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According to a Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) press release, in which the Governor outlined his budget priorities for 2014-2015, the Governor's plan includes the Expanding Excellence Program. If enacted and funded, this initiative would "provide competitive funding to schools that have attained a 90 or higher on the School Performance Profile and are willing to analyze and share best practices that have proven to raise student achievement. Grant recipients will be responsible for supporting schools across the state that strive to replicate these strategies and techniques."In his budget address, Governor Corbett argued that the proposal will help struggling schools "link up with the top schools in a mentoring partnership, to gain from their experience and knowledge." By way of background, School Performance Profiles (SPP), unveiled last fall, rate public schools on as many as 30 indicators in four categories: academic achievement, academic growth, closing the achievement gap, and other indicators such as graduation and attendance rates. Schools may also earn up to seven points via "extra credit" based upon high performance on state and industry assessments as well as for students earning a score of 3 or higher on Advanced Placement exams. Not all indicators apply to every school; for example, third-grade reading proficiency will not factor into a high school's score. Additionally, not all measures are applicable this year; the "closing the achievement gap" category does not apply to schools until the end of the 2013-14 school year. To provide detail on the schools and students this initiative may affect, Research for Action (RFA) has prepared an initial analysis based on publicly-available data from PDE. Decades of research show income stratification is one of the strongest predictors of student outcomes. Since SPP scores are heavily weighted based on standardized test scores, schools that enroll high numbers of traditionally-disadvantaged students face particular challenges in meeting the eligibility requirements for the initiative. RFA will provide additional analysis of implications of the Governor's budget address in the weeks ahead.

Pennsylvania's first cyber charter school opened in 1998, enrolling 44 full-time students. From this modest beginning, Pennsylvania's cyber charter sector has grown to 16 schools enrolling 35,000 students from all but one school district in the Commonwealth. Pennsylvania has one of the nation's most extensive cyber charter sectors, and six additional proposed schools are before the Department of Education (PDE) for review. The recent growth in the sector coincides with increasing attention from state policymakers. As of this writing, there are at least 12 legislative proposals pending in the Pennsylvania General Assembly addressing cyber authorization, funding, or oversight. To help situate cyber charter schools within a state context, Research for Action (RFA) examined the state's recently-issued School Performance Profile (SPP) scores for the 11 cyber charters for which complete data are available. RFA then compared these scores to all public schools statewide, including traditional public schools and brick-and-mortar charters. RFA's analysis is based on publicly-available data from PDE's School Performance Profile. Also, given the relationship between student mobility and academic achievement, RFA examined enrollment into and out of five cyber charters for which data were available during the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years. RFA reviewed the demographics of the student populations in cyber charter schools as compared to traditional public schools and brick-and-mortar charters. Main findings for these anlyses are reported here in tabulated form. A glossary of terms is included. Appendix A, "Cyber Charter Enrollment Trends for the 2011 and 2012 School Years", is presented in table 6.