In case you don’t have time to read the full report released by “In the Public Interest” about the real costs of charter schools, Jan Resseger has done it for you.
Legislators pretend that charters are simply a “choice,” and pay no attention to the fiscal damage they impose on the public schools that educate the majority of children and lose revenue. Thus, the decision to have more charters reduces the quality of education for the majority of children in the district or the state.
She writes:
“What stands out in this report is the perfectly lucid explanation about exactly how charter school funding depletes the budgets of local school districts and what it means for the students left in the traditional public schools when some students carry their per-pupil funding away to a charter school: “To the casual observer, it may not be obvious why charter schools should create any net costs at all for their home districts. To grasp why they do, it is necessary to understand the structural differences between the challenge of operating a single school—or even a local chain of schools—and that of a district-wide system operating tens or hundreds of schools and charged with the legal responsibility to serve all students in the community. When a new charter school opens, it typically fills its classrooms by drawing students away from existing schools in the district. By California state law, school funding is based on student attendance; when a student moves from a traditional public school to a charter school, her pro-rated share of school funding follows her to the new school. Thus, the expansion of charter schools necessarily entails lost funding for traditional public schools and school districts. If schools and district offices could simply reduce their own expenses in proportion to the lost revenue, there would be no fiscal shortfall. Unfortunately this is not the case.”
“The report continues: “If, for instance, a given school loses five percent of its student body—and that loss is spread across multiple grade levels, the school may be unable to lay off even a single teacher… Plus, the costs of maintaining school buildings cannot be reduced…. Unless the enrollment falloff is so steep as to force school closures, the expense of heating and cooling schools, running cafeterias, maintaining digital and wireless technologies, and paving parking lots—all of this is unchanged by modest declines in enrollment. In addition, both individual schools and school districts bear significant administrative responsibilities that cannot be cut in response to falling enrollment. These include planning bus routes and operating transportation systems; developing and auditing budgets; managing teacher training and employee benefits; applying for grants and certifying compliance with federal and state regulations; and the everyday work of principals, librarians and guidance counselors.” As other studies have shown, the greatest fiscal burden for local school districts is for special education, because traditional public schools continue to serve the children with the most serious disabilities, the children who require expensive services most charters elect not to provide.
“What about the problems in school districts where the school population is already shrinking? In recent years charters have somehow been prescribed in places like Chicago and Detroit and Cleveland as a way to attract families to the district. But ITPI’s report explains why such thinking is flawed: “It is true that shrinking student populations cause a fiscal crisis for school districts. However, charter schools exacerbate this problem in unique ways. First, charter schools make it extremely difficult for districts to consolidate schools in the face of falling enrollment… When the creation of new schools is no longer tied to student population growth but rather is open to any number of entrepreneurs aimed at competing for market share, the inevitable result is an increased number of schools for the same population of students. In Albany, New York, over the course of a decade the district went from serving 10,380 students in 17 schools to serving just slightly more students—10,568—but in 24 schools…. And the New York Times reported that in the city of Detroit, ‘the unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles…’ The problem is particularly destructive in communities whose total school population is already shrinking…. In such districts school systems already struggling to meet student needs with diminishing resources are faced with additional dramatic cuts in funding.”
It makes perfect sense to everyone other than legislators and charter lobbyists.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
https://isreview.org/issue/94/slavery-and-elite-education-us
Jan, Thanks for the summary of the report. I am forwarding this to my local social justice group with a recommendation that key points be reframed as 3 minute speeches for the school board (already infected with a member from TFA) and for several other events. I intend to recommend a local audit/study of the costs of charter schools to the public schools in our district.
In states that have caps or laws that limit the amount of property taxes that can be levied, schools districts have no other choice but to keep cutting deeply. California is the home of Proposition 13. “School districts are under multiple sources of fiscal stress.” The state should be asking itself at what point is the state no longer able to offer a through and efficient education. California has made unfettered charter expansion a priority at the expense of its young people. The report suggests that the state should be required to review the economic impact of charter cost annually and make adjustments as necessary. This is an unattainable ideal as long as Eli Broad and other billionaires are tailoring laws to suit their charter expansion agenda.
Correction: thorough
“California has made unfettered charter expansion a priority at the expense of its young people.”
You hit the bulls-eye.
😎
When a student opts-out of a publicly-run school, and enrolls in a charter school, the per-pupil expenditures follow the child, into the receiving school. The same phenomenon occurs, when the child transfers to another district, another county school system, moves across the state, or moves to another state, or moves to another country, or beams up to the planet Krylox.
Charter schools (and all forms of school choice) remove students and money from publicly-operated systems. This is exactly what they are intended to do.
Of course, the losing school(s) are faced with fixed costs. Utilities, janitorial services, school building maintenance, etc. continue when the school population is reduced. This is to be expected. Teachers often complain about large class sizes. School choice, and the departure of students, makes class sizes smaller.
School system will have to prepare to deal with the lower number of students, and the lower amount of funding as well. States should prepare assistance funds, to assist school systems who are forced to down-size with administrative and logistical assistance, to properly reduce physical plant costs, and personnel reductions.
