Charter
proponents such as the Thomas Fordham Institute and others often cite rhetoric
about charters being less expensive. The facts presented in this report suggest
something quite different. The
reality is that total costs to a community for the same total number of
students rises, quite substantially, when charter schools open. When charter proponents try to argue
that charter schools cost less, they are using very selective figures
concerning where the costs lie. This report will take you step-by-step
through the impact of charter schools on the fiscal health of a school system.
How Are Charter
School Funding Formulas Determined?
In
a somewhat simplified example, take an entire school system's spending, and
divide this amount by the number of students in the district. Multiplying the
number of students in each charter school by this "per-pupil" amount,
minus perhaps a small percentage for overhead costs incurred by the district
responsible for the charter, determines that school's funding. Is this
valid? Let's see how it plays out
in practice. Keep in mind that this "per-pupil" amount is not the
actual dollar amount spent on each student. It is an average amount, only. You
will see why understanding this is important.
A school system's costs includes those
of central administration functions, most of which are related to costly mandates
from state and federal governments. The costs include requirements under No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) policies that even the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan now admits are failures. The
extensive, and expensive costs of evaluating and meeting the specific needs of
students qualifying for special services under the Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and the costs of programs to educate
homeless children and those of migrant workers are also very costly, on a per
student basis. State and Federal dollars dedicated to these programs do not
cover all of the costs.
The
costs of specialized programs for students identified under IDEA seem, and
often are, very expensive, yet you should consider two factors. If you are the parent of such a child,
you know how important these specialized programs can be in the quality of life
and in the education of your child. If you don't think it is financially
prudent to spend the money necessary to meet the needs of a child with severe
challenges, you might take heart in knowing that such specialized education
pays large economic dividends to the community. In the not so distant past,
children who now are educated to the level of being able to care for
themselves, and to work in and benefit our communities in so many ways, and
even to pay taxes, were instead placed in public institutions where the costs of
supporting them in sometimes horrid facilities was vastly more expensive than
the "costly" education they now receive.
Charter
supporters will sometimes point to research by other charter supporters that suggests
that, on average, charter schools in a certain location have a similar percent
of students qualifying for these specialized programs. What is missing from their calculations
is the startling reality that the qualifying students in charters often have
very mild challenges (requiring fewer compensating services) compared to those
remaining within the regular public schools. And overall, the claims fall short
of meeting the "veritas" standard anyway, since in most places
charters have far fewer students having Individualized Education Plans (IEPs)
than the surrounding traditional public schools.
In
addition to costly functions mandated by law we also find in the budgets of
most school districts expenses known by accountants as "legacy
costs." These costs include
debts already incurred by the district, but not yet paid, such as the cost of
providing mandated health benefits to retirees and the costs of prior construction
and renovations to be paid in upcoming years. These costs are real, and ongoing.
When charters are not required to cover any of these costs (the argument by
charter supporters being that charters did not "cause" these costs)
then the per-pupil funding is improperly inflated. Why? These very real legacy costs are to
fund past costs to a district. When charter schools do not contribute to the
payment of these just "pre-charter" debts, the remaining debt is then
heaped upon those remaining in the regular public schools.
There Are No Savings Realized When Students Enroll in a
Charter School.
What
about the claim promulgated by charter school advocates that the public schools
save money when charters open? "You are paying us less than what it costs
to educate students in your school district, therefore you are saving money
each time a charter opens!"
If only this were true, then there would not be quite as many public school
closures and school programs cut across the nation due to the impact of
charters. Let's play out a very real scenario.
Let
us take a moment to examine what really happens to "per-pupil"
funding in a district when it reaches the public school level. The central
administrative costs of the district are first removed, the "legacy
costs" are removed, and in Louisiana, the costs of transportation for all
students living a mile or more from school are removed from the funding
actually making it to schools. In Louisiana it is also required that public
school systems provide transportation to certain private and parochial schools.
