Cybercharter schools tout themselves as a high-quality alternative to public schools for students who struggle in a conventional school setting.

The online schools offer the convenience of Web-based instruction and the ability to tailor courses to the academic strengths and needs of their students.

But when cybercharter schools are compared with brick-and-mortar schools using the state's primary academic yardstick — the PSSA — they fall short.

In 2007, only three of the state's 11 cybercharter schools made "adequate yearly progress," the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment's benchmark for compliance with the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Seven of the 11 schools have never made AYP in the five years the state has been using that benchmark.

Overall, 36.4 percent of cybercharter school students scored proficient or advanced in math in 2007, and 51.9 percent scored proficient or advanced in reading.

The scores are below the AYP cutoffs of 45 percent in math and 54 percent in reading and well below the statewide averages of 69 percent in math and 68 percent in reading.

The achievement gap is even wider in Lancaster County, where, overall, 75.3 percent of students reached or exceeded the math target and 72.6 percent scored proficient or advanced in reading.

Cybercharter school proponents argue that the biggest cyberschools in the state, which enroll about two-thirds of all online students, both made AYP this year.

They also say the state's method of determining AYP gives more leeway to traditional public school districts than to cyberschools.

And because each cybercharter school can draw students from all over the state, those schools have more difficulty meeting the AYP requirement that at least 95 percent of students take the PSSA, which must be administered in person, not over the Internet.

Proponents also point out that cybercharter schools tend to enroll students who have failed in the public schools and don't do well on standardized tests.

"If I was getting a cross-section of kids from across the state, I would have no problem making AYP," said James Hoover, CEO of Pennsylvania Distance Learning Charter School, which has never made AYP.

State Department of Education spokesman Michael Race declined to discuss the disparity between cybercharter and traditional public school PSSA scores, saying the department does not comment on individual schools' scores.

PSSA results do factor into whether the department renews a cyberschool's charter, which comes up for review every five years, Race said.

"Student proficiency and student performance has to be a consideration in whether a school should continue," he said.

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Cybercharter schools have come under fire recently for amassing large fund balances while collecting tuition from the school districts in which their students live.

Legislative hearings are being held on cybercharter funding, and lawmakers this year are expected to vote on a bill that could limit cybercharter tuition to as little as $3,000 to $5,000 per pupil.

School districts now pay their per-pupil cost — in Lancaster County the range is about $9,000 to $13,000 — for each student who enrolls in a cybercharter school. The state reimburses districts 27 percent of the total.

According to the state Department of Education, county school districts paid about $6.5 million up front in cyberschool tuition last year.

Enrollment figures for 2006-07 were not available, but in 2005-06, about 600 county students were enrolled in eight cybercharter schools.

That total was likely higher for 2006-07 because cyberschool enrollment has been growing every year, cybercharter school officials said.

Most county students were enrolled in the two biggest schools — Pennsylvania Cyber Charter, with about 7,500 students statewide, and Pennsylvania Virtual Charter, which enrolls about 4,000 across the state.

Both schools, which enroll about 70 percent of the state's 17,000 cybercharter students, made AYP in 2007 after failing to meet the standard the previous two years.

Their students have some of the highest average PSSA scores of all cybercharter schools, ranging from 45.8 percent to 60.4 percent in math and 64.7 percent to 67.1 percent in reading.

But they still lag behind state (69 percent math and 68 percent reading) and county (75.3 percent math/72.6 percent reading) averages.

Every school district in Lancaster County but two — Lancaster and Columbia — had higher average scores in both subjects.

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Like other cybercharter schools in the state, Pennsylvania Cyber Charter tends to get two types of students, Fred Miller, the school's communications director, said.

"We get the students that are the high achievers, the homeschoolers who are already into (learning) mode," he said.

"The other group is the students that have failed, for whatever reason, at their home districts. It's a real challenge to try to get those kids to pass the PSSA."

Miller cites a July 2007 report by the Commonwealth Foundation that indicates cyberschool students tend to come from school districts with low graduation rates, low SAT verbal scores and low PSSA reading and math scores.

About 43 percent of all cyberstudents are considered low-income, compared with 34 percent of all public schools, the study found.

The Commonwealth Foundation is a nonprofit public policy institute that supports school choice and opposes changing cyberschool funding.

The state Department of Education does not compile socioeconomic statistics on cybercharter school students.