Of course, the costs of educating special-needs children are higher than the costs of educating the average student. These costs continue and are unchanged, regardless of whether there is school choice/charters in the district of the special-needs children. It is unfair to blame charter schools, on the costs of educating special-needs children.
Fortunately, there is a way to deal with this. The Supreme Court ruled in Endrew F. V. Douglas County, that if a publicly-operated school system cannot provide an adequate education to a special-needs children, then the child is entitled to an adequate education at a private institution at public expense.
Charles,
You make clear that you did not read the report about which you are commenting. You learned nothing from the facts.
Why would the state of California provide any additional funds like an “assistance fund” when they don’t adequately fund the schools in the first place? So the state shouldn’t increase current school funding, but they should have a pot of money at the ready to provide to schools to help with their downsizing and closure? What kind of twisted logic is that?
I once lived in a city, that had a major employer move to town. (General Motors, Corvette). The public school system had to “up-size”, and expand quickly. The school system had to buy trailers (called portable classrooms), and hire additional teachers and support staff.
The state had a contingency fund, to assist the city school system in the expansion.
What is so wrong with the reverse? If a municipal school system loses students, and has to “down-size”, the state should be able to provide the public school system with logistical and administrative support (and possibly financial support) to reduce staff and liquidate physical plant.
This shouldn’t have to be repeated, but much of the cost that “follows” the student leaving a charter school is still needed for the public school. Lights still have to turn on, heat still has to run, custodians and lunch staff are still needed.
IF enough students leave for a charter, a teacher or several may be laid off. What happens then, dear Charles, is that the other teachers left are stuck with overcrowded classrooms. Those become even more crowded when most of the kids come back from the charters mid-year (and they do). Schools generally don’t add teachers mid-year, so the classrooms get even more ridiculously crowded.
I know this from sad experience, year after year, in a high risk school, where kids come and go all year, and my class sizes, and those of my colleagues, are getting to be astronomical. Classes of 38-45 (this is a junior high) are commonplace. But we still can’t get more teachers, because the district assumes a certain number of students will leave for charters.
We went through the same arguments with Charles millions of times, and he repeats the same nonsense about laws, “schools need to be prepared to fluctuating enrollment”, “with students leaving, class sizes decrease” etc. Charles is neither a listener nor a learner.
Sadly he doesn’t listen. Sometimes he seems not to have read the article he responds to. I don’t know why he likes to goad everyone here with his far-right opinions. H is very genial. He knows that I delete many of his comments because they are repetitive or offensive or cite disreputable sources.
Mate,
He just did it again today.
I know he doesn’t listen or learn, but as one of the few Utah teachers who will actually say anything about the horrendous conditions here, I feel that I have to speak. I know I will never get through to Charles, but maybe others from my state will listen and learn.
Of course I listen and read and learn. In a dynamic economy, people transfer with employment, and for other reasons. I have worked from Harrison, Maine to Monterey, California, and 16 years in foreign lands. Factories close, factories open, people and their children transfer. Military families transfer frequently. Sometimes a parent will die, and the surviving spouse has to relocate with the children. Sometimes, sadly, a child will die, and the school system loses the per-pupil expenditures, but must continue to operate. My father was transferred frequently, and I attended public schools in North Carolina (2). Lexington KY (3), Bowling Green KY (2). Seven(7) different public schools had to face increases and decreases in enrollment and adjust to the gain/loss of income when I was enrolled in public schools. Somehow, they all managed.
Schools and school systems must be prepared to deal with population shifts, and increases/decreases in school enrollments. Nothing is “static” in this economy. When a school is faced with an increase in enrollment “mid-year”, and does not have the ability to hire additional staff “mid-year”, then staffing policy of that school system is failing, and needs to be modernized. With the additional students, arriving, additional per-pupil disbursements arrive as well. The school system should use this additional money to hire additional staff and/or temporary staff.
Of course there are fixed costs in a school system. It costs the same to heat a classroom with 29 students, as it does to heat a classroom with 30 students. A school system has to be prepared to deal with fluctuations in enrollments.
School systems need to develop “contingency funds”, by sequestering a small amount of the annual per-pupil expenditures into an escrow account. When a school system is faced with an increase/decrease in enrollment, the funds can be disbursed as needed. States can and should assist public systems with the costs inherent in population shifts. Just cramming more students into already overcrowded classrooms, is ridiculous.
Being prepared for the normal fluctuations in enrollment is one thing. Being forced to deal with the rather more dramatic shifts that the charter industry is creating is more difficult. When a charter school closes midyear and their students flood the public schools, that is not a normal shift in demographics, especially when a school system has already made some painful decisions to compensate for the loss of funding to charter schools. None of that money magically reappears in the public system. It is gone for the year. Then deformers say that’s the market; deal with it. No. Schools are not commercial enterprises. They are run by the public for the public good. Any return we get on our “investment” is an intangible and often quite long term. The “market” has found a backdoor way of milking the resources that have been dedicated to public education by claiming their charter schools are public when it is time to dole out the tax dollars and private whenever any of their actions are questioned. Public schools do not have the luxury of shutting their doors and moving on; they are there to serve all children, not just the ones the charter schools choose. But then, you know all of this, Charles. Your disingenuous act make you appear rather slow at times; then you turn around and say something intelligent!
