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February 15, 2011

Report: Most city charter schools receive more per-pupil funds

by Anna Phillips, at 4:49 pm

Reversing its earlier findings, the city’s Independent Budget Office has concluded in a new study that most New York City charter schools receive more funding per student than their district school peers.

A year ago, an IBO study found that charter schools housed in public school buildings received $305 less per student than district schools for the 2008-09 school year. Now, the office has revised its methodology and has reached a very different conclusion.

In 2008-09, charter schools in district space were given $701 more per student than traditional public schools, the new study finds. For the 2009-10 school year, that disparity shrunk to $649.

Where the two studies do agree is on the question of funding for charter schools that are housed in private space. Roughly a third of New York City’s 98 charter schools fall into this category, and both studies found that they receive significantly less funding per student than district schools and charter schools in district space. The most recent report states:

The reason we calculate a higher funding allocation for charters housed in public school buildings than charters in private space is the value of in-kind services they receive due to their location: charter schools co-located in public school buildings don’t have to budget for space costs and utilities, janitorial services, or school safety agents.

The IBO’s report did not examine the amount that charter schools raise through private philanthropy each year.

Looking ahead, the study’s authors suggest that the per-pupil funding gap between district schools and charters in district space is likely to widen as a result of the state legislature ending the charter school funding freeze. They write:

When complete data from 2010–2011 become available, they are almost certain to show an even greater advantage for those charters housed within public school buildings compared with traditional public schools.

In its explanation of its new methodology, the IBO states that unlike its last report, the new study does not include spending on transportation for special education students. It also doesn’t include the pension costs of special education teachers at district schools and it uses a new estimate for the cost of fringe benefits.

Department of Education officials have not commented on the report’s findings yet (I’ll post when they do), but a spokesman for the IBO, Doug Turetsky, said that DOE officials had asked the IBO to take down the report because they hadn’t had time to review it.

“We have no intention of pulling it down,” Turetsky said, adding that the IBO sent the study to the DOE last Thursday and received a response yesterday.

In her testimony before the legislature in Albany today, Chancellor Cathie Black seemed to agree with the report’s main conclusion that charter schools in district space receive more funding than district schools.

“It is not our goal to have more money on a continuing basis go to charter schools over district schools,” she told the elected officials. “There are ups and downs in the funding. This year it is true that there is a higher per student payment, but it will equal out.”

Chief Executive Officer of the New York City Charter School Center James Merriman said that he wished the IBO had incorporated former Chancellor Joel Klein’s recommendations for changes to its methodology that Klein suggested last year.

“My sense is taking into account the chancellor’s refinements to their mythology, the numbers come out more or less equal,” he said, suggesting that the disparity between district schools and charters in district space might be much smaller or even nonexistent.

The report “simply confirms what we’ve known all along, which is funding taken as a whole for the charter sector is less than funding for districts schools taken as a whole,” Merriman said.

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  • Diamonte

    I mean when does this stuff end? This Bloomberg administration has created a disaster. What really changed? Now – sad to see the difference in $$$ per student in the same areas of NYC.
    They took high school buildings with 1 principal and created nothing. The same 4000 students are in the buildings, just with 6 principals, 20 assistant principals, and 75 school aides. The same student pop is there, just add a few million per each school payroll.
    November 2013 is coming. I hope the next mayor can try to fix this system somewhat.

  • Ellen

    so much for doing more with less……do you think Eva knows?

    Hmmmm, reminds me of the old Nike commercials…..Bo knows…..
    Eva knows….the Chancellor
    Eva knows….Bill Gates
    Eva knows….the bankers at Goldman Sacks
    Eva knows….where the schools are

    or maybe we could compare her with The Shadow? The shadow knows……

    Aw phooey, let’s all just admit, EVA KNOWS

  • John G

    And don’t forget how much funding these schools receive from the private sector.

  • http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator

    Like everyone else, I’m shocked, shocked.

  • Other District 13 Parent

    The majority of charters to not receive “private sector” funding.

  • John G

    Yes they do (if anyone shows proof, I would be happy to apologize for the mistaken notion).

    And let us not forget the amount of extra money they save for not having to follow all of the same state mandates that a public school does.

  • Pogue

    So many stacked decks. Bloomberg, payoff money, editorial boards, hedge-funders, lotteries, attrition, fraudulent tests.

    Since no one is held accountable for this corruption…

    How soon till we kick mayoral control to the curb?

  • Nichole

    Ask any teacher who works at one and they’ll let you know the teachers aren’t sucking up the money at charter schools. I worked at one of these stunning charter high schools you see here in NYC – this particular one has a graduation rate of 48%. When I was there, most of my fellow teachers were making far below the DOE pay scale (as I was) – and the school had no need nor desire to pay us more. In the end, I got a sizable raise when I started working for a public high school.

  • Ken

    Although I haven’t reviewed this report, I was pretty impressed by the one last year.  The IBO seems to do a reasonably thorough analysis.  It will be interesting to see the DOE response.  

    Both this report and the one from last year suggest:
    1. Charter and traditional funding is comparable (4% difference in this analysis) for charter schools in public space.  (To be clear, the goal should be a 0% difference!)
    2. Charter schools not in public space receive less (15% less in this analysis).

    As usual, I think the goal should be a simplified and equalized funding formula such that students receive neither more nor less public funding for attending a charter school.  

    The private funding (philanthropy) issue is a tough one.  The analyses I have seen indicate that most charter schools receive little or no philanthropy, but several receive quite a bit.  Moreover, it can be difficult to track some of the funding sources and to calculate per-student amounts for schools that are part of multi-school Charter Management Organizations.  I don’t favor proscribing or equalizing philanthropy, but I do think the numbers are relevant to certain debates.   I predict that philanthropy will become a shrinking percentage of charter funding over time as the movement grows.  Many charters ask for philanthropy as “start-up funds”.  I think it will be harder for them to get grants for more mature schools.   

  • http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ norm

    “I think it will be harder for them to get grants for more mature schools.” Good point Ken, especially as they begin to eat each other up when there are no public schools left. And of course demonstrate that not only will the cinder that remains will be no better than what came before but considerably worse. Think of it as the ruins of war. How long till the day comes when you and other charter school pushers look at the landscape you have wrought and say like Colonel Nicholson at the end of Bridge Over the River Kwai as he realizes the horror of his actions. “What have I done?”

  • insiderknowledge

    We should demand that the comptroler audit any charter school sharing a public space to see where their money comes from and where it goes. Well we know where it goes ..”Eva’s Pocket”

  • http://www.ourschoolsnyc.org Justin

    At a panel on charter accountability tonight at NYU, James Merriman of the NY Charter Center responded to my question of fiscal responsibility for charters with the statement that charters, on average, receive less public funding per pupil than district schools. Given that 70 of the 125 charters in NYC are in public buildings, and IBO showed these schools to be overfunded compared to district schools, how can this be? Someone chime in with the math and-more importantly- the morality of this fiscal unaccountability!

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Hey, where’s Kitchen Sink?

  • http://blog.nycsa.org Peter Murphy

    The IBO’s politically-timed release Tuesday admits it botched last year’s analysis by a $1,006 per student; now we are all suppose to take at face value that charters get more? The IBO still counts start-up grants even thought most city charters no longer receive them, so it “averages” this $287 amount ($266 for least year). It also glosses over its reason for not counting categorical funding which totals $2.3 billion for city district students, or $2,100 to $2,700 per student, depending on the subset of enrollment. I stand corrected but charters do not receive near this level of federal title and child nutrition funds, which would more than negate this supposed $700 “advantage.” To the Bloomberg administration’s credit, it has sought resource parity between public schools, charter and district, since the state funding formula from its beginning short-changes charters across the state. For two-thirds of the city charters, they appear close to parity, if not at that point, because of in-kind support from the city district, while more than 40 city charters in their own private space remain cheated by nearly $2,600 per student last year if you accept the IBO analysis. By all means let’s continue this intra-district debate about how much in-kind support should be provided to charter schools to attain funding parity for all city public students; but a reminder: even the IBO finds that one-third of charters unjustly continue to lose out. For more, see Chalkboard blog at http://blog.nycsa.org.

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  • KitchenSink

    Right here, bud. I’m happy to admit that Leonie Haimson was right in her analysis on this one, and I was wrong about the in-kind funding from the DOE. I can say so because I trust the IBO, until I have reason not to.

    Now about those special education pensions…

    The core argument that charters need more funding to be on par hasn’t changed becuase of this report. The shame of treatment of private-space charters aside, there but for the grace of Bloomberg go district-housed charters; a Thompson administration would probably have worked its hardest to remove as many charters from DOE buildings as possible, rendering this analysis pointless. Charters are (generally) in favor now, but we won’t always be. Our good ideas will be lost in the shifting political and cultural winds at some point (maybe soon, certainly if you have your way MF), and if we don’t fight for security we’ll have nothing to stand on other than our good intentions and memories of when we had some measure of equitable funding.

  • closethegap

    John G, slight correction: chateres follow all state mandates. They are not run by Chancellor and do not have to abide by DOE mandates unless it has to do with DOE space.

  • closethegap

    John G, slight correction: charters follow all state mandates. They are not run by Chancellor and do not have to abide by DOE mandates unless it has to do with DOE space.

    Insider knowledge-to clarify, charter schools go through rigorous state audits and are held to very high standards to prove where their money comes from and goes.

  • Smith

    Ken, are you still backing charter schools? We haven’t heard much from you since they were outperformed by the public schools on the city’s most recent progress reports.

    Your crowd out to be so unbelievably wrong with the whole “get rid of the union and schools will blossom” theory, that I assumed you had moved on to other causes.

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