Study: Traditional Schools Outpace Charters In Funding

Traditional schools received an average of $2,706 more per pupil than charter schools in 15 states in fiscal year 2011, a gap caused by traditional schools receiving more public funding, according to a study released June 17 by the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform.

“Buckets of Water into the Ocean: Non-Public Revenue in Public Charter and Traditional Public Schools” found that traditional schools in those states received $13,628 per pupil while charters received $10,922 per pupil.

Charter schools are public schools granted more flexibility regarding government regulations. They can be managed by school districts or by nonprofit charter management organizations.

Non-public funding composes only a small percentage of schools’ overall budgets: 2.6% of traditional public schools’ revenues and 5.3% of charters’ revenues. Traditional schools received nearly $6.4 billion while charter schools received $379 million in non-public funding in fiscal year 2011.

One type of non-public funding is philanthropic giving ranging from foundation gifts to bake sale proceeds.

Charitable organizations donated $173 million to charter schools, or $264 per pupil, while traditional schools received $331 million, or $18 per pupil. Charitable giving closed the funding gap between traditional and charter schools by $246 per pupil.

For charter schools, this kind of giving made up almost half of non-public revenues. In contrast, only 5% of traditional public schools’ non-public revenues came from donations, while one-third came from food service and 13% came from investments.

“Our one big takeaway is that private philanthropy is really not a big part of public school funding,” said Dr. Patrick Wolf, the project’s principal investigator. “It’s not as big of an element of funding as many people think or claim. … Public schools in both the traditional sector and the charter sector really kind of live and die based on public financing, public funding sources.”

Ninety-five percent of all charter school gifts went to schools enrolling only one-third of the charter students, while 34% of the schools reported receiving no such support. Wolf said that other research has shown that most donations to charter schools goes to those that are either brand new or well-established.

“Basically, philanthropy is investing where it thinks its dollars are going to be most impactful, and they’ve got some favorites that they finance pretty strongly,” Wolf said.

Arkansas was not included in the year’s report because researchers could not determine from the data the differences between the various types of non-public revenues.

But last year, University of Arkansas researchers reported in “Charter School Funding: Inequity Expands” that traditional public schools in Arkansas received an average of $11,374 per student, while charter schools received an average of $8,392 – a difference of $2,982. That study did not include district conversion schools in Arkansas.

That study found that in 30 states and 48 cities, public charter schools received an average of $3,814 less per pupil than traditional public schools.