The dollars that go into charter schools have proven a flashpoint for education leaders. Critics have often derided charter school finances as dominated by private interests and opaque to taxpayers.
A study released last month by the University of Arkansas sheds a little more light on how these schools work — and also suggests that the differences between how private funds are allocated between traditional public schools and their charter counterparts may not be as straightforward as previously thought.
The study looked at non-public funds in public schools in 15 states with substantial numbers of charter schools. The research includes a wide range of private funding sources, from philanthropy to school lunch in districts with low proportions of low-income students. The report found that, in total, nearly $6.4 billion in non-public funding goes to traditional public schools, with $400 million going to charter schools.
Traditional public schools receive more than 20% more public revenue than charter schools, and some have said that philanthropic sources help make up for lower public expenditures on charters. But in three of the 15 states studied, traditional public schools actually received more private money per pupil than charter schools (nationwide, that’s true in at least 13 states), and both sectors primarily relied on private dollars. The overall proportion of funding breaks down to 5.3% of charter revenues and 2.6% of traditional public school revenues coming from non-public sources.
And while charter schools are typically thought of as having big donors or foundations backing them, the study found that, on average, a third of charter schools receive no philanthropic support. In fact, the charter landscape overall was extremely varied. Just a third of charters pull in almost all the philanthropic support, and the amount of non-public support ranged from 1% in New Jersey to 15% in Hawaii.
Funding charter schools as laboratories
Still, compared with traditional public schools, charters receive most of their non-public funding through philanthropy. That may be because charter schools promise to deliver a new type of schooling experience and connect with foundations looking to fund outside-of-the-box approaches.
Districts may also direct funds to charters in order to, at least in part, test out innovative instruction techniques and school models. Charter schools’ origins lie in an idea that districts needed a place to test out new methods and see if families were interested in an alternative to traditional school models. Some districts still maintain charters as a kind of laboratory for innovative schooling techniques.
In Denver, for example, the district helps charters find space in either district-owned buildings or elsewhere, and includes charter schools in district-wide initiatives. In some cases, Denver Public Schools has directed funding toward charters to try approaches like blended learning or extended instruction time prior to implementing them in traditional public schools if they work.
“We know that by collaborating across school types and thinking of our charter schools in part as the R & D labs that their original federal mandate suggests, we can more quickly fulfill our fundamental promise to graduate 100% of our students prepared for college and the workforce,” Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, Denver Public Schools' chief of innovation and reform, said during a 2014 Congressional hearing on charters.
Notes on the study
As with most research that did not pass a peer review process (and even some that has), the findings of the University of Arkansas’ latest study should be taken with a grain of salt. A prominent New Jersey education blog took the researchers to task for averaging public school revenue across states, when most include non-urban areas where charters are sparse and revenue operates differently due to lower poverty rates. It also critiqued the focus on revenue rather than the burden of financial responsibility. In some states, districts must pay for charter services like transportation from their own budget rather than the charters.
The University of Arkansas has courted controversy with its education research before, as well. Last year, a study from the school’s Department of Education Reform (which also produced this study) stated that charters offer a higher return on investment in terms of student performance on tests per dollar spent. It was widely critiqued both for its methodology and its penny-minded approach to teaching students.
As always, it’s worth reading the methods and considering what is not said alongside what is.
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