Pennsylvania approves stronger charter school regulations

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania regulatory board on Monday approved Gov. Tom Wolf's proposal to subject charter schools to stronger ethics and accounting standards and to try to root out discriminatory admissions decisions, perhaps the biggest update to a quarter-century-old law stuck in the past because of political deadlock.

The 3-2 party-line vote by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission was on a proposed regulation that, along with Wolf, was backed by Democratic lawmakers and public school boards and advocates, but opposed by Republican lawmakers and charter schools.

Despite protests by “school choice” backers, Wolf's administration portrayed the measure as a way to improve educational quality and choice.

“Choice without quality isn’t really choice at all," Wolf's education secretary, Noe Ortega, told the commission.

Under it, charter school officials must adhere to state laws on ethics, by filing public financial disclosure statements and obeying conflict-of-interest laws, as well as following the same accounting standards as those followed by public schools.

Charter school officials said some of them already do those things.

Murray Ufberg, Wolf's appointee to the commission, called it an incremental step to improve cooperation and competition between public schools and the charter schools whose bills they pay.

“We have an obligation to them, as well as to ourselves, to achieve a better end," Ufberg said after listening to several hours of testimony.

John Soroko, a House Republican appointee, said the regulation goes beyond the authority of the state Department of Education to write it and its provisions were not envisioned when the Legislature first passed Pennsylvania’s charter school law in 1997.

Opponents also said the regulation will hurt the...