Charter School Funding Considerations

There is a long-standing debate in public administration as to the differences and similarities in management practices across sectors. A number of scholars have argued for market-based reforms as a means to transform and improve public sector services, including the educational system. Charter schools have emerged as a reform that proposes to improve the educational system through choice, competition, and autonomy from the bureaucracy of traditional public school districts, but their implications are not fully understood. This mixed-method study analyzes differences in human resource management practices across traditional public, charter, and private schools, with a focus on formalization and autonomy. In support of other research on public-private management differences, this analysis suggests that traditional public schools are more formalized and have less autonomy than private and charter schools. Findings provide support for the utility of a core approach that distinguishes between public and private organizations based on ownership. The study suggests that ownership has a significant influence on personnel management practices, but that funding generally does not.

In this study, we analyzed public school teacher employment data from 2009 to 2015 to understand why teacher attrition is 54% higher in charter schools compared to traditional public schools. We investigated the factors associated with the differences in exit rates of teachers from traditional public and charter schools in Arizona which has a large charter school sector. Our findings suggest that the major factors behind the gap in retention rates between school sectors in Arizona are teachers’ professional characteristics: less experienced teachers and teachers with alternative certification are more likely to exit schools and, in particular, charter schools which also employ a significantly larger share of these teachers. We argue that charter school and school district leadership might consider interventions, mentoring, and support for teachers in the early stages of their career targeted at novice teachers.

The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing traditional public schools, and we have very little information about how distance matters in the competition for students. Because of this, traditional public schools and school districts have little ability to plan for enrollment changes in the face of charter school growth. Our paper uses data on enrollments and demographics in all charter and traditional public schools in Los Angeles from 2000 to 2013 to better understand these dynamics. We find that traditional public school enrollments clearly decline with competition from nearby charter schools. However, we also observe that charter schools tend to locate where traditional public school enrollments are on the decline. Competition is more relevant for elementary schools at short distances—within about 1 mi appears to be where the associations between charter school enrollments and TPS enrollment declines are the strongest. For middle and high schools, those connections are apparent within 2 to 6 mi in some models.

Charter schools have been categorized as "everyone's reform" (Bracey, 2004); they are a type of public school, first established in 1992, that normally has fewer restrictions than most public schools and that serves a student body that, in many circumstances, has consciously opted to attend the school. Charter schools have promised high student achievement and program options that would create healthy competition in the American educational market. Currently, in California alone, there are approximately 800 active charter schools that serve more than 340,000 pupils. As we close in on nearly twenty years of charter school reform, many charter schools could be considered successful. Every year, however, some have their charters either revoked or not renewed due to a variety of reasons including deficiencies in academic programming, poor student achievement, or improper fiscal mismanagement. According to the California Department of Education (2010), twenty-five percent of the 1,152 charter schools that have opened in California since 1992 have closed permanently, with more than forty closings due to charter revocation. To date, however, there has been very little research on charter school closures. This qualitative study attempted to (a) determine which types of California charter schools have closed, (b) discover the reasons the schools' former leaders give for the closures, as well as compare official reasons for closure with the schools' former leaders stated reasons for closure, and (c) solicit any advice the former leaders would offer others wanting to begin, or continue to successfully operate, a charter school. Reasons the former directors gave for their schools' closures included: (a) conflict with their sponsoring agent, (b) a negative relationship with their superintendent, (c) problems with facilities, (d) financial problems, (e) working ineffectively with a business partner, and (f) perceived unethical behavior by a business partner. Advice offered by these directors included the importance of securing and controlling finances at the site level, developing and maintaining collaborative relationships with sponsoring agents, beginning a charter school with a specific vision, not allowing a business entity to operate a charter school, and maintaining a high level of energy and enthusiasm.