States/municipalities have to plan their school systems, based on data provided by the US Census Bureau (and other sources, of course). By tracking demographic trends, states/municipalities can plan where to build public schools, what size, and which ages/grades to serve.
Governments have to plan for the “long haul”, and adjust their public school construction/personnel policies accordingly. Governments also have to plan for contingencies, like factory closing/openings, and possibilities like a military base closing (or opening). I was in El Paso TX in 2005, and the Army announced that it was relocating an additional 50,000 soldiers (and their families) to Fort Bliss. The public school systems in El Paso had to scramble on that event.
School choice/charters inject a new dynamic into public schools long-term and short-term planning. Government officials will have to develop policies to deal with a more “elastic” number of students moving into and out of public schools, when choice arrives in a community.
This is how a dynamic economy works. They will just have to deal with it.
No, no, Charles, school choice introduces failure, lack of accountability, lack of oversight, and fraud into public finance.
A free market is not government funded.
I would also wonder about what effect charters are having on innovation in public Ed. The idea of the charter was to influence innovation by allowing charters to try things in a less restrictive environment. It would seem to me that charters who pull money away from school districts would take funds which might have previously been available for programs such as art or math magnets. Not to mention the general defunding of education in places that are in need of infrastructure improvement.
Charters have failed to deliver on innovation and improved results. The privateers have made sure that test and punish keep public schools trying to swim against the current while simultaneously facing lost funding due to charter drain.
This report really lays out how charter schools are undermining public education. Anyone who is involved in a battle to limit charter incursions, particularly those in California, should have this report at their fingertips. It provides the hard facts that counter charter advocates’ tired talking points.
California’s law prohibits schools districts from considering the impact of charter expansion on their budgets. This is a recipe to make school districts collapse, especially if they cannot raise more revenue. They are trying to suppress the information to snooker the public.
I did not think it was possible, but I have even less respect for looney-tunes California than I had before. That is the stupidest law, I ever heard of, bar none. School districts have to consider a number of factors in their planning decisions, and charter school expansion is certainly one of them.
Is it any wonder that 250 businesses a month, are leaving California?
This is an excellent report.
One of the very worst things that Barack Obama did was — in either ignorance or simply lack of any integrity — is the hypocrisy in which his administration approached charter schools and Obamacare.
The Obama administration developed Obamacare knowing full well that allowing private insurance companies to cherry pick the healthiest Americans and have free reign to dump them as soon as they get a serious illness was a terrible system. The Obama administration was more than happy to explain to Americans who were demanding their cheap NON-insurance policies that excluded coverage for any serious illness that those insurance policies were worthless if you actually NEEDED insurance. They explained that the reason healthy Americans were required to pay more for coverage “they didn’t need” is because insurance — and public policy — is about SHARING those costs among the healthy and sickest and not just letting the healthy people buy cheap insurance — or “non-insurance” — from private companies who dumped all seriously ill patients into Obamacare when they weren’t profitable anymore – with Obamacare required to pay for all treatment from all the private insurance rejects.
Can you imagine the laughter if the private insurance industry funded “studies” in which ONLY the outcomes of the patients allowed to remain on the insurance companies plan — i.e. all the ones who didn’t get sick and got dumped — were compared to all the patients on Obamacare — including the ones that the private insurance companies refused to ever take — and it was found that the “outcomes” of patients in Obamacare were worse? Any academic who was paid to come up with those findings would have been drummed out of any legitimate university as a fraud.
But then the very same people in the Obama administration — who obviously understood enough about economics to organize Obamacare in a way that didn’t allow private companies to pick off the healthiest Americans — insisted that for education, everything they claimed about Obamacare was a lie. You COULD have a private organization that taught only the cheapest to teach kids and dumped the rest into the public sector. You COULD give the exact same amount of money to teach the cheapest children as you did the children who cost the most to teach. You COULD directly compare the outcomes of children allowed to remain in charters with the public schools that took all the students that charters decided were not profitable enough to teach.
If the Republicans had insisted that private insurance companies be allowed to dump any patients they wanted to Obamacare and use the savings to market to the healthiest Americans, the Obama administration would have called out their lies.
But when it comes to education, the Obama administration decided to act as Republicans and lie, too.
They should be ashamed.
(And Hillary Clinton was one of the few Democrats who reminded us that charters did not take the same kids and anyone who started with that assumption was simply a liar.)
President Trump is now trying to do to Obamacare exactly what the Obama administration did to public schools. Those Democrats who have insisted that charters are a great thing would be asked whether they support the right wing Republican desire to abolish all medicare and obamacare and simply let insurance companies dump sick patients just like the Republicans want. Because “the market” that those charter school promoters love will take care of it all.