A new report by researchers at the University of Arkansas examines non-public revenue in public charters and traditional public schools (TPS). This is the same group of researchers that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute commissioned to do our first charter-district finance study—and thankfully, they’re at it again, dispelling the myth that charters get all the philanthropic dollars they need to make up the existing funding deficit. Not so.
Analysts engage in an in-depth examination of non-public funds for Fiscal Year 2011 in public charter and TPS sectors in the fifteen states where they possess sufficient data (which means this isn’t a representative sample). Non-public funds include revenues from areas such as food service (that yummy cafeteria food), investment revenue, program revenue, rental revenue, philanthropic funds, and others.
Key findings: TPS received $6.4 billion and charters $379 million of non-public revenue in 2011. For TPS, this amounts to an average of $353 per pupil; for charters, an average of $579 per pupil. Yet these numbers vary by state. For instance, in Michigan charters receive 50 percent less in per-pupil revenue from non-public sources than do the TPS. The types of non-public revenue coming in also change by sector. In TPS, one-third of non-public revenue comes from food service and “miscellaneous,” but in the charter sector, philanthropy makes up almost half of non-public revenue. Charters receive $264 per pupil in philanthropy and TPS $18, but this difference is driven by large student enrollments in TPS, which receive almost double the amount of philanthropy in absolute dollars. Philanthropic funds also vary greatly among charter schools (one-third of them receive no philanthropic funds of any kind).
The report's last takeaway says it all: “Although charitable funds from philanthropies make up almost half of the non-public revenue in the charter sector, they account for only 2.5% of total charter revenues nationally and therefore cannot be expected to close the 21.7% total funding gap between charters and TPS in these 15 states.” Another charter school myth bites the dust.
SOURCE: Meagan Batdorf et al., "Buckets of Water into the Ocean: Non-Public Revenue in Public Charter and Traditional Public Schools," Department of Education Reform, University of Arkansas (June 2015).
