyber charters the same per-student tuition it would spend educating a child in one of its classrooms, minus some costs for transportation and facilities. Districts must send this tuition payment for every student who lives in the city but is enrolled in a cyber charter, regardless of whether that child was ever educated by the district.  

Advocates have called foul on the state’s four largest cyber charter schools for using those funds to amass nearly $500 million in real estate, such as office space and parking lots, and more than $20 million on advertising and gift cards. Cyber charter leaders have defended their spending, saying their schools retain physical assets to protect their finances from instability. Furthermore, the operators say they need buildings to house technology infrastructure like servers, office space for school staff, and “family service centers” where parents can get in-person assistance. 

Related: Luring Covid-cautious parents back to school

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in Harrisburg has put forth efforts to reform the way cyber schools are funded and monitored, but the boldest changes haven’t gained much traction. 

The most recent state budget Gov. Josh Shapiro signed in July included $100 million to reimburse school districts for payments they make to cyber charter schools and some alterations to the way special education students are counted and funded. But the wholesale reforms some lawmakers had proposed did not make it into the final budget. 

Calls by local school boards for more oversight cross party lines, according to Lawrence Feinberg, director of the Keystone Center for Charter Change, who has been following the growth of cyber charter schools.

“I know public education is far from perfect, but theoretically, there’s accountability built into it. It seems to me that for 20 some years, accountability has been missing from the cyber charter arena, both fiscally and performance-wise,” Feinberg said.

Despite the drawbacks, parents are still seeking online learning

While advocates fight for more oversight of cyber charters, some families in Philadelphia say they’re not happy with their traditional neighborhood schools and don’t have time to wait for the district to improve. 

Still, for some students, the adjustment to online learning can be hard. 

Starlynne Santiago, 18 and an engineering technology student at Drexel University, said making the switch to a cyber charter was “scary” at first for herself and her brother, Skyler Rodriguez, 12. But she forged close bonds, even over the computer screen.

“Overall, I think the education was the same, and I feel like the connections I had with the teachers were way closer than what I had in-person school,” she said. 

Ultimately, Santiago was able to graduate a year early from Reach Cyber by taking summer classes and working with career coordinators to focus her studies on engineering.

Her brother said it’s been harder for him to make friends in online school, and while he wants to finish middle school virtually, he’s not sure it’s the right fit for him long term.

Related: How four middle schoolers are making it through the pandemic

Musa, active and gregarious, and his mom have different philosophies about his future as well.

Though he loves going to school with his siblings, “once I get to middle school, I would like to go to a real school,” Musa said. “I don’t want to be in middle school and have my whole life be on a laptop. … I like to talk and help others.”

Abdullah said she recognizes her children are outgoing and need friends, socialization, and time outdoors. She said she works hard to tailor their online school experience so that they can travel, meet up with other online families, take field trips, and play with their friends in the neighborhood.

Her goal, she said, is to one day create a space where families like hers can join up, and do online homeschooling together.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

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