Charter School Funding: Inequity in New York City

Charter schools have been a part of the educational landscape in New York City since the first New York charter school opened in Harlem in 1999. We define a charter school as any school that (1) operates based on a formal charter in place of direct school district management and (2) reports its finances independently from the school district. We define all other public schools as district schools. According to the New York State Department of Education (NYSDoE), New York City was home to 1,575 district and 183 charter schools in Fiscal Year 2014 (FY2014). Seven percent of all public school students in New York City attended charter schools that year

Charter School Funding: Inequity in the City

Public charter schools are a growing part of K-12 education. Charter schools are public schools that are granted operational autonomy by their authorizing agency in return for a commitment to achieve specific performance goals. Like traditional public schools, charter schools are free to students and overseen by the state. Unlike traditional public schools, however, most charters are open to all students who wish to apply, regardless of where they live. If a charter school is over-subscribed, usually random lotteries determine which students will be admitted. Most charter schools are independent of the traditional public school district in which they operate

Buckets of Water into the Ocean: Non-public Revenue in Public Charter and Traditional Public Schools

The funding of K-12 education remains a contentious public policy issue. Questions of funding adequacy and equity across school sectors, school districts and individual schools are prominent in discussions of how to improve educational outcomes, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds (Downes & Stiefel 2008; Ladd 2008). Although scholars are divided regarding the extent to which money affects student outcomes in K-12 education (Jackson, Johnson, & Persico 2015; Hanushek, 1997; Burtless 1996), there is basic agreement that more education revenue is better so long as the increased resources are directed towards productive educational activities and programs (Murnane & Levy 1996). If you ask education practitioners, the majority will say that more resources will make their schools better

Charter School Funding: Inequity Expands

The revenue study is based on Fiscal Year 2010‒11 (FY11) data for each of 30 selected states plus the District of Columbia (D.C.). Traditional school districts and public charter schools were analyzed and aggregated “statewide.” For each state, one to three “focus areas” were selected based on larger concentrations of charter students – most focus areas are large cities, some are metropolitan counties. Traditional school districts and charter schools were analyzed separately in each focus area. The analytic team collected and analyzed all revenues, public and private, flowing to traditional district and public charter schools. FY11 funding includes Federal, State, Local, Other, PublicIndeterminate, and Indeterminate sources

The Productivity of Public Charter Schools

This is the first national study of the productivity of public charter schools relative to district schools. This report is a follow up to the charter school revenue study, Charter School Funding: Inequity Expands, released in April 2014 by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas. That study was authored by the same research team that crafted this report. In the revenue study, per pupil revenues for public charter schools and traditional public schools (TPS) were compared. The research team found that during the 2010-11 school year (FY11), charter-school students across 30 states and the District of Columbia on average received $3,814 less in funding than TPS students, a funding gap of 28.4 percent

Charter School Funding Inequities: Rochester, New York

Public charter schools are increasingly becoming part of both the broader national conversation about education policy as well as the local urban scene in the United States. The latter is certainly true in Rochester, New York, where charter schools serve more than 18 percent of the students who attend school in the city. Given the important role that charter schools play in educating Rochester’s students, we sought to learn if students who attend the city’s charter schools are funded equitably when compared to students in Rochester City School District (RCSD) schools

Blaine it on Politics: The (Non-) Effect of Anti-Aid Amendments on Private School Choice Programs in the U.S. States

James G. Blaine was a prominent American politician of the late 19th Century. Although Blaine was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for President in 1884, U.S. Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, and a Senator from Maine, his primary legacy was the enshrinement of anti-aid amendments in the constitutions of 39 U.S. states. These so-called Blaine Amendments were designed to prohibit government funds from supporting sectarian religious organizations such as schools and charities. In Blaine\u27s day, sectarian was widely understood to be a euphemism for Catholic . Nondenominationally Protestant organizations such as the public schools of the day were considered to be non-sectarian and entirely worthy of government support. The Blaine Amendments ensured that government-sponsored schools in the U.S. would be pervasively Protestant, at least until religion was banned from public schools in the 1960s, and that Catholic schools would have to make do without any substantial financial assistance from the government

Education Freedom and Student Achievement: Is More School Choice Associated with Higher State-Level Performance on the NAEP?

School choice is on the rise in many states. Since the start of the new millennium, many states have launched or expanded private school choice options, permitted and expanded independently operated public charter schools, eased restrictions on homeschooling, and enacted policies that allow and encourage various forms of public school choice. One thing that is not on the rise, unfortunately, is average student scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). Student performance on the assessments, typically called “The Nation’s Report Card,” were flat from 2001 until 2015 and have dropped slightly in both 2017 and 2019

A Good Investment: The Updated Productivity of Public Charter Schools in Eight U.S. Cities

In 2015-16, the United States spent over $660 billion on its public education system in hopes of providing children with greater opportunities to excel academically and to improve their life trajectories. While public education dollars have risen at a relatively fast pace historically, future challenges, including underfunded pension liabilities, suggest policymakers should economize wherever possible. Meanwhile, the number of public charter schools has increased exponentially. From 1991 to 2018, charter school legislation passed in 44 states and the nation’s capital, and student enrollment in charters increased to around 3.2 million