This study was a descriptive survey research which explored the financial management and budgeting in public and private secondary schools in South- East, Nigeria. A Researcher’s developed instrument tagged financial management and budgeting in public and private secondary schools in South –East, Nigeria (FMBPPSSSENQ) was used to collect data for the study. The instrument was a fourteen (14) item questionnaire validated by three experts. Two of these experts are from the Department of Educational Management while one is from the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, (Measurement and Evaluation option), all from the Faculty of Education, Enugu state University of science and Technology, Agbani, The reliability coefficient of the instrument was determined using Cronbach Alpha method and an Alpha value of 0.87 was obtained indicating a high reliability of the instrument for the study. The population of the study consisted of all the 2,272 public and private secondary schools in all the states of the zones namely Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo States. This number was categorized as follows: 1,266 public secondary schools and 1,006 which were used for the study. A sample size of 340 was obtained using Taro Yamane formula and this was categorized into189 public and151 approved private secondary schools. Three states out of the five States that made up of the South East zone were randomly selected and used for the study. These states include Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu States. Proportionate stratified random sampling technique was employed in obtaining the number of principals from each of the three states. Proportionate stratified random sampling enabled the researcher to draw respondents randomly from each stratum in such a way that the relative proportions of the strata in the resultant sample are the same as existed in the parent proportion. In addition to the use of questionnaire to seek information from the principals, an interview schedule was structured in such a way that it also sought information from the principals on the financial management and budgeting which they applied in their schools. This was chosen to seek probing information from the principals especially in the areas where it was difficult to obtain information using only the questionnaire. The data collected was analyzed using mean scores with standard deviation. t-test statistic was used to test the hypothesis at .05 level of significance. The findings of this study revealed that school budget is usually prepared ahead of every school year in public schools and principals work hand in hand with the bursar to ensure proper accountability but the reverse is the case in private schools. The findings also revealed that whereas public school principals generate funds internally to augment the government subventions, private school principals do not generate funds but rather depend on the student school fees and levies imposed on parents for their profit oriented interest. The findings that items of expenditure are listed in order of priority in public schools but not in private schools indicated that finance is better managed in public schools than in private schools. Based on these findings, it was recommended among other things that, government, proprietors and proprietresses of schools should adequately fund schools; they should organize seminars, workshops and conferences on how to generate funds internally, and how to manage funds judiciously to achieve the stated objectives of education.

ABSTRACTFew evaluations have focused on the supply and demand within the education marketplace in a school choice environment. Because traditional public schools are not subject to the same level of competitive pressures as private schools, we expect that measures of school quality—enrollment, academic achievement, and safety—will be more likely to predict closures for private schools and public charter schools than Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). We employ survival analysis using data from private, traditional public, and public charter schools in Milwaukee from 2005 to 2016. Data on enrollment trends, demographics, and academic performance from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction were combined with data from other sources on school safety and closure. Results from our models suggest: (a) enrollment losses drive school closure in all three sectors, (b) low academic achievement only predicts closure for private schools, (c) families choose schools based on academics in all three sectors, and (d) academics and school safety are positively correlated.

A widely cited report by the federal Government Accountability Office found that charter schools enroll a significantly smaller percentage of students with disabilities than do traditional public schools. However, thus far no hard evidence exists to definitively explain or quantify the disparity between special education enrollment rates in charter and traditional public schools. This article uses student-level data from Denver, Colorado, to map the creation and growth of the special education gap in elementary and middle school grades. The gap begins because students with disabilities are less likely to apply to charter schools in gateway grades than are nondisabled students. However, the special education gap in Denver elementary schools more than doubles as students progress between kindergarten and the fifth grade. About half of the growth in the gap in elementary grades (46%) occurs because of classification differences across sectors. The remaining 54% of the growth in the gap in elementary grades is due to differences in student mobility across sectors. However, the gap does not primarily grow—and in fact tends to shrink—due to the movement of students with disabilities across sectors and out of the city’s school system. Rather, the impact of student mobility on the gap is driven primarily by nondisabled students: Regular enrollment students are more likely to enter into charter schools, thus disproportionately reducing the percentage of students with disabilities within the charter sector.

Teacher Attrition in Charter and Public Schools

This brief argues that charter school programs can have direct fiscal impacts on school districts for two reasons. First, operating two systems of public schools under separate governance arrangements can create excess costs. Second, charter school financing policies can distribute resources to or away from districts. Using the city school districts of Albany and Buffalo in New York, we demonstrate how fiscal impacts on local school districts can be estimated. We find that charter schools have had fiscal impacts on these two school districts. Finally, we argue that charter schools policies should seek to minimize any avoidable excess costs created by charter schools and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable excess costs is equitably distributed across traditional public schools, charter schools, and the state. We offer concrete policy recommendations that may help to achieve these objectives.

Charter schools have grown significantly since 1991, when Minnesota became the first state to enact charter school legislation. Charter schools are public schools, as defined by federal and state law. Thus, when it comes to issues of religion and education, charter schools are bound by the same laws and legal precedents as public schools. As a result, local developers and state chartering agencies that seek to establish religious or faith-based charter schools are likely to fail in state and federal courts. This chapter examines this legal framework in the larger charter school movement.

