Auditor General Jack Wagner said Pennsylvanians are getting a bad deal when it comes to the funding of charter and cyber charter schools. So he is calling for a moratorium on the creation of any more of these independent public schools until the funding formula for them is changed.

In a special report, Wagner found fault with the varying tuition rate that each school district pays to charter schools when a district student enrolls. The rates varied in 2009-10 from $6,493 to $16,249 for regular education students, and are based on what the district spends to educate children in its own school, not the actual cost to educate them in the charter school.

He also took issue with the $228 million that the state spent in 2008-09 to reimburse school districts for children they transferred to charter schools. The reimbursement is intended to help districts fund costs that remain even though it has fewer children to educate.

Among his recommendations is limiting the amount of reserve funds that charter schools can have on hand to be consistent with the limits imposed on school districts. A recent Patriot-News story explored the amount of reserve funds that public schools, including district and charters, had amassed as of June 30, 2009, and found they had $2.75 billion in reserve accounts.

"The big problem is that we are trying to finance 21st-century education with 19th- century funding methods," Wagner said. "With Pennsylvania mired in its greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, we can't afford to be wasting precious financial resources on schools whose costs have absolutely no basis whatsoever on what is actually needed to educate our children."

A representative for the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools was disappointed by Wagner's call for a moratorium. Its executive director, Guy Ciarrocchi, said parents want more choices to public school districts as evidenced by the almost 30,000-student waiting lists that exist for charter schools.

"An honest assessment of charter schools would recognize two facts: (1) charter schools are public schools that operate with only about 70 cents of every dollar spent on students in district-run schools; and, (2) despite this unfair funding, charter schools score as well as district-run schools, and our state's poorest and most disadvantaged students are twice as likely to succeed in a charter school," Ciarrochi said. "Only a career politician -- with a political agenda that puts politics above children -- would criticize schools that succeed and save money."