Here’s a fact: In most major U.S. cities with charter schools, charter students receive substantially less funding than students in district schools. In our study, “Charter School Funding: Inequity Surges in the Cities,” students attending charter schools in major cities are shown to receive one-third less funding on average than their district counterparts.
These inequities themselves are not all equal, as some cities fund charter schools nearly on par with traditional schools. Boston and Houston fund charter school students almost equitably, but they arrive at funding equity in similarly complicated and tenuous ways.
Let’s begin in the “cradle of liberty.” During the 2018 school year, the average charter student in Boston received $23,930 in funding. That was only 7% less than the total per-pupil funding of $25,628 for Boston’s traditional schools. When we adjust for the fact that 18% of the student population of Boston charters has a disability, compared to 20% of students in traditional schools, charter students were funded equitably in Beantown.
Although Boston charters were close to parity in 2018, there is no guarantee charter students will receive their fair share in the future. Boston charters are not funded like traditional schools. Traditional schools received $18,953 per pupil in local funding in 2018. charters did not receive a cent. State revenue made up part of that sobering local funding gap, as Boston charters received $10,970 more per pupil from the commonwealth than did traditional schools. Federal revenues provided $334 more in per-pupil funding to public charters than to traditional public schools.
Local, state, and federal funding combined to leave students in Boston’s charter schools funded at $4,431 less per pupil than their traditional counterparts. Boston charters gained near parity in funding because they received $2,733 more than traditional schools per pupil in nonpublic revenue. Nonpublic revenue is the least reliable source of dollars for schools, as it includes money from philanthropy, fundraisers, student fees, and investment income.
In short, Boston charters were funded equitably in comparison with public district schools in 2018 because they got lucky. Luck is not a firm foundation for equity in funding.
Elsewhere, Houston charters show why reliance on nonpublic funding is a narrow reed. We assigned Houston a grade of “A” for funding equity in 2014 and 2016, as students in the city’s charter schools received only 2% and 5% less in funding, respectively, than students in their traditional schools. In 2018, Houston’s grade fell to a “C.” What happened?
Like Boston, Houston provides no local education funding to its charter schools. Like Massachusetts, the Texas state government makes up some, but not all, of that local funding gap. Federal funding support in Houston was close to equal between the two sectors. The result was charter funding gaps from all public sources of around 8% in both 2014 and 2016 that were nearly eliminated by more nonpublic per-pupil revenues brought in by Houston charters compared to traditional schools in those years.
In 2018, the per-pupil funding of Houston charters from all public sources was almost equal to the total public funding of Houston’s traditional schools, differing by just 1.4%. Houston lost ground in its pursuit of funding equity, though, because the traditional schools in the city brought in $2,130 in nonpublic revenue per student compared to just $865 in per-pupil nonpublic revenue for charters. Nonpublic revenues may giveth funding equity, as they did in 2014 and 2016, or they may taketh it away, as was the case in 2018.
Total student-based education funding, weighted by student need, would be a more reliable system for achieving lasting resource equity for all students, regardless of the type of public school. Funding from all public sources should be combined into a single formula, adjusted for student disadvantages, and then it should follow each child to the public school he or she attends, whether charter or district.
The equitable funding of charter school students should be a result of careful design, as opposed to luck. Equitable educational opportunities are too important to leave to chance.
Patrick J. Wolf is a distinguished professor of education policy and 21st century endowed chair in school choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Corey A. DeAngelis is the director of school choice at Reason Foundation and the executive director at the Educational Freedom Institute.