These funds are also removed from what is ultimately available to fund the
education of students in the schools. Per-pupil funding available for the
school itself is obviously less than the system wide "per-pupil"
funding used to determine charter school funding. For the sake of our example
below, we will use an average amount of $7,500 available at the school level to
fund the education for each child.
Imagine
a charter school opening in your community. Imagine that the new school opens
with 100 students the first year. These
students are drawn from applicants applying from ten area schools, from grades
one through five. Now, imagine the district is sending $1,000,000 to the new
school for the first year. This
would be the district level per-pupil amount of $10,000 per student. Each of
the ten "sending" schools is losing ten students, evenly distributed
across first through fifth grade. That would then mean, that each school is
losing two students from each grade. Your child's school loses the school-level
funding for each of these charter students, and now it is necessary to cut the
school budget by $7,500 for each charter school student. Please explain where
in the school these "savings" are realized? With ten students leaving, two from each grade… the school
loses $75,000 per year. If you are the principal, where do you
save $50,000? In the second grade
you have 26 students in each of three classes. You lose two students in this grade to a charter. You now have two classes of 25 and one
of 26 students. Can you cut a teacher to save money? How? Did you
stop heating the classrooms, or cut the hours of the librarian, or the counselor? There are not, in reality, even
marginal savings for the school, unless you impact the services of your remaining
students, often in drastic ways. To save the money necessary you would have to
cut something… but what? If a charter
group takes over a school, an entire school, with all of the students in that
school, then there would be "some" savings to a district. However…
the impact of legacy costs now shared by fewer students, often negates any
savings even in that unlikely circumstance. The fact is, that "savings" due to charter schools
are a huge myth!
Worth noting in this examination of the impact of charter school on the
local school districts is the additional revenues most charter schools
acquire through a variety of funding sources. Start-up funding for charters is often significant, and
comes from state and federal education funds allocated specifically for
charters, and from private foundations pushing the privatization of public
education. While charter school
supporters often scoff at the amount of such start up funds, compared to the
costs of starting a new school, the evidence is clear that the charters are
often "showing a profit" with a few short years. Illinois charter supporters, for
example, point out that charters in Illinois are required to be
"non-profit" schools, but the history of charters across the country
points to charter school "management" companies who are claiming, or
promising, quite healthy profits to their investors. In addition, local
organizations and or wealthy individuals and foundations such as the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli Broad Foundation are funneling
increasingly lucrative grants to charter schools. Might these funds otherwise
accrue to the benefit of all students?
Finally,
while not the specific topic of this post, the achievement of students in
charter schools should be noted. The CREDO Charter
School Study, which looked at charters in 16 states found rather dismal
effects overall compared to the promises made by charter proponents. First, only 17% of the schools in the
study showed academic performance in charters to be higher than for similar
students in traditional public schools.
For 37% of the schools, educational achievement was significantly lower
than for traditional public schools.
For the remainder, the achievement in charters was the same as that of regular
public schools. This does not
sound like the vastly superior education claimed by proponents of charter
schools. For charters in Chicago, Illinois, for example, the improvement in
reading was .02 standard deviations above the performance of similar students
in the traditional public schools… and for mathematics achievement there was no
difference. Not exactly setting
the world on fire.
Also
to be noted are the findings of the University
of Minnesota Law School's Center for Race and Poverty Study of the New
Orleans schools, often cited as a bright and shining star example for charters.
In this study the researchers disclosed a variety of methods by which charter
operators sought to increase the likelihood of "creaming" the best
students.
All
in all, charters are costly, they are more likely to decrease student
achievement than increase it, and they drain resources from public school
systems across the country. They
are a way to "select" out of the community challenge of educating all
students by focusing on the Balkanization of the public school systems in
America. The "savings" proclaimed by charter school advocates are
just another piece of "myth-information" designed to promote further
privatization of our nation's public schools.
Copyright
2014, all rights reserved by Noel Hammatt. Permission is granted to share this entire post in written or digital form as long as this copyright notice is included.