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curious 2
March 9, 2010
Buried on the Department of Education’s website is a page that lists per pupil spending on a school-wide, district-wide, and system-wide basis. Using this information, as well as expense data from the 2007-2008 audits and the recent Independent Budget Office report, we compared spending by charter schools and traditional public schools that are located in the same building.
We found that charter schools spent $365 less per pupil than their co-located traditional public schools in 2007-2008. You can see our calculations in a workbook here.
Some notes on our methodology:
- We looked only at the amount the co-located traditional public school spent per pupil on their general education students (which includes part-time but not full-time special education students). This is because while charter schools do enroll special needs students, very few offer all-day special education classes. For reference, we included the numbers for overall per-pupil and full-time special education spending in our database.
- We did not adjust for charter school demographics, save the case of Opportunity Charter School, which we know enrolls a large number of special education students. For this comparison, we looked at overall per pupil spending.
- Unlike the IBO’s report, we include the total amount that charter schools spent in 2007-2008, which contains philanthropy and federal funding sources, such as Title I monies.
- For charter schools, we looked at how much they spent per pupil, as reported in their 2007-2008 audits. To this number, we added $3,735, which is the estimated value of the amount of in-kind services that charters received from the DOE in 2007-2008. (Since the IBO report estimated the value of services received in 2008-2009, we adjusted their number by 5% to account for the slightly smaller DOE budget in 2007-2008.)
- Some charter schools did not have audits available for 2007-2008. To correct for this, we looked at their expense numbers from 2008-2009 and decreased them by 13%. The 13% decrease is meant to adjust for the fact that charter schools received only $11,023 per pupil in 2007-2008 versus $12,443 in 2008-2009.
Finally, in addition to these calculations, we created an accessible Excel database of school-specific spending information available for most traditional public schools. This data includes breakdowns of specific spending components, such as teacher compensation. It was compiled from pages like this one available on the DOE website.
As always, we welcome feedback and suggestions for future areas of research!
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March 10th, 2010 3:46 am
Looking at charter schools’ outside audits is a very interesting thing to do. As it happens, the UFT’s charter school didn’t submit its audit for the school year ending in 2009, according to the NYS Ed. Dept.’s Audit Office web site. I wonder if the UFT felt that it had to contribute a lot of money to make the school work and produce good numbers, i.e., acting just like the private financiers who attract so much flack for doing the same thing for the charters of their choice.
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March 10th, 2010 8:33 am
Dee: the UFT 2008-09 audit can be found here: http://www.newyorkcharters.org/pubsReportsAudits.html
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March 10th, 2010 9:52 am
I apologize in advance for this question if it is just plain stupid.
Kim,
Given the other, related work you have done researching and reporting on how much charter schools take in calculated as per pupil revenue, how do we explain the difference between the funding charters take in and the money spent on students?
For example, I recall pouring over the speedsheets you did comparing per pupil philanthropy spending to examine the charters in my district (that ranged from roughly $300/student to over $3000/student in private funds).
Before I look at this wonderful new research you just published I wanted to correct my lens- if charters take in more mony per pupil (which seems to be the case on average as well as speciifically in the charters co located in my district), then what can we surmise about charter spending?
Are the CMOs operating a sort of funding arbitrage by taking in slightly more than they spend on students?
Are charters spending more money on administration, p.r., lobbying, marketing, equipment, transportation, or some other non educational type of expenditures?
I do apologize for asking before looking at the reports first myself, but I hoped you could correct my assumptions and lens before I dove in on a possible wild goose chase.
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March 10th, 2010 12:54 pm
Hi Lisa -
I did some quick research and found that in 2008-2009, there were 34 charter schools (out of 77) that spent less than the amount of philanthropy they took in per pupil (i.e. there was a surplus). In 2007-2008, the number was 14 (out of 58).Overall, these schools tend to be part of larger CMO chains, and they mostly appear to save the difference from year to year - in some cases, because they are looking to save money for a building. This is the case with many of the Achievement First schools and the Icahn schools.
Other cases are less clear - and many were not the same from year to year. For instance, in District 1, there were two co-located charters. Girls Prep spent more than it raised in philanthropy per pupil both years. Manhattan spent more in 2007-2008 and less in 2008-2009 - probably because it raised 5x as much money in 2008-2009 as it did in 2007-2008.
In terms of charters spending more money on admin, etc - I’m not quite sure what you’re getting at there. I looked at TOTAL expenditures per pupil - I didn’t break it down to see the percentage of operating expenses devoted to teachers versus administration. That’s more than enough for another post - and I’m working on it!
Hope this helps!
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