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curious 2
March 19, 2010
A longstanding selling point of the charter school movement has been budget independence — that is, schools are given the freedom to allocate resources as they see fit, relatively free from government control. We decided to explore how this freedom is affecting allocation decisions.
We analyzed the spending breakdown, specifically as it relates to teacher salaries and classroom instruction expenditures, and found that, on average, charter schools devote 10 percent more of their budgets to teacher salaries and 14 percent more of their budgets to classroom instruction as compared to the Department of Education’s budget for traditional schools. A full spreadsheet with individual school budgets, the total DOE budget, and our calculations is available here.
Overall, the DOE devotes around 41 percent of its budget to paying teachers, paraprofessionals, and other classroom aids. Charter schools in public space devote around 51 percent of their budgets to program salaries, which are salaries associated with classroom instruction. Classroom instruction, which includes funds spent on teacher salaries, classroom materials, student afterschool programs, and professional development, makes up 49 percent of the DOE’s total budget and 63 percent of publicly-housed charter school budgets.
Charts comparing these budgets are below:
Methods:
In order to compare the DOE’s budget to charter school budgets, we used two different methodologies which gave largely the same result. In our first method, we looked at how much the DOE spent per pupil on each of its budget items, as reported on this page. We then compared those amounts to how much charter schools spent per pupil on things like program salaries and classroom equipment. To figure out the percentage of charter school budgets that went to these expenses, we used our calculated per pupil expense (discussed in this blog post) and added to that amount the $3,929 that the Independent Budget office estimates charter schools get in in-kind services from the DOE. However, because there have been many criticisms of the IBO report, we decided to compare the budgets a different way: by subtracting the cost of things that charters get in kind, like transportation and food services, from the DOE budget. The results were largely the same: Although the percentage of the total budget that was devoted to teacher salaries and classroom instruction changed, the difference between the DOE’s numbers and charter schools stayed constant.
Other Notes:
- I left out KIPP Academy because their Statement of Activities included many non-school related expenses, like the KIPP to College costs, which were difficult to parse.
- In some cases, items that the IBO listed as charters receiving were not listed on the DOE’s page (like Software and Health expenses). Since these were relatively small additions to charter budgets, I left them out.
- Although the DOE budget was for 2007-2008 and the charter budgets were from 2008-2009, I think the comparison is fair, as the percentage breakdown of DOE spending does not seem to change much from year to year.
- I think it is important to separate charters that are housed in public space from those who must pay occupancy costs — for that reason, I believe the public charter to DOE comparison is most accurate, but I included the other numbers in the spreadsheet for comparison’s sake. As always, we welcome feedback and ways to improve our calculations!
As always, we welcome feedback and ways to improve our calculations!
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March 20th, 2010 11:49 am
Kim and Ken,
I keep reading that class sizes in charterville are smaller than in TPS country. If true, how might this affect the implications of your results?
A lot of the public square discussion involves assumptions that TPS teachers include a good number of more senior (pricey) teachers, and that charters have more entry-salary teachers. Your results suggest otherwise, no?
How do you account for the “off balance sheet” goods, services, and support, that charters are said to receive?
Pairs of pies totaling 100% each might look different if compared as absolutes — as dollars. Say normed to a per class, or per student, basis.
Last, while the debate revolves mostly around the “in-class instruction” component, how much load is on the TPS principals that may not be on the charter principals, or vice versa?
Thanks much.
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March 21st, 2010 12:52 am
I hesitate to ask (GS and Gittelson are both running on charter $),
but why percentages and not raw #s?
and where does Eva Moskowitz’s compensation get counted?
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March 21st, 2010 5:35 pm
Hi Michael, Jonathan -
If you look at the spreadsheets, you’ll notice that I actually compared numbers on a per pupil basis, not on an aggregate basis. This is to correct for differences that may result from class sizes, etc. I chose not to use “raw numbers” because I think raw number comparisons can be misleading. For instance, School A devotes $2 to teacher instruction whereas School B devoted $100. Knowing that School A’s total budget is $4 for 20 pupils whereas School B’s budget is $400 for 2 pupils changes the picture significantly. If you’re curious to see the total expenditures versus the per pupil amounts those are in the spreadsheet as well.Jonathan - I’m not quite sure why you believe that I take “charter money” but I assure you that’s not the case. In terms of your compensation question, if a school leader works only for one school, it would show up in their audit. In the case of someone like Eva or Deborah Kenny–people who run more than one school–their salaries are generally paid for by a CMO. This means these salaries aren’t line items on an audit, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not accounted for. Rather, the school (in this case, HSA or HVA) pays a certain management fee to the CMO, which presumably could be used in part to pay management salaries. This fee I counted under management expenses - which again, you can see in the spreadsheet linked to in this article.
Michael - Again, if you look at the spreadsheet, you’ll see I used two methods to account for the in-kind/”off balance” services that charters receive from the DOE. The first includes the IBO’s estimate for in-kind services that charters receive. I used their number - around $3900K per pupil - and added it on to the average charter expenditure and then looked at the percentage devoted to teaching. Since there were critics of the IBO’s report, I also did a comparison where I subtracted out the amount that the DOE spends on these services - things like transportation, food, etc - to have a more apples to apples comparison. Let me know if you have questions.
RE: your other points. I don’t think my results prove anything regarding the compensation of individual teachers at charters or at traditional DOE schools. I’m looking at comparing the number of teachers at schools in another post, though, which might help to answer some of your questions. In terms of the relative “loads” on charter principals v. TPS principals, I don’t think there’s any sort of generalization that can be made or quantified, at least in this specific case. You can look at my other study that shows that principals at charters are compensated at roughly the same pay rate as TPS principals. But again, this is not a great comparison, as many charters have “school leaders” and many TPS schools have assistant principals, which are generally (but not always) lacking at charters. Sorry I can’t be of more help just yet - hope this helps! -
March 21st, 2010 6:28 pm
I’m sorry. Don’t you work for directly for Hirsh?
And I don’t understand your response about Moskowitz. Is her “compensation” included in the charts at the top of this post? Red? Blue? or not included?
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March 21st, 2010 7:55 pm
Kim,
Thanks.
I was fishing for more salary/budget hits like “school psychologist” that are more likely to be found (I believe) in a TPS than charter.
I knew you already had things like rent and busing covered.
Cheers. -
March 22nd, 2010 10:47 am
Hey Jonathan,
Kim does work with me and, yes, I have given money to charter schools and organizations that support charter schools in the past. I have also given money to Gotham Schools. All of those facts have been disclosed several times in the past, but I think it is worthwhile to repeat them periodically.
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April 5th, 2010 4:35 pm
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April 6th, 2010 3:18 pm
[...] truth-of-the-head is that American public schooling is failing.Expenses are too high, political influence is too systemic, and results areterrifyingly low. This isn’t news. [...]
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Mapping the Budget Cuts
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