ABSTRACTThe charter-school sector in the United States has grown steadily since the first charter school opened in 1992 and nearly 7,000 charter schools currently serve nearly 3 million students. Research suggests that the average charter school performs about the same as nearby traditional public schools, but there is great variation in the effects of charter schools. Some are successful in boosting student achievement and others are not, raising the question of what distinguishes good charter schools from bad. This article summarizes the research on factors associated with successful charter schools. The research suggests that urban charter schools have more positive impacts on student achievement than other charter schools. The policies most consistently found to be associated with positive charter-school impacts include long school days or years, comprehensive behavioral policies with rewards and sanctions, and a mission that prioritizes boosting student achievement. In addition, moderately strong evidence suggests that high-dosage tutoring, frequent feedback and coaching for teachers, and policies promoting the use of data to guide teachers’ instructional practices are positively associated with charter schools’ achievement impacts.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, Louisiana, there is a growing concentration of charter schools. The Recovery School District (RSD) has oversight of the majority of these schools. To explore charges from community advocates that RSD charter schools restricted admission and provided inadequate services for students with disabilities, the following questions were asked: Were students with disabilities admitted equally to charter and traditional schools in New Orleans? and How were the services for students with disabilities the same or different in charter and traditional schools? A case study research design that included both traditional and charter RSD schools was used. Data were gathered through examination of relevant reports from school entities and popular media. Additional data were gathered through interviews with district personnel and traditional school, charter school, and community disabilities advocates. Analysis of resultant themes indicated evidence of selective practices as well as differences in education provision for students with disabilities.

This article presents the results of an investigation involving the provisions for special education services in state charter school legislation and highlights selected special education issues within Colorado's charter schools. The research included document reviews, a survey of individual charter schools, interviews, and site visits in four schools. The results of this multilevel effort reveal significant variability across states and among charter schools within Colorado in how students with disabilities access the schools as well as how special education is provided. There is a general lack of information flowing to charter schools about special education and a disparity in how services are funded and provided. Legal and administrative responsibilities for special education are often ambiguous. Nonetheless, charter schools appear to offer individualized educational approaches that are perceived by many parents and teachers as meeting the needs of many students who had experienced learning as well as behavior problems in the public schools.

Traditional public school interests in North Carolina, or the BLOB—Big Learning Organizations Bureaucracy—as one study participant referred to them, successfully kept charter schools in a box from the passage of charter school legislation in 1996 until Republicans took control of the state House and Senate in 2011. They did not seek to eliminate charter schools in state. They accepted the state’s one hundred-charter school experiment and masterfully played political defense, stopping charter schools from encroaching any further on their territory. While charter schools in North Carolina during that period came to a permanent fixture in the public education landscape, they were a very small one. The majority of North Carolina’s one hundred counties did not have any charter schools at all. And even in Wake County, with the state’s highest concentration of charter schools, charter school students made up less than 1% of the county’s public school enrollment. Charter schools reached their cap in 2001 and after that, the State Board of Education was only able to grant new charters when existing ones were revoked or voluntarily relinquished.KeywordsPublic SchoolChoice PolicySchool LeaderCharter SchoolParent ChoiceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Grounded in analysis of specific features of the federal school reform undertaken in the U.S. in early 21st century, this article demonstrates that the U.S. government attempted to reduce the number of students lagging behind and thus to increase students’ average performance by means of stimulating them to transfer from underperforming to better schools, including from public schools to schools of other types, which offer higher quality of teaching. The article distinguishes three stages of the reform. On the first stage, in late 20th century, new types of schools emerged in the U.S.: in addition to pre-existent public, private and religious schools, as well as home schooling, magnet schools emerged in 1970s, and charter schools emerged in 1990s. On the second stage, during George W. Bush Administration, U.S. government assumed the powers to stimulate transfer of students from underperforming public schools to charter schools, and to stimulate increase in the number of charter schools. On the third stage, during Barack Obama Administration and the first year of Donald Trump Administration, U.S. government faced the impossibility to significantly increase the number of charter schools, to stimulate mass transfer of students from public schools to charter schools, and to significantly improve average students’ performance over short time. Even if U.S. government assumes the powers to stimulate transfer of students also to private schools, as Donald Trump Administration proposed, it will hardly have a positive effect in the short run. The article concludes that the model of school reform applied in the U.S. cannot solve the puzzle, because it concentrates available resources around elite schools, while most students lagging behind concentrate around traditional public schools.