Hoover said most of his school's students "have been failed, in one way or another, by the public schools."

"That's basically the story for cybercharter schools," he said. "I guess that begs the question: Do the kids make the school or does the school make the kids?"

Pennsylvania Distance Learning students this year missed the AYP cutoffs by significant margins — 16.4 points in math and 10.5 points in reading.

Hoover said Congress, which this fall will consider reauthorizing No Child Left Behind, should change the law so schools are judged by the progress students make throughout the year, not by a single test like the PSSA.

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The two other cyberschools with the most local students in 2005-06 — Commonwealth Connections Academy and Pennsylvania Leadership — failed to make AYP in 2007 and have never made that standard.

But officials at both schools said they just barely missed AYP this year.

Pennsylvania Leadership fell short because it didn't meet the state's graduation requirements, CEO Jim Hanak said.

To make AYP, 80 percent of a school's students must graduate, or the school must improve its graduation rate from the previous year.

Commonwealth Connections missed AYP because its special-education subgroup didn't score well in reading, Holly Brzycki, the school's curriculum coordinator, said. This was the first year the school had enough special-education students to qualify as a subgroup, she said.

All other subgroups improved their reading scores by at least 10 percent, Brzycki said.

Cybercharter schools also have missed AYP for failing to get the required majority of students tested — a challenge when pupils are spread across the state.

Miller said Pennsylvania Cyber missed AYP in 2006 because a handful of its special-education students did not get tested, dropping the test rate for that subgroup below 95 percent.

"We had a Herculean effort (this year) to work on participation," Miller said.

The school sent students CDs with information on the PSSA and links to practice tests on the Web.

It also set up 29 testing sites across the state in hotel rooms, libraries and other sites and paid 171 proctors to administer the test over two days, he said.

Staff members spent about 470 nights in hotel rooms and traveled more than 36,000 miles to administer the tests to groups of as few as five or as many as 222 students, Miller said.

The effort, which cost about $163,000, paid off in a 98 percent participation rate, Miller said.

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Three other cybercharter schools enrolled county students in 2005-06: 21st Century, Achievement House and Pennsylvania Learners.

Of them, only 21st Century made AYP in 2007.

Achievement House students had the lowest PSSA scores of any cybercharter school in 2007: 10.8 percent proficient/advanced in math and 32.3 percent proficient/advanced in reading.

"We do get an awful lot of students who are far behind when they get here," Achievement House CEO Wallace H. Wallace said. "We have kids coming in who have not had algebra and so forth."

The school enrolls only high-school-age students, who tend to score lower, overall, on the PSSA — especially in math — than younger students.

Wallace said the school is developing an improvement plan that calls for extending the school year and adding staff.

Schools that fail to make AYP in successive years must develop such plans and provide tutoring for their students.

Those that still don't meet the benchmarks risk state takeover.

Next year, meeting AYP will become even tougher when the state raises the cutoffs for scoring proficient or advanced on the PSSA to 56 percent in math and 63 percent in reading.

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Timothy Daniels, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools, said the state's system of determining AYP status favors traditional public schools.

Despite having as many as 7,500 students, cybercharters are considered single schools. If any "subgroup" of students — as few as 40 special-education pupils or minorities, for instance — fails to make AYP, the entire school fails.

School districts, on the other hand, can make AYP even if one or more of their schools fail to meet the standard.

A district must make AYP targets in reading and math in only one of three grade spans, Race, the Department of Education spokesman, said.

If students in grades three through five score above the cutoff in math but not in reading, the district can make AYP if students in another grade span — six through eight or nine through 12 — score above the reading cutoff, Race said.

Cybercharter schools have no such leeway.

"There's an unfairness in the comparison because all charters are considered single units," Daniels said.

If school districts were treated like cybercharter schools, every district with a school failing to make AYP also would fail to make the standard.

That would place most districts in the state on the AYP failing list, Daniels said.

He said it's unfortunate cybercharter schools are being compared with the very schools that have failed many cyberschool students.

"Where students are (academically) is determined by where they are when (cyberschools) get them," Daniels said. "If a kid comes in with low scores, is that the cyberschool's fault?"

Cyberschools offer a viable alternative to students who otherwise would drop out of school completely, he said.

"I think people look at this as a contest, but what this is is opening up choices so students have more options."

E-mail: bwallace@lnpnews.com