Public Financial Support for Charter Schools Impacts Sustainability, New Study Shows
Latest Research Report from Bellwether Education Partners Examines How a High-Performing Charter School Network Would Fare Financially in Various States
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact Andrew Rotherham (202/365-7950) andy@bellwethereducation.org
Chris Lozier (312/237-4043) clozier@civitaschools.org
WASHINGTON, DC (February 8, 2011) – With increased national demand for sustainability and scalability in public education and greater attention to funding provided to public charter schools across the United States, a new study from Bellwether Education Partners, a non-profit consulting firm, finds that the sustainability of even a high-performing charter school network is dramatically affected by state-by-state discrepancies in charter school funding, and that any analysis of charter sustainability must account for these underlying fiscal realities.
In Location, Location, Location: How Would a High-Performing Charter School Network Fare in Different States, study authors Chris Lozier, the Chief Financial Officer for Civitas Schools, and Andrew J. Rotherham, co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, find that the sustainability of Aspire Public Schools would be significantly different if the schools operated in a state other than California.
“Absent substantial reform to education finance, the old real estate adage can also apply to charter school expansion: location, location, location will play an increasingly important role in the proliferation of charter schools in this country,” Lozier and Rotherham said. “This has obvious implications for policymakers, philanthropists, advocates, and anyone concerned about expanding educational opportunity for currently underserved students.”
Currently, California is one of the lowest-spending states, per-pupil, in the United States. According to the National Education Association, California ranked 45th in per-pupil spending for the 2009-2010 school year, allocating $8,825 per student compared to the national average of $11,052. Researchers have also found that California charter schools receive as much as 36 percent less funding per pupil, from the government, than the average California public school.
“These results support the hypothesis that California is among the more fiscally challenging states in which charter schools operate, as well as the more general hypothesis that location must be considered in any analysis of charter school network finance and sustainability,” the study found. “In this case, the average of Aspire’s estimated operating margins implied for the other jurisdictions in this study was 12.2 percent, or 11.6 percentage points higher than actual. This translates into an average of an additional $1,410 of surplus per pupil for Aspire—23.5 times the $60 of surplus per pupil that it enjoyed in California.”
Based on the report’s calculations, Aspire would have been better off, financially, in 18 of the 23 states studied. Only Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, North Carolina, and Ohio would have put Aspire Public Schools on worse financial footing than California.
The full study can be found on the Bellwether Education website at:
http://bellwethereducation.org/location-location-location/
“While many policymakers see charter schools as one way to advance reform in their states, it is clear that some jurisdictions do a better job than others of creating the right conditions for charters and CMOs,” Lozier and Rotherham stated in Location, Location, Location. “In turn, high-quality charter operators in pursuit of scale will become increasingly strategic about where to place new schools. Obviously, finance will be a key factor, and this paper identifies those states where the finances work best to attract CMOs, and those whose policies create the opposite effect.”
About Bellwether Education Partners
Bellwether Education Partners is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the achievement of low-income students by cultivating, advising, and placing a robust community of innovative, effective, and sustainable change agents in public education reform and improving the policy climate for their work.