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.”
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% 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% 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.”
Parents on remote learning: ‘I felt it was safer’
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.
What is the district doing to serve families online?
The School District of Philadelphia also operates its own online school — the Philadelphia Virtual Academy also known as PVA — which it sees as a way to serve students and their families who want that specific cyber experience while also keeping them in their public school district. But it’s having trouble getting the word out. Currently, PVA's enrollment is higher than it was pre-pandemic, but it's still far below the 15,000 students enrolled in cyber charters.
One major difference between what the district offers and what cyber charters offer is live instruction: While Musa and his siblings may have a class or two with a teacher in realtime, some of their lessons are asynchronous or involve watching a video or studying on their own and with their mom before answering questions. At PVA, all of the classes are live and taught by certified district teachers at their headquarters at 440 North Broad Street.
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.”
Some cyber charter schools struggle to perform
